I'm highly skeptical the clothes line was as pivotal as the article makes it out to be
It's presents the clothes line as the detail that busted the case wide open. I'm sure they had some more hard evidence to go on before deciding to raid it. Can you imagine intelligence officials in a meeting with Obama: "Mr President, this house in Pakistan hangs up too many clothes to dry. It has to be Bin Laden"
Indeed. This story sounds like a parallel construction aimed at deflecting questions from the true means of his discovery. No idea what they might be trying to hide; mayve a satellite-based ground-penetrating infrared radar with millimeter resolution? Regardless, I would never trust the government to be forthright and honest in such matters.
Interesting insight into op-sec failures when trying to hide...
> It had no telephone lines or Internet service.
I wonder how the CIA got this info from Abbottabad Telecom. Pay someone? Hack into their systems? In my imagination it's someone local going undercover to work for them and extract the info. People think being a spy is James Bond stuff but it's infiltrating a... telecoms company.
Maybe the standard in Pakistan is above ground cables on telephone poles? I would assume an experienced professional would be able to tell which cable delivers power and which delivers phone service with a glance.
You have to be impressed that a world famous guy with a huge bounty (25m) on his head and who was pretty recognisable (6-5 in a country that averages 5-5) took so long to catch.
TLDR; after years of hard work and different intelligence tactics being deployed to actually find him they confirmed Osama likely lives at a house due to the number of garments hanging on the line matching the number of people in his family.
Not sure about propaganda, but sounds like a lame-ass piece, taking for granted what BS official sources said.
As if they'd reveal an informant or other (more plausible) means of getting that information.
They had arrived at a suspect house, identified the driver, but had to rely on the clothesline for such information? I call BS. But it makes for a good story.
Well they had to be certain, right? What if the driver was working for someone else, and Bin Laden was nearby but didn't live there? You send in the marines, you don't get Osama, and instead you've basically let him know that he needs to GTFO that city...
The clothesline was only a clue, they didn't rely on it:
"But the final clue was the clotheslines on the compound, which flapped each day with women’s garments, shalwar kameez worn by Pakistani men, children’s outfits and diapers — far more than the 11 members of the bodyguards’ families could ever wear."
Perhaps you only read the title? because I agree it's a clickbait.
It’s hard to disagree with this, it was bs all the way down. There was also the way a vaccination programme was used as a cover for helping find him, causing problems down the line.
I'm not a fan of the CIA's methods in general but I don't think blaming them for this lapse in vaccinations is fair. The real cause is the people spreading all these lies about vaccines.
In fact I like that they went out of their way to validate their target instead of just going in all cowboy and shooting the place up on limited intel.
Yes. Nevermind that you actually had conspiracy theory level skulduggery going on under the guise of a public health measure further undermining the already tenuous trust that exists under for the neutrality of the public health edifice.
Amazing the level of mental gymnastics that people are prone to when the objectives of national security come into relief.
I'm not even American :) Their national security isn't something that would worry me. And I know they often do things in the name of national security that are more about commercial interests.
However we are talking about a man who murdered thousands of innocents in cold blood. And shocked the whole world.
If people already have distrust for the local medical service, that's a local problem they should address. If they feel like helping to track down a mass murderer makes that health service even less trustworthy, they really are supporting the wrong side.
I think the only thing they did wrong was killing Bin Laden. I feel he should have stood trial for that. They shouldn't have killed him no matter how much he deserved it. Even the worst Nazis stood trial. I know it would have given him a stage but it was still wrong.
But I think sending a fake medical team in to confirm was a small measure considering what he had done. I'm sure even the police would do things like that in much less important cases.
>In fact I like that they went out of their way to validate their target instead of just going in all cowboy and shooting the place up on limited intel.
Not before the CIA faked a vaccination campaign to get some blood samples for confirmation, thus compromising the concept of vaccinations in the region, of course.
It's presents the clothes line as the detail that busted the case wide open. I'm sure they had some more hard evidence to go on before deciding to raid it. Can you imagine intelligence officials in a meeting with Obama: "Mr President, this house in Pakistan hangs up too many clothes to dry. It has to be Bin Laden"