And so we wake up this morning to news that Osama bin Laden is dead. Countless trees will die as newspapers bring us details and analysis but the BBCs instant reaction has been interesting – especially as they’ve had 9 years, 7 months and 21 days to prepare.
The BBC has a rolling obituary which better suits a head of state or great friend of the world which is…typical. Take this sentence as an example:
“‘To his supporters, Bin Laden was a fighter for freedom against the US and Israel, not, as he was to many in the West, a terrorist with the blood of thousands of people on his hands.‘”
One clip ends with the statement that ‘his ideas live on‘ solemnly intoned over a photograph of him smiling into the camera like a happy, bearded uncle.
This should be an interesting day on al beeb – on the one hand holding up Obama as some sort of world hero, and on the other finding all mannner of issues with which the muslim world might be outraged about, regarding the death, capture and disposal of Bin Laden.
Mark Mardell’s already hard at work on the first of those Lloyd!
Bin Laden’s death: A cathartic moment for the US
President Barack Obama is making it clear that the killing of Osama Bin Laden didn’t occur by accident – and that it happened while he was in charge. He told former Presidents Bush and Clinton what he was about to announce before he made his televised White House statement. I am sure he resisted any suggestion that he had done what they had only talked about. Yet he made it clear that his administration had been determined…(etc)
if it had happened while dubya was in charge,Mardell would have dropped a bollock(if he has any that is)over the fact that bin Liner was nailed on the spot
hypocritical tramp
I suspect Oblimy & pals knew where Bin Bag was some time ago – they were just waiting for an opportune drop in the polls to boost their flagging campaign.
Who knows, maybe even Bush knew where he was and they were collecting intelligence. Bin Laden may have been more use alive than dead.
they’ve known since August last year apparently
what took them so long to nail the bugger?
I was thinking the same thing. Are any lefties going to criticise Obama for claiming “justice has been done” when no such thing has been done. Surely capturing him to be paraded on the world stage prior to – presumably – being sentenced to execution in the US would have been something more akin to “justice being done”. Yes its the same end result, but the means to the end do matter.
utterly contemptible
something really really needs to be done about these dhimmis
they are anti British,anti western,anti capitalist,anti semitic,anti christian
in other words they are the enemy within
it’s as simple as that
tv licence?You gotta be kidding
What a disgrace the BBC is…. see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10741005
First line describes Osama Bid Laden as a “dissident” not until the very last line of the article do we get the T word, “To his supporters, Bin Laden was a fighter for freedom against the US and Israel, not, as he was to many in the West, a terrorist with the blood of thousands of people on his hands.”
I think every country see’s him as a Terrorist not just the “West”.
Isn’t an obit already a bit premature?
Seems little doubt, and he is… apparently.. now buried at sea, but might it not have been wise to await definitive confirmation?
My site,
I guess they have DNA from his relatives and him.
BBC’s Rachel Harvey: “Old family photos show Osama Bin Laden as a typical teenager”
Strewth… with twin teens, on this basis there’s about 6,000 folk somewhere who better watch out in case my two might in later life don’t feel in a good mood about things not going to their liking.
All that has transpired, and this is what she comes out with?
Er, how can anyone tell from a photo whether someone is a “typical” anything ? Now, what could dear Rachel be driving at , I wonder ?
Yes, the Russians and the Indians (two of the biggest victims of Bin Laden-inspired terrorism) are already welcoming the news and freely using the T-word too. The Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans, not to mention the people of Bali, aren’t “the West” either, but they’ve all been on the receiving end too. The BBC’s easy use of the term “the West” is very inappropriate here.
Unbelievable, I have just added this disgrace as an update to my post earlier. The obit is over 40 paragraphs long, and as BBCwaste says, the T word is in the VERY last line and even then it is a “third party” description.
Well spotted , Craig !
Sunny side up and sunny side down that last paragraph is an agenda driven statement in favour of Al Qa’eda terrorism.
I wonder if that notorious BBC number was found on Obama’s mobile as well?
Thanks for that, ASE.
Anyone catch Paul Wood at 7.25am on Today describe OBL as “marginal” and “peripheral”?
Anyone catch Jeremy Bowen do his best to suggest Al Queda had nothing to do with Islam?
