Back in my Patterico days, both I and Patrick were very hard on Obama’s decision to have bin Laden buried at sea, supposedly out of respect for Islamic tradition (except it wasn’t) before there was any independent verification that we actually killed him. We felt that doign it that way robbed the families of the 9-11 victims of closure, and gave fertile ground for conspiracy theories. And so now today via Althouse we get this article from the Wikileaking of Stratfor’s databases:
Leaked: Bin Laden not buried at sea, body moved on CIA plane to US
The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks.
Wow, holy crap, that means the Obama administration was not as dumb about this as I thought. I take it back, I mean...
Except, um, wait a minute:
Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says.
(Emphasis added.) Um, he believes? As in he isn’t sure?
The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony.
"If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi's ashes," Burton commented in another email. Eichman was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. He was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and, tried in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea over the Mediterranean.
“Which I doubt” means he is speculating...
"Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being sentenced to death and executed. No one wanted a monument to him so they cremated him. But i dont know anyone who claimed he wasnt eicjhman [sic]. No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which i doubt happened [sic]," Stratfor CEO George Friedman replied.
(emphasis added.) Again, “doubt,” which is not the same as having knowledge one way or the other.
"The US Govt needs to make body pics available like the MX's do, with OBL's pants pulled down, to shout down the lunatics like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck," Burton says in another message.
Not sure how pulling down his pants help, but...
Oh wait, maybe this is what they are talking about:
Moving on:
In another missive Burton says Osama’s body “is a crime scene and I don’t see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen.”
Again, “I don’t see” is speculative language.
So bluntly, the quotes in the article emphatically do not match the headline. They are not saying they have any knowledge. They are just saying they can’t believe that bin Laden would really be buried at sea, because it is inconceivable (probably because it was a dumb move).
And it’s more than a little disappointing to see this intelligence agency focused on convincing Americans. I have always been more interested in convincing the Muslim world of bin Laden’s mortality.
I would be curious as to whether the world thinks he is really dead or not.
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