“Precision kill shot” is the phrase used in a CBS/AP report. This is an accurate description. Air marshals are trained to shoot people in the head inside an airplane without sending a stray bullet through the airplane. Military personnel such as attacked bin Laden likewise are dead shots. It follows that bin Laden could have been wounded, if he were violently resisting (does any report say that he was?) and not killed.
Sensitive to this criticism, the White House presents a lame explanation of why bin Laden was not taken alive. In fact they admit the opposite, that killing was the instruction and they explain why it was the instruction. The White House spokesman said “we were not going to give bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces.” In other words, shoot to kill. Why? Bob Orr, who interviewed intelligence sources, reports that the government wanted to avoid the difficulties of holding bin Laden. In his words, ” Where would he be held? Who would do the interrogation? Would the U.S. have to read him his rights? Most counterterrorism experts did not view bin Laden as an exploitable source for intelligence.” The news report goes on: “There was little chance he could substantively add to what the government knows about his organization. Beyond that, bin Laden, alive in captivity, would have added to his mythological standing among radical jihadis and would have presented an ongoing tool for radical recruitment.”
The latter explanations all are evidently government-sourced. They all give no weight to any semblance of rule of law, whether ordinary or under conditions of war. They mirror the kinds of police injustices that Will Grigg reports to us on almost a daily basis. They mirror the conclusion of Paul Craig Roberts that the rule of law is dead.
6:15 am on May 3, 2011