The BBC are gutted.
“‘To his supporters, Bin Laden was a fighter for freedom against the US and Israel,
As noted in the open thread, while a spread of coverage of opinion is legitimate, the BBC already seems to be being extraordinarily… er.. ‘balanced’ in their treatment of world views and ‘factual’ back story.
This wasn’t another Frank Gardner was it? If so, one wonders if he had anything less than complimentary to say about Mr. Bin Laden’s … ‘achievements’.
Honestly can’t fault Pres. Obama on what has been shared so far (Mardell default suck up notwithstanding) , but funny watching SKY and their man in New York stumbling a bit on his ‘O..amas’.
‘Obama whacks Osama’ does have a certain ring to it.
I suspect that come election time the BBC will be highlighting at every opportunity that Obama killed Bin Laden and will somehow manage to forget that after beginning his Presidency signing an Executive Order to close Guantanamo he did a 180º about turn a year later.
I wonder if it will emerge how the intelligence that led to Bin Laden’s termination was obtained? Whether it was through Bush’s ‘slappy, slappy’ methods, or Obama’s ‘Miranda’ methods?
IainDale Iain Dale BBC News Online: “Bin Laden was accused of being behind a number of atrocities.” No he wasn’t accused. He WAS behind them. Dear oh dear.
Well, if that’s true, it’s worth £4B unique compulsory extortion of anyone’s money.
Iain Dale’s an idiot.
BBC 5 Live this morning and the usual leftie fans/callers being put on air seem a bit down in the mouth. What’s the matter, did their football team just lose or something?
Heard one caller say something along the lines of “it doesn’t serve the victim to punish perpetrater” – i’ve only just stopped laughing. Campbell’s just made his first mention of “angry muslims”.
NC had his usual mixed bag of callers and guests.
An Irish guy called half way in and asked him if he thinks Barbara Plett will shed tears over Osama like she did over Arafat?
NC doubted it, however, a couple of months or so ago, when a caller complained about the biased BBC coverage of Israel, he did volunteer Barbara Plett crying over Arafat as a reason for why he might think this.
politicshomeuk politicshomeuk Douglas Alexander tells BBC R5live that “all of us need to choose our words carefully this morning“.
As Mr. Alexander has done so often in the past when rushing to enhance the narrative in the studio? The BBC’s guest list over the next few days is shaping up well.
I have noticed on R5L this morning a marked absence of Govt Spokesmen and top heavy on former Labour Govt bigwigs.
Frank Gardiner tells us…..’BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says that, to many in the West, Bin Laden became the embodiment of global terrorism, but to others he was a hero, a devout Muslim who fought two world superpowers in the name of jihad.’
<!–[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]–>
<!–[endif]–>
A *cough* screenshot from the BBC website *cough* sort of.
Oh dear, poor beeboids, those nasty Americans being brutal again. At least their chosen one, Obama, gets to take the Kudos – imagine how upset they would have been if that ghastly Mr Bush had got the credit !
Questions the beeboid talking heads will be trying to avoid :
1. Why do we give billions in aid to a country whose inhabitants follow a religion with stone age values which actively preaches that our civilisation is evil ?
2. You can’t just build a bleeding great secure compound in the suburbs , in a country where the monthly wage of the average person is probably £20, without those in authority knowing about it . Discuss.
Just caught it on BBC 1. The BBC in mourning. I thought Frank Gardner was going to burst into tears. The BBC emphasising “reprisals” already. The BBC really are the pits of humanity.
Me, I am going to crack open a 25-year old bottle of “Dhimmi Beeb ” Irn Bru. Slainte !!!!
I suppose we’ll have to endure weeks of Obama arse-licking now, and all of a sudden he’ll be the greatest Pres, evah…
Natsman,
He already was ! The problem for the scum at the BBC is that one of their heroes has killed another of their heroes !
Just watch, every limp wristed lefty liberal will ditch Che Guevara and adopt Osama Bin Laden on their T shirts.
I see the bBC has turned the death of its Ideological hero into a promotion into how everything about the US is bad, I quote:
Intelligence experts believe that the US Central Intelligence Agency played an active role in arming and training the mujahideen, including Bin Laden. The end of the war saw a sea change in his views.
