Bin Laden been dead'n

Also like Saddam, Bin Ladens time was just up. Once an ally that became a problem, they both were only going to end up this way. The world is a better place without both of them, but we still have the apperatus and people that helped create them. We will always have more Bin Ladens around the corner.

FOX NEWS ALERT

maxle beat you to it.

Still, I think we can all agree - Chomsky mentioning certain facts proves that he hates America, and since he hates America we are obliged to ignore those facts.

First - we can’t imagine a foreign power landing troops and carrying out killings on our soil? Yeah, you’re right, we have no idea what it is like to have some entity kill one - or thousands - of our citizens on our soil. They didn’t land, though, so I suppose that doesn’t count. No they didn’t dump the bodies in the ocean, though we had to scrape up the bodies of many that jumped to their death rather than burn to death, and there weren’t a lot of bodies left to dump anywhere. Yeah, hard to imagine a foreign enemy of some kind attacking and killing on U.S. soil.

He never claims Osama isn’t guilty - but he spends half of his wordcount talking about how we we have no basis for presuming that Osama was behind the 9/11 attack (or any other attacks killing U.S. citizens.)

Yeah, it does piss me off to have a guy like that wringing his hands about horrible America is for finding and killing the leader of an organization that we are actively at war with. And to say everyone should ignore his “tone” is like saying you should ignore Sarah Palin’s “tone.”

No legal basis, yes. And he’s right, for the most part, certainly if you take into account what ought to be the burden of proof for state sanctioned assassination. I don’t agree with his contention because I don’t share his view that international relations are or ever will be fundamentally guided by laws and ideals, but the US and other “good” countries persist in using the thinnest of international legal pretexts for their actions and leave themselves open to this criticism.

Yeah, it does piss me off to have a guy like that wringing his hands about horrible America is for finding and killing the leader of an organization that we are actively at war with. And to say everyone should ignore his “tone” is like saying you should ignore Sarah Palin’s “tone.”

I don’t think Jason meant that as a criticism of your reading of it so much as one of how Chomsky wrote that. I don’t agree with Jason that it’s a problem created by poor rhetorical skills; if anything, the thing with Chomsky is that his exceptional grasp of language gives him the opportunity to create unsettling arguments in the sum of their impact that are somehow less vulnerable than you’d think to direct accusations when you take apart what he actually said. It’s effective within his niche as self-appointed permanent leftist minority, but it makes him ineffective outside of that and his unwillingness to vary his approach is often judged by more moderate or practical leftists as a liability precisely for the allergic reaction he can engender in reasonable people everywhere. It might depend on whether you look at the nonviolent firestarters on each side as catalysts for change or extremist obstacles, which usually comes down to the preconceived notions and ideological tilt of the observer for most of us.

Whenever Chomsky trolls the shit out of me, I always look back at this NSFW, horribly crude Space Moose comic and laugh. Probably not a solution for everyone, though.

This is, like, an entire paragraph of non-sequiturs. Are you seriously suggesting that the US tortured a confession out of Bin Laden seven years ago, while he was a free man?

No, obviously a confession is not an infallible piece of evidence. Yes, confessions can be made under circumstances that call their veracity into question, much like the testimony of any witness. But that doesn’t mean that confessions are only used as evidence by “police states,” as you said in your initial post.

Legally speaking I don’t think you can convict anyone on a confession alone unless you live in a police state. A confession is not evidence of anything except the fact that someone is willing to make a confession.

Here’s a test of your theory: commit a crime, turn yourself over to the authorities, and plead guilty. Observe as you move directly to sentencing.

Unless there is some sort of supporting evidence to verify the confession it is nothing but words. People lie all the time if they think it will help them or hurt others. A legal system that doesn’t support this principle is open to manipulation and fundamentally insecure.

Unless you wish to contest your own confession in court, admitting that you have committed a crime waives your right to a trial, at least in the US. Even if you choose to contest your confession, your confession will be used as evidence (“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law”). That’s the entire reason why we have the fifth amendment–so that defendants cannot be forced to incriminate themselves. Obviously, in order for that protection to have any meaning whatsoever, it must be possible to incriminate oneself.

And while IANAL, I suspect that if you asked any trial lawyer whether a taped confession–made while the suspect was a free man and broadcast to the world at his discretion–was a really strong piece of evidence against him, they would say “Yes.” Lawyers, feel free to weigh in here.

