Man Unknowingly Tweets the Osama Raid 354
Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual, had no idea the helicopters he was complaining about on twitter were part of the top secret mission that killed Osama bin Laden Sunday night. 10 hours before bin Laden's death was announced Athar posted: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” From the article: "During the raid, Athar speculates that he was two or three kilometers away from the shooting that took place. Once news broke that bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Athar tweeted, 'Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.'”
This is good to know (Score:4, Interesting)
This is good to know. Otherwise his tweet might have ended up on some conspiracy theorist sites with a "black helicopters" tag or something...
A very interesting point is that it is said one of the 4 choppers was hit by enemy fire which I haven't heard about yet. President Obama said "no Americans were injured" so I would assume it was only a minor hit.
On another topic, CNN just announced a few minutes ago that there is a DNA match confirming the body was indeed Osama. They also announced that the FBI has updated its most wanted list, it makes sense I guess...
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The rumors were that it was a Pakinstani helicopter that went down. If that's the case, I can understand why it hasn't been played up, as the Pakistanis have been playing both sides on these issues for a long time now, and don't like to publicize it when they help the U.S.
Re:This is good to know (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, it was a US helicopter that went down, but it was a minor incident. The "window shaking bang" was when the seals blew up the chopper on the way out (since it apparently couldn't fly). There's been a lot of news coverage on that topic. :-P
Re:This is good to know (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is good to know (Score:5, Funny)
one of the 4 choppers was hit by enemy fire
sources said that it was hit by a giant swatter
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I wish I had mod points for you.
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Read carefully. He tweeted 10 hours before his death was *announced* by Obama. In that 10 hours, the raid took place, OBL was killed, the body was brought to Afghanistan, positively ID'd and perhaps even already given a seamans grave.
Re:This is good to know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is good to know (Score:4, Funny)
Donald Trump is hard at work on this.
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Damned good question! And it better be the long form, too, by golly.
Re:This is good to know (Score:5, Funny)
Damned good question! And it better be the long form, too, by golly.
But if it says this went down in Hawaii, I'm calling bullshit!
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"But where is the death certificate?"
Ehuhh... I think it's enough if Netcraft confirms it.
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New at the top of the FBI's most wanted list is the guy that tweeted about the helicopters.
Re:This is good to know (Score:5, Funny)
I thought Marines were only capable of grunts.
Re:This is good to know (Score:4, Funny)
Force Recon Marines have been observed to speak up to a dozen words. Guess that's what makes them the elite of their branch.
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There, I fixed your typo, teabagger. 'Conservative thought' has almost become indistinguishable from trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
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"I did troll you for your thinly veiled racism"
But, the thing is, you can't understand that you FAILED. Black, white, liberal, conservative, gay, straight, male, female - the vast majority of each of those groups are well aware that you can tell when a politician is lying. If his lips are moving, he's lying. If his lips are not moving, he's hiding something. So, your troll failed, because the original post was denigrating Obama for being a politician, not for being black.
In short, you read into the post
The tweet itself (Score:2)
http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64783440226168832 [twitter.com]
I can't find it (Score:3)
Here's the Google Maps satellite photo of Abbottabad, Pakistan. I can't find his compound. Can you?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Abbottabad&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.854268,56.513672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Abbott%C4%81bad,+Abbottabad,+Khyber+Pakhtunkhwa,+Pakistan&ll=34.146769,73.209769&spn=0.0019,0.005493&t=h&z=18 [google.com]
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Informative)
Here it is http://maps.google.com/maps?q=osama+bin+laden+&hl=en&view=map&mcsrc=google_reviews&num=10&ie=UTF8&start=20&cid=11196890339658103699&t=h&ll=34.184471,73.246193&spn=0.010331,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A [google.com]
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Funny)
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It's very unclear to me from looking at the Google map where the border of Pakistan is to the north and east. Was OBL closer to India, China, or Afghanistan? I would have guessed the latter based on what we heard after 9/11, but it looks like he was closer to the border with India or China.
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Funny)
Why didn't we just search Google for his location? It is even marked! ;)
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Funny)
The US Military went over it's bandwidth cap with AT&T and was confined to 56k for all their web traffic.
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Funny)
U.S. Intelligence really sucks for not being able to find this place. Google Maps clearly labels it, "Osama bin Laden's Compound", yet the U.S. still couldn't find it?
Re:I can't find it (Score:5, Funny)
the reviews for that place are awesome:
- Free HBO, but "death to America! " chants were getting old. Better options nearby.
- Cold and drafty at night, walls full of holes.
- I heard that this place is now available (prior residents left suddenly and unexpectedly).
