Talk:Killing of Osama bin Laden

Doug Laux on Hersh's article

Doug Laux, a former CIA case officer who served in Afghanistan, Syria, and much of the rest of the Middle East has recently answered a number of pertinent questions about his service (and revealed plenty of trivia about his personal life) on Reddit. When asked about Seymour Hersh's widely-discredited propaganda article on bin Laden's death, Laux replied: "I think it was garbage and Peter Bergen absolutely destroyed him." This is, of course, just one minor detail among the vast array of problems with Hersh's story that suggest it cannot possibly be correct, but I thought it was worth mentioning here. As George W. Bush put it: "Seymour Hersh is a liar."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

That's rich, coming from Bush. -Darouet (talk) 03:49, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Typo?

Acronym GPVNG-18 should read GPNVG...short for Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggles.

Thanks.

Training Mock-Up

The article mentions the training mock-up at Camp Alpha (Bagram Airbase), but there is no mention of the mock-up at the Harvey Point Defense Testing (CIA training facility): http://binged.it/1OhcWs8 Jbottero (talk) 20:15, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 May 2016

In "Approach and Entry" section "GPVNG-18" should be "GPNVG-18"...NVG short for Night Vision Goggles.

Thanks

65.95.199.36 (talk) 02:51, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

 Done thanks for providing a reference - Arjayay (talk) 07:50, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Assassination

The killing of bin Laden was without much doubt an assassination. Thousands of other people have been killed by the US military and CIA in the last decade, and the authorities are quite happen to admit to this. So why the reluctance to admit that bin Laden also was assassinated? There should at least be a reference to this in the article. The assumption that his death was unintentional is neither likely nor plausible.Royalcourtier (talk) 19:08, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Ben Ferencz

@Glrx: I reverted your removal of Ferencz's comment for several reasons.

First, Ferencz was one of the major prosecutors of the Nuremberg Trials, successfully convicting leaders of the Einsatzgruppen who murdered millions of people in Eastern Europe. He was also a friend to Telford Taylor and Robert Jackson.

Second, Ferencz was one of the most important voices in the creation of the International Criminal Court, and has received the U.S. presidential medal of freedom.

Third, Ferencz's position is radically different from what otherwise appears in the article concerning the legality of the killing, and the notion that the killing might have been illegal receives virtually no mention without Ferencz's position.

Fourth, Ferencz was quoted by the New York Times in the aftermath of the attack.

best -Darouet (talk) 17:39, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

e/c

Please observe WP:BRD.

An importnat issue is WP:DUE.

1. Ferencz may have been one of 12 major prosecutors in the 1946 trials, but that was years ago. The guy was born in 1920, so the comments are coming from a 91-year old, long-retired lawyer. I'm not seeing significant prominence to make his remarks essential. WP:DUE

2. The insertion only cites a single voice. DUE requires several voices.

3. "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article."

4. Publishing a letter in the NYT does not carry editorial weight.

The insertion has other problems.

The statement is not concrete. It has a hypothetical about self-defense but does not come down on one side or the other. Ferencz military law view is also not nuanced. If a combatant has surrendered, then you don't shoot him. If he hasn't surrendered, he's fair game.

The edit was poorly placed: it preceded Holder's viewpoint rather than being a counterpoint; it also preceded the UN Security Council's viewpoint. The insertion does not mention the disagreement of professor of international law Ben Saul. That suggests the edit is PoV.

Glrx (talk) 18:33, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Media quoting Ferencz position

• The New York Times (letter by Ferencz) - [1] - "...was it really justifiable self-defense, or was it premeditated illegal assassination? The Nuremberg trials earned worldwide respect by giving Hitler’s worst henchmen a fair trial so that truth would be revealed and justice under law would prevail. Secret nonjudicial decisions based on political or military considerations undermine democracy. The public is entitled to know the complete truth."

• The Week - [2] - "A former chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials said today that the "instant justice" meted out to Osama bin Laden a week ago was morally wrong and the United States should have done everything possible to bring him to trial... Ferencz joins a growing list of people questioning the manner of Osama bin Laden's death. The Archbishop of Canterbury said last week he felt "very uncomfortable" about it, while two senior United Nations officials have asked that the US explain the precise details of Bin Laden's killing in Abbottabad. As Ferencz wrote in a letter to the New York Times, 'The Nuremberg trials earned worldwide respect by giving Hitler's worst henchmen a fair trial so that truth would be revealed and justice under law would prevail. Secret non-judicial decisions based on political or military considerations undermine democracy.'"

• BBC - [3] - " 'The issue here is whether what was done was an act of legitimate self-defence,' said Benjamin Ferencz, an international law specialist who served as a prosecutor during the Nuremburg trials and argued that it would have been better to capture Bin Laden and send him to court. 'Killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime under military law as well as all other law,' he told the BBC World Service." ... Like Mr Ferencz, British law professor Philippe Sands QC says it is impossible to make a definitive legal judgement without knowing precisely what happened. But he says the case for the raid's legality has been weakened. 'The question to ask is: were the measures taken in the actual situation that pertained reasonable and proportionate, given the circumstances in which the [Navy Seals] found themselves?' he told the BBC. 'The facts for Bin Laden don't appear to easily meet that standard... I think it's deeply troubling if we are indeed moving to a place where you can have a global assassination policy for those who are perceived to cause trouble,' he added. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, have raised a similar concern."

• The Guardian (letter by Ferencz) - [4] - "Benjamin Ferencz, an American lawyer who was a US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and who lives in New York state, asked whether the killing was justifiable self-defence or premeditated illegal assassination. He would have preferred for Bin Laden to have been captured and put on trial. Ferencz, 92, said: 'The picture I get is that a bunch of highly trained, heavily armed soldiers find an old guy in pyjamas and shoot him in the chest and head, and that borders, without access to more facts, on murder.' He added: 'Even [the head of the Luftwaffe Hermann] Göring had a right to trial.'"