Why kill Usâma?
In the previous post, the question is raised: why did we off Usâma bin-Lâdin rather than capturing him and making him the mother of all sources?
Of course, Confucius has no greater knowledge than anyone else, but it strikes him as probable that it’s simply our drone policy on the ground, with SMGs instead of Hellfires. Obama (and Eric Holder, etc.) have put themselves in a fairly lousy position, having run against Guantánamo, rendition, waterboarding, etc., and found out that their favored strategy for high-level terrorists, criminal trials, has foundered on the outrage of the public at bringing KSM to New York and Ahmad Ghaylânî’s almost getting off scot-free.
Consequently, we don’t have a heck of a lot of good options for dealing with, much less extracting information from, captured terrorists and have put ourselves in the position where we are almost forced to kill terrorists, even if we might value them as sources, as we have made unpleasant interrogations, indefinite detention, being able to threaten handing them off to governments they might fear more, and the other arsenal of techniques we used to get info out of the initial cohort of al-Qâ’ida detainees. So, Hellfire ’em; we can’t smack ’em around…
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that it was a decision made on affirmative grounds. The IC may have underrated Usâma as a potential source (“figurehead!” “in hiding!”), making the risk to the SEALs unacceptable. The time window before Pakistani aircraft could get there might have dictated the speed of killing trumped snatch-and-grab. Or, conceivably, the strategic value of the “we went in and shot his ass dead” propaganda was considered to have trumped his use as a source. Hard to know…
Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.