Well actually the US had nothing to do with Bin Laden. This Bin laden himself admitted when he gave an interview to Robert Fisk where he stated:
“Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help.”
Maybe there lies the reason why the bBC quotes a supposition rather than a fact when it comes to OBL.
The bBC continues with its mis-information campaign by promoting this lie:
His hatred of Moscow shifted to Washington after 300,000 US troops, women among them, were based in Saudi Arabia, home of two of Islam’s holiest places, during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Bin Laden vowed to avenge what he saw as blasphemy.
When in fact the story is that after Saddam invaded Kuwait, OBL offered his help to the Saudi Government in removing Iraq from Kuwait. After his offer of help was rejected , Osma pissed off at the Saudis for rejecting him decided that he would replace them and in turn rebuild an Islamic caliphate with him as caliph for his do as he pleased.
However in order for him to legally remove the Saudi government (legally as per Sharia law) he accused them of blasphemy by allowing non Muslims (Americans) to base themselves in the country prior to kicking out Saddam. Which is why he attacked American forces around the world in the hope that like Vietnam ,Lebanon and Somalia they would leave and allow him and his terrorists to take Saudi Arabia. (Which explains why he had training camps in Afghanistan and why so many western Muslims went there to be trained) All in all a totally different version of events from the bBCs version. I’m sure that Mizz Plett will be shedding a few tears tonight.
Finally the bBC spins the lie that Osma lost his Saudi Passport due to US pressure:
American pressure ended brief sojourns in Saudi Arabia – which removed his citizenship in 1994 –
And the real story is that he was banished from the kingdom in 1993 after he spoke out publically against the Saudi royal family, his passport was taken away after he didn’t shut his trap (But I hear the yanks finally did so yesterday by shooting him in the head) in 1994. He didn’t really come to prominence with the Yanks until the latter part of the 90s, funding the Luxor attacks in Egypt in 1997, US embassy attacks in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. All of which brought the OBL to the attention of the US. Well after the Saudi government took away his passport in 1994.
Pounce, I suggest that Bin Laden was lying, he just didn’t want to acknowledge his indebtedness to the United States for kicking out the Ruskis.
Come on SAS, let’s see Anjem Choudary and Abu Izzadeen meet the same fate.
(Vince Cable too, while you’re at it)
I wonder if they chose May Day on purpose ?
If anyone commemorates, or protests, the death of this evil man, can they be prosecuted for hate crime like those who commemorate Hitler can?
dunno
but they should be……glorification of terrorism
Must admit the look on some of the beebles faces was a joy to see! like the bit where Bambi mom gets it or all their puppies have been shot , the poor loves have no way they can spin without looking like they either support state sponsored executions [which if it’s the right target I’m fine with by the way] under Obie or supporting the “T” word
rabble on speed dial !
Methinks Panoramalamadingdong will do the full expose I their inimitable style no doubt !lol
Matthew,
Be careful civil war doesn’t break out on this website between the “beeble” tendency and the “beeboid ” tendency !!!!
Ah good point Grant sorry for that just been catching up on be Dickens references 😀 !
And to BBC News 24 where our license fee enables ‘an expert’ from guess where? – LSE – to give some BBC approved lines…
The war on terror was a big mistake. AQ is no longer significant. There are lots of radicalised anti-West people in the world who we ought to appease in some way.
Unquestioning BBC presenter: ‘Youssuf (?), thanks for those thoughts.’
Shortly into Victoria Derbyshire on R5L she interviewed the BBC’s Pakistani (sounding) Pakistan Correspondent. To my mind, he covertly tried to build-up Bin Laden and his cohorts as making a heroic last stand. According to him they brought down one of the 3 helicopters involved in the assault.
The BBC’s beautification of Osama Bin Laden has started.
And wait until tomorrow when Bush House holds a memorial service for the great bearded one. The senior BBC left wing idiots will be back from their holidays in Tuscany and Provance foaming at the mouth that US Navy Seals have murdered their hero.
Already and no doubt in fear of their own jobs, junior Beeboids are becoming hysterical in reporting that people in Washington and New York have “Actually been cheering at the news”.
This is just the start of BBC bias, can you imagine how wretched it will become over the next few weeks ?
John wrote:
“Already and no doubt in fear of their own jobs, junior Beeboids are becoming hysterical in reporting that people in Washington and New York have “Actually been cheering at the news”. “
I’ve watched both the bBC and Sky news coverage on this story and the bBC version is the one which is most sympathic towards Mr Bin Laden getting shot in the head. In contrast Sky news is currently interviwing an ex CIA fellow who was part of the team after OBL who says that the CIA offered Clinton 10 chances to take OBL out. He refused. They are also reporting that Saudi Arabia refused to take OBL body which is why he is currently shark bait. (Poor sharks)
In other news, it transpires that OBL was found after evidence was gleaned from a terrorist held in Gutanamo bay.
Dead right about Sky News what a difference in reporting.
Wee Dougie Alexander is playing a prominent role on News24 this morning.
One year on and at the BBC it still hasn’t quite sunk in that Labour lost the last election.
With “expert timing(hah)”; it behoves Andrew Marrs “Start the Week” to offer us all the notion that evil does not exist!
With Bin Laden already nibblng his nuts in paradise, turns out that an Aspergersy type expert would rather we consign the very word “evil” to historys dustbin. Not helpful you see!
Far better now to refer to a “lack of empathy” instead so we`re told…and a surprising lack of questionning from our Andrew-any ideas why he was so quiet today boys and girls?
Jesus must have meant “deliver us from a lacK of empathy” then!-no doubt Longley,James Jones and the rest of them in the BBCs “Spirit zone” are already rewriting their Bibles in the light of Baron Cohens expertise(that name rings a wind chime-om shanti!)
That was then-9a.m…but now at 10.00 we do get evil registered-hate crimes on Yale Universty campus where Frat Brats bond inappropriately.
Unlike Bin Laden or Huntley…who lack empathy of course-these name callers and boozy drugged up students are evil incarnate.
Of sourse rape is evil-but when you can`t use that word then is it merely “disproportionate sex “in Beebspeak?
Secondly, when you use the catchall word rape and bundle it in with the usual shenanigans when drunken students get together, does it not diminish your case re the extent of yet another “hate crime”?-although obviously you hoover lots of grants and grievance gangs like these US career builders.
Jenni has built hers, but she allowed two sides of the same argument to tell us all(in case we don`t know!” that men are beastly!
Reckon the assembled sisterhood displayed that “lack of empathy” that I can now equate with “evil” now!
And my point is-here at Weymouth University, I am happy to research how much continual exposure to Radio 4 might put me at risk of “psychic disabilty”-surely the Toricutz won`t prevent me arguing that they have induced temporary schizophnenia for today! Within the hour I am told Bin Ladens dead-but evil is all in my head,except when it`s a US hate crime that Jenni Murray thinks we really must know about…let`s see if Jenni and Ali Gs uncle can come to an agreement on whether Peter Sutcliffe was “low on empathy” when he “damaged to terminal degree” those couple of students amongst those “sex workers” way back…anybody else feeling my pain?…or are we all in need of an” empathy jack up”(to qoute the Walking Wingnut..peace be upon him!)
Now that the soul of Osama bin Laden has been despatched to his eternal day job in Odin’s pigsty where he will labour mightily until he goes on to work his night shift fellating Richard the Lionheart in return for cheap beers and bacon sandwiches, I wonder how long it will be before the BBC interviews someone of the opinion that assassinating an unconvicted and presumed innocent person violates not only his human rights but also international law?
Can somebody please explain why the bBC gives more prominance towards the Shadow leader than they do the Current PM over what they have to say about the cold bloodied murder of their hero:
It’s still flashing up that Ed Miliband quote, along with one from Tony Blair and a U.S. official, at the top of the Home page. The Miliband quote still leads and is the first thing your eye goes to when you click on it for the first time. (William Hague and David Cameron’s comments are clearly not important enough.)
Best news there’s been in a very long time:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110502/ap_on_re_us/us_bin_laden
I recall that right after 9/11, Pakistan’s Musharraf rushed to offer the US condolences, one of the first to do so. I believe he feared a US attack and rightly feared it because of Pakistan’s intimate connections with Islamic terrorists.