So far in Sweden 175 people have admitted to killing Oluf Palme during the 80’s, should they also be sent to sentencing?

IANAL but I am a (Canadian) law student. Confessions are different from judicial admissions. Judicial admissions are formal statements admitting to a series of facts; a guilty plea is a kind of judicial admission. Confessions are admissible evidence because they are “statements against interest”, and so are a narrow exception to the rule against hearsay. Confessions are a common feature of many wrongful conviction cases: the Innocence Project claims that of the ~200 wrongfully convicted people they have exonerated through DNA evidence, around a quarter were imprisoned as a result of false confessions and other incriminating statements.

This being the case, confessions are looked at by Canadian courts as viable pieces of evidence, but not determinative, particularly where there are clear ulterior reasons for the confession, if the confession is made under any kind of duress, and so on. Each confession is based on a different set of facts, and so needs to be looked at contextually. It is certainly not the case that a confession is decisive proof of anything.

This doesn’t have much to do with Osama, but the fact that Osama admitted to 9/11 only in 2004, when he had clear reasons to benefit from that confession whether or not he actually planned the attack does not strike me as particularly convincing evidence of his guilt.

Here’s another test. Don’t commit a crime, turn yourself over to the authorities, and claim you have committed a crime. Observe as…?

What last word could there be whether he was captured or killed? Either would be used as a justification for future terrorist acts.

Well… exactly.

I think these fellows have all the justification they need, question is a matter of revenge…
There are probably others who usually don’t get involved who now will feel he was done ill by, they might want to ‘balance’ out things…

Back in the days we called these things blood feuds, just ask the Sicilians, they got a black belt in it.

:P

12345

“Of some kind”, yes, but that’s not what he said. A foreign government reserving the right to invade whenever it feels like it and blow up buildings and people with your government having virtually no ability to respond isn’t remotely the same thing as random terrorist attacks. Look at life in Waziristan, for example, with random drone attacks blowing up wedding parties.

He never claims Osama isn’t guilty - but he spends half of his wordcount talking about how we we have no basis for presuming that Osama was behind the 9/11 attack (or any other attacks killing U.S. citizens.)

To be all Robert’s Rules about it, he’s technically correct. The US government has prosecuted its case against Osama with a wide variety of often contradictory leaks to the media; there’s never been a coherent presentation. It doesn’t matter much for you or I, because we’re Americans, but for non-Americans stuff like that matters quite a great deal.

Yeah, it does piss me off to have a guy like that wringing his hands about horrible America is for finding and killing the leader of an organization that we are actively at war with. And to say everyone should ignore his “tone” is like saying you should ignore Sarah Palin’s “tone.”

Not saying you should listen to him, just explaining why he’s such a terrible arguer.

Wait, I don’t think that’s what you meant. Were you thinking “Tea Party” when you typed “US Government?” Or were you talking about someone else? :)

I hate you all

Is it our freedoms Jason? Is that why?

Just stop doing it, and we’ll stop noticing it. Like magic!

Anyway, I agree with Iain. Framing this as a war is what allow Chomsky to treat Ob…err, Osama (!) like a political leader. He isn’t. This isn’t an assassination because he isn’t a state figure. It’s not like we sent our guys in to take out a head of state (not saying we haven’t done that before, btw). And he wasn’t a citizen of Pakistan either, AFAIK. He was a criminal fugitive. Except for the burial at sea part, this could have happened with any criminal fugitive living in a country where we didn’t trust the extradition process.

The international law that Chomsky mentions applies to real wars and citizens and such. However, as someone ignorant of this law he is discussion, can someone answer a few questions for me?

  1. Is Pakistan a member of International law? What I mean is: do they honor that law and participate in its creation and maintenance?

  2. Does that law have any real codification? If so where? UN?

  3. What nation could claim Osama as their own? Where IS he a citizen?

  4. What are Pakistans extradition laws?

  5. Did Pakistan ever officially declare Osama a fugitive?

You can assassinate people who aren’t state figures. For example, Martin Luther King was clearly assassinated, but had no formal legal status as anything other than a private system. I think what makes something an assassination is whether the murder occurs for an underlying political reason, in which case the execution of OBL would clearly qualify (if we accept that he was executed rather than killed unintentionally).

I don’t think calling OBL a criminal rather than a state figure helps you case any, either. I can see the justification of killing political figures in certain circumstances. If OBL is just a criminal, then a targeted killing with no due process is simply vigilante murder.

Opinio Juris can!

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