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Here it is http://maps.google.com/maps?q=osama+bin+laden+&hl=en&view=map&mcsrc=google_reviews&num=10&ie=UTF8&start=20&cid=11196890339658103699&t=h&ll=34.184471,73.246193&spn=0.010331,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A [google.com]
Not according to the BBC, who place it slightly further east: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=osama%27s+hideout&ie=UTF8&hq=osama%27s+hideout&hnear=&cid=11926225655530825281&ll=34.169377,73.242888&spn=0.00348,0.006968&t=h&z=18&iwloc=A
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13257330
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No, that doesn't make sense. I've seen a few locations guessed wrong (including on CNN, who just zoomed in on downtown Abbottabad). None of those locations in the thread are right so far.
It's been described as a 3-story building with a walled balcony on one side and a high wall around it, fitting what is seen in the ground photos in the news stories. Location-wise, yes, it is near Abbottabad, but is described as being in the outskirts, and only a few hundred metres from the local military school -- that
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The Ogle Earth blog has the best coverage [ogleearth.com] I've seen so far - deducing the location from various clues. Finding it turns out to be a medium difficult problem because of the age of the imagery.
Call me Crazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
But why would they take the body, promptly bury it at sea, then tell the world? I understand that they would want to minimize the impact in the islamic world by not defiling his body in any way which was recorded, but it seems like this would be something you show on television, that it's REALLY him. Who knows, maybe they made a deal with him and he's now in South America to live out his days in (even more) luxury. But that's the George Noory [coasttocoastam.com] in me.
And I'm also quite mystified why so many people are celebrating this. It took almost 10 years, trillions of dollars, the invasion of two countries (neither of which he was found in), and an untold number of lives lost to find a 6 foot 6 inch multi-millionaire (with diabetes!) living in a private luxury compound (in a well populated city) which was at least eight times larger then anything nearby. I don't think there is too much to celebrate here.
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Interesting)
The statement I saw was that they dumped him in the ocean to deny his followers a crypt they could go to to revere him. And since both the ISI and al Qaeda have confirmed he was killed, I don't think the deathers are gonna get a lot of followers on this latest conspiracy theory (but then again, there are a lot of crazy and stupid people out there, so I could be wrong).
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ISI and al Qaeda have confirmed he was killed
Do you have a direct source? Please provide us with the link.
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http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/05/201152141416432205.html [aljazeera.net]
Article contains comments from a "senior al-Qaeda" member as well as a Taliban spokesman. Both are clamoring for revenge for bin Laden's death, rather than claiming it to be false and that their sheik/imam/whatever is still alive.
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http://www.alqaeda.com/obituaries/ [alqaeda.com]
Fool me once, shame on you.
http://www.isi.com/boardofdirectors/ [isi.com]
Fool me twice, shame on me.
I had to look at the 2nd link, just to make sure... Just like when you're 99% sure it's a Rick Roll or a goatse link, there's that 1% that says "what if it's not"... Fail...
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From what I understood, capturing him alive wasn't an option because it turned into a fullout firefight.
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I don't think anyone at any point since 9-11 has had any notion that bin Laden would ever let himself stand trial. If the US and/or its allies ever caught up with him, I'm sure he had ever intention of going down in a hail of bullets. Which is, apparently, what happened.
Wonder when they'll release the photos. Apparently it's pretty gruesome, a big hole above the left eye with lots of blood and brains, and normally the media doesn't release untouched death photos like this, but I think bin Laden should be
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From what I've heard that photo is a fake.
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Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop killing people now?
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We invaded Afghanistan because we demanded that they turn over Osama bin Laden, and they demanded we follow an extradition process.
-Rick
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're wrong, son. Afganistan only offered *after* the invasion had begun [guardian.co.uk].
Nice revisionist history though...
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
So why did we invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan? It seems to me that all we needed were a good investigation and a team of crack Navy Seals.
Can we stop killing people now?
I really like your use of "we" in this post, because we really are the ones killing people. People seem to think we are separate from our government.
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Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
49% of us *are* separate from our government. It only takes 51% to vote our leaders in.
Ok, so that's not exactly true, but in spirit it's close enough. Many of us disagree with a lot of things the government does, but we're effectively powerless to change it. We can vote, but only the majority gets represented. We can revolt, but who has the better weapons, funds, and infrastructure? Until a vast majority of people are ready to revolt, it won't really matter; and, by then they really could just vote the leaders out instead.
So, although our government is theoretically "the people", most of "the people" really have no say in what goes on.
Maybe if our government were more open and kept us better informed about what was happening and why things are done the way thy are done, there may be more agreement that those things are necessary. As it is now, though, we are generally treated like kids asking "why" and getting just "because I said so" as the answer. Is it really surprising that so many people don't trust our government?
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So why did we invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan?