The terrorist pig was holed up in a house surrounded by 18-foot walls in an affluent area right next to a military academy?
I believe that proves the point.
It’s time for us to speak out. We need to address our Nation’s executive (the Cabinet) through the Prime Minister.
The obgituary and clear body language of bbc staff make it clear that they do not have the same outlook or values as the majority of the British people.
OBL was an international terrorist who is responsible for the cold blooded murder of thousands. Because of his “beliefs” our soldiers are dying daily leaving widows, orphans, bereft parents and communities.
The bbc behaviour is financed through statutory law enacted by Parliament. The Cabinet must now review the “position” of the bbc is relation to its own society. The Cabinet should decide whether to gut this organisation and ensure that editorial policy is in line with the current moral values of the society it serves or tell the bbc it has been canned.
We cannot allow this cancerous organisation to continue to progate it’s poison to the society that funds it.
I say its time for a widely publicised petition directed to Prime Minister calling for urgent investigation into the bbc editorial policy and broad attitude.
I am very pleased I stopped paying my licence fee 2 months ago. What I have read on the news website regarding this man is a complete bloody disgrace.
Guest,
I agree , but we have a very weak, gutless, PM who has already signalled that the BBC have carte blanche and they know it. Expect the BBC to sink further into the mire and Cameron to do bugger all.
I see the bBCs democratically elected government in Gaza (Hamas) is the only the only government in the whole world to complain about the death of Osma.
I wonder how the bBC will cover this story seeing as in doing so Hamas have openily played their cards.
Islam Not BBC (INBBC) indeed.
Three obvious observations about INBBC political propaganda on Bin Laden:
1.) INBBC avoids reference to fact that his ideology was mainstream Islam;
2.) that INBBC is reticent to emphasise that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was instrumental in aiding and abetting him; and that he would never have been found if Pakistan ISI forces had been let in on the US hunt;INBBC refuses to see that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is an enemy, and NOT an ally.
3.) that all INBBC ‘reports’ are written, first and foremost, with the political interests of Islamic Britain being paramount; and that multicultural open-door mass immigration to Britain should continue.
The BBC Online live coverage has been selecting a narrow range of e-mails that surely can’t be representative of world opinion, especially those chosen in the last five hours. (It started off not too badly).
Though there are exceptions, almost all the recent selections have come from one of these categories:
– People from Pakistan who feel that Pakistan is being hard done by
– People who think the celebrations in the U.S. have been “disgusting”
– People who believe that the U.S. is lying and that Bin Laden is still alive
– People who say the killing of Bin Laden will achieve nothing
– People who say the killing of Bin Laden will make matters worse
(There’s also the inevitable pick of an anti-Cameron comment).
INBBC, although financed by the British people, sees itself as a politically ‘leftist’ propagandist for world opinion; as there are about 1,5000,000,000 Muslims in the world, world opinion is bound to include many millions of Muslim supporters of Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, which INBBC is happy to give space to.
BBC 1 TV just now. The helicopter lost “was said to be due to mechanical failure ” ! By whom ?
PS Sort of gives the impression that the BBC would like to think it had been shot down or am I being paranoid ?
Where is David Preiser when we need him ? Sleeping or partying ?
Obama (and his followers) give ‘respect’ to Muslim Islamic jihadist Bin Laden in death; and INBBC does not demur:
U.S. ensures that bin Laden’s body handled in accord with Islamic tradition
I agree with others here who have noted that the bBC is airing a vast amount of posts from people who are upset by the killing of this evil man. How the bBC hasn’t got round to reporting how Hamas are bitching about the death of this’Islamic warrior’ and how the bBC isn’t asking questions about the complicity of the Pakistani government in all of this.
The BBC news outlets seem to be ignoring that Osama was found under the noses of the Pakistani miltary in a garisson town, metres from an military academy visited in the last two weeks by the top miltary brass.
Several guests have bought it up but the the BBC aren’t investigating.
Why?
Hmm.
Of course, much of INBBC ‘reporting’ from Pakistan is done by Pakistani Muslims. That is what BBC licencepayers have to pay for.
Whose political interests are such Muslim Pakistani ‘reporters’ likely to support?
Radio 5 Listeners have lost Sheila Tittering-Coquette from their Breakfast Show – they’ve given her a slot of her very own on the basis that you just can’t have too many ‘shows’ on Radio and TV by stupid women and for stupid women.
Anyhoo she has been replaced by someone called Anna Foster who until last week was a weather-reader-outer on BBC Radio Wiltshire.
She interviewed (if I can dignify it with that word) the US Ambassador to London.
‘It’s been a very lengthy process hasn’t it, almost a decade to find Bin Laden, many believe (That BBCC ‘many believe’ again) that the US would have done this far swifter?’
‘Do you expect attacks on the US Embassy in London as a result of this?’
‘Worrimpact d’you think those pictures of celebrating Americans outside the White House and at Ground Zero, worrimpact d’you think those pictures will have internationally?’
and still she went on
‘But don’t you have concerns that the reaction of those crowds will provoke bad feelimgs overseas?’
Even Gameshow Nikk realised she had to be stopped and dived in with a sensible question about the tragedy of 9/11.
Crass, insulting, and biased questions from a stupid, stupid woman clearly thinking she has to be her master’s voice.
Take a tip from me, love, you’re well out of your depth. There’s a train leaves Paddington 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.
Do us all a favour.
Be on it.
On the bBCs website they are running a ticker tape feed here is the past hours coverage:
1408: Khan in Pakistan, writes: “Indeed it is great news that the head of a terrorist organisation was killed. However, as a Pakistani, I feel that there should be solid proof that it was Bin Laden. Why? Because we need to be sure, as our country has paid a huge price for supporting USA.
1400: When asked what would he have done in this situation, Mr Musharraf told the BBC: “If they had asked me, I would have said that Pakistani troops would carry out the operation. We had carried out dozens of such operations. All big al-Qaeda people from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed downwards, how did we catch them? We would use US intelligence because they were better at it, but action would always be taken by our own law enforcement agencies. We did not allow US troops to carry out a single action on our soil.”
1358: Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf said the operation to kill Bin Laden “should have been carried out by Pakistani troops”. He told the BBC Urdu service: “This is our sensitivity, that no foreign troops should enter Pakistan. Although what has happened is good, I do not expect Pakistani people to be happy at the way our sovereignty was violated.”
1354: Mr Panetta told Reuters: “Though Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is not. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him, and we must – and will – remain vigilant and resolute.”
1343: Julia Barclay in London writes: “As someone who lived in NYC on 9/11, I cried when I heard the news Osama Bin Laden was killed. I did not cry ‘from joy’ but simply the emotion of the whole day and time coming back. I remember thinking at the time I never wanted to see this kind of violence inflicted on anyone else ever again.
1339: Mr Hasan added that he hopes Pakistan’s neighbours will not start “a blame game” because Bin Laden was found in Pakistan: “India has always been looking for a chance to pin down Pakistan on something or the other,” he told the BBC World Service.
1338: The high commissioner said the fact that President Obama did not thank the Pakistani government in connection with the killing of Bin Laden was perhaps “a slip of mind” in the middle of the night.
1337: Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London, tells the BBC World Service he “wouldn’t buy the story that Pakistan would have been kept in the dark” about the operation in Abbottabad:
1327: K in Islamabad, writes: “Pakistani people are tired of other countries bringing their fights to Pakistan where Pakistanis suffer. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi national, funded by US to fight Soviets in Afghanistan – to give a short history – doesn’t include much about Pakistan.”
1325: The US special forces team that hunted down Osama Bin Laden was under orders to kill the al-Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a US national security official told Reuters news agency. “This was a kill operation,” the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture Bin Laden alive in Pakistan.
1314: Kenyan Douglas Sidialo was blinded when al-Qaeda bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing 213 people. “This is quite a huge relief for us survivors of terrorism in the world and a reason for celebration that Osama Bin Laden, finally, has been killed,” Mr Sidialo tells the BBC World Service as chairman of a group representing the victims of that bombing. “However, it would have been better if he had been captured so that he could repent his sins and evil deeds he had committed [against] people in the world.”
1313: Derek Sozou in London, writes: “No justice. No jury. No body.”
