Creepy Coincidences

I'm rereading my last (jokey) post in a different light after seeing the news this morning. Osama Bin Laden has been killed by American troops in Pakistan (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13256676). I don't think many people are going to miss him. However, there are a few hanging questions about the operation, carried out by US special forces.

1) Why were there so many deaths among the targets in such a well planned operation? Apparently the Americans had a facsimile of the compound to train in and Obama could see what was going on in real time so as to better direct events. Osama Bin Laden wasn't even armed yet still him and his wife were deemed to be 'resisting' and he was killed while she was shot in the leg.

2) Does the USA even have any respect for jurisdiction any more? Apparently the Pakistanis weren't even told until the operation was over. BBC News 24 raised the interesting question of how big a fuck up might have occurred if the Pakistani army had heard the shooting and decided to get involved. Mutual recriminations ahead I suspect.

3) That burial at sea business sounds distinctly dodgy and seems to have attracted a lot of censure from the Arabic community. Maybe the Americans don't want to make a new pilgrimage site for Al-Qaeda members but that sort of unilateral, underhand solution might be part of the reason they are so unpopular in large swathes of Africa, the Middle East and Asia in the first place. It seems like a throw back to the CIA's dirty tricks in the assassination of Lumumba or the killing of Che Guevara during the disastrous Bolivian insurgency.

However, I bet Obama is still ecstatic to have such a foreign policy coup before the 2012 election and is probably hoping that Bin Laden's death might just decrease the frequency of mujahideen references in the newspaper (avoiding awkward questions about where they came from and who gave them all that training and those stinger missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA-Osama_bin_Laden_controversy)).

In other news, the release of this book (http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/spacesuit-interview-with-nicholas-de.html) has been exceptionally well timed in view of the development of the latest Dr Who plot line. It looks interesting and I'm seriously considering purchasing it.