The success of the Iraq mission is an open question...we will not know for a few decades. Certainly it was very poorly executed, with a shortage of necessary troops that resulted in many years of chaos. As to the Afghan situation, it is obvious why we are there. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. That is it. Period. Let me explain:
Pakistan has a very strange government and political situation. There are forces that tend to be very anti-western and tend to a more fundamentalist religious bent. And there a
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It is puzzling. The best explanation I've heard is that burial at sea within 24 hours of death fulfills Islamic tradition, but does not leave a shrine for terrorists to flock to.
The only way this works politically, however, is if they took lots of pictures and video of the corpse as proof of identity. I expect those to come out before long.
It took an outrageous fortune, and celebrating death is never a good thing, but this man was hated so much by so many that you can't begrudge them their celebration. N
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celebrating death is never a good thing
You're obviously not Irish
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly we should just be barbarians too. Why don't we smack some civilian planes into their buildings why we are at it.
Your kind are why we have these problems. If petty folks like yourself would grow up on both sides we would not have these issues.
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Who knows, maybe they made a deal with him and he's now in South America to live out his days in (even more) luxury.
More likely gitmo, spilling da beans about everyone else in his org whom are still (temporarily) alive? Later to be buried at sea in the gulf of mexico? Like anyone is ever gonna know. I suppose if the back pages report about 20 times as many people of interest have been captured this month than normal, then we'll "know".
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate [wikipedia.org]
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The fact that both Hitler and OSL died on the nearly the same day should keep the conspiracy theorists going for decades.
Hitler 4/30/1945
OSL 5/2/2011
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Why hate them? No point in wasting your time on that.
Recognize them for what they are, mentally ill. I don't hate rabid dogs nor do I celebrate when one is euthanized.
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Rabid dogs usually find it difficult to commit mass murder and inspire others to do the same.
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I did not say he was rabid, merely mentally defective. Mental defectives have been recruiting others since the beginning of time.
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If it was chewing on me I would get rid of it myself. I still would not celebrate that. He did not pose much of a threat to me or you, statistically lightning is more likely to kill me than any terrorist. My car is orders of magnitude more likely to kill me. I am not clueless nor teenage, I am merely rational. To waste so much effort on something so unlikely to kill us is insane. Cars, Heart disease, Cancer those are the things to really be worried about.
Also, your keyboard seems broken. A proper one would
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false alarmism is a problem in this world, people hysterically overreacting in proportion to the nature of the threat
equally a problem, is exhibit A above: false complacency. unperceptive people underreacting in proportion to the nature of the threat
but don't worry my friend. you are completely untouchable and terrorism has absolutely no meaning in your life. don't worry your pretty little head about it. put your head back in the cloud, because we all know you are above it all
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Go look up the numbers. Check what is killing Americans, terrorists are below farm animals on that list. You are chicken little and I must say the sky is not falling. We waste trillions on something that in decades kills less people than die on our highways in a month.
While you are at it get a working keyboard, please test its shift function before posting again.
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right. you establish your mastery of the subject matter by saying its a braindead numbers game. of course, absolutely no other factors matter. naaaaah
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Please mention these other factors.
The rational view would be to do what we do with everything else, dollars/life saved. If you have another objective metric feel free to weigh in. If you insist on being chicken little then come back when you are ready to talk to the big boys.
Also, this is my last reply to you if you cannot get a working keyboard. Have a little bit of fucking decency and at least capitalize the beginning of sentences.
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it is of course a sign of unintelligent obsession that so many can't bring themselves to view the world except through the lens of one mildly amusing piece of orwell fiction. i liked that book, "1984." i actually like "animal farm" better. but in either case, i didn't feel the need to form a religious cult around it and alter my entire perception of reality around the stupid book's themes
it is especially ironic to see orwell cited under this story, a story about a guy using twitter to tell the world what th
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> I'm also quite mystified why so many people are celebrating this
We find a sort of closure and a degree of satisfaction when the bad guy gets his due. It's a justice thing.
As to the expense, I agree - the money, carnage and innocent deaths have been too high a price. But perhaps you'll still allow us a moment to celebrate the Reckoning.
Re:Call me Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm also quite mystified why so many people are celebrating this. It took almost 10 years, trillions of dollars, the invasion of two countries (neither of which he was found in), and an untold number of lives lost to find a 6 foot 6 inch multi-millionaire (with diabetes!) living in a private luxury compound (in a well populated city) which was at least eight times larger then anything nearby. I don't think there is too much to celebrate here.
Some of the guys I work with were all high five-ing and cheering, and I'm like "dude, you know we lost, right?" ... wake me when I can fly on an airplane without my wife and daughter being molested by govt agents, when we've got at least some of our civil rights back, when my tax dollars aren't paying for a concentration camp, etc. So the leader of the guys who won, is now dead. Who cares, as if its going to improve anything for us.
Roosevelt died right around the end of WWII ... were any of the Germans dumb enough to celebrate, despite their obvious loss? Yeah we're totally screwed here, uh huh, but the boss of the other guys is dead, so lets party like