1309: M Aslam in Islamabad says the West has been playing a “double game” with Pakistan: “They are currently pretending thatPakistan is their top ally which is not the fact. Actually Pakistan is their requirement till they achieve their objectives in Afghanistan. [Then] they will turn to Pakistan.
1306: Tim Proctor in France writes: “What will be the reaction of the majority of the people of Pakistan once they understand that this operation was carried out their soil by foreign troops?
All of the above accoutns for the bBCs past hour covarge. After reading them do you get the impression that the bBC is somewhat pissed at how their hero was murdered in cold blood by the nasty evil Americans.
I liked the first one better. ![endif]! always does it for me.
The American blogs have a more perceptive narrative. Obama rushes to pin the whole terrorism bit on a personality – OBL – and not an ideology (Islam) intractably opposed to America, Israel, and the West generally.
Having defeated The Personality we are all now safe again. The bad guy has been taken out. But having cake and eat it, be extra vigilant for reprisals from some followers of the bad guy.
OBL may be dead, but OBL-ism lives.
#1 should be: Why do we give billions in aid to a country who was hiding Bin Laden for years?
We do have his video confession, though, contrary to what the BBC used to teach children.
I think you misunderstood. Mrs Dale was dissing the Beeb which had said that.
If the present incumbents in charge at INBBC had been around during WW2, they would most probably have employed Lord Haw Haw as the head European correspondent.
they would have been shot as traitors
Itwf,
Those were the days !
Pounce,
Something tells me that is not a cross-section of opinion !
Mind you, most Americans are probably out celebrating and don’t tune in to the BBC anyway !
That BBC obituary reads more like an eulogy.
The UK media has got to a point where it is so afraid of offending “foreigners” that it implicitly and sometimes explicitly sees its own culture as somehow inferior.
Since it seems pretty incontrovertable now that the Pakistani military has been in collusion with Al Qaeda or at least knew he was there and allowed him to stay in safety (every talking head on the BBC so far today has said as much), does this put the lie to all those BBC reports from Barbara Plett, Orla Guerin, and others about how the Swat Valley falling under control of Al Qaeda was Bush’s fault and the Pakistani army was really, really trying to stop it, honestly they were?
Is it really appropriate for John Simpson to be talking about how Bin Laden seemed to have a happy childhood? At least his report admits that Bin Laden planned attacks on the US before, and was responsible for 9/11.
How the hell would that prat Simpson know anything about Bin Liner’s childhood. What a moron.
Channel 4 reported that Bin Liner’s dad had 50 children !
Ironic. The Nobel Peace prize winner (because he is not Bush) will probably run his reelection campaign on the basis he makes war better than Bush did. O:-)
Let’s hope we get a robust, no nonsense Republican candidate who will remind the American people how Obama opposed every method Bush brought in to wage the War against Terrorism until he took the White House and straight away signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo then admitted 2 years later he was wrong and Bush was right all along.
Will be interesting to see how the US got the intelligence that led to Bin Laden. Was it someone renditioned to some dark, obscure hovel and given a bit of ‘slappy, slappy’, or someone mirandaised and given a lawyer as was the approach that Obama took over the failed LSE pants bomber?
Lets hope for America and the Free World that the Republicans find that robust, no nonsense candidate.
At exactly 16.00 GMT Ed Miliband finally got bumped. He had a good innings though.
Will be very interesting to get that Gitmo info confirmed. One doubts very much it was obtained from reading a ‘suspect’ his rights and providing him with a lawyer, as Obama handled things at least well into his Presidency.
Basically Obama has ended up where Bush began. If it hadn’t been for the Democrats waging a propaganda war on OBL’s behalf during Bush’s Presidency it wouldn’t have surprised me if they could have got him a lot sooner with the Democrats support instead. The Dems and their media friends made life a lot harder – A LOT HARDER – than it needed to be.
Yes, on R5L today it has been an utter disgrace the deluge of Labour figures interviewed and the paucity of Government figures. It’s seemed that every news bulletin they read what the Prime Minister has said and then play what the Labour figure has said to give it greater authority.
There’s a lot of good impartial journalism at R5L, but I’ve noticed in the bulletins you see the bias and in the guests that get lined up for the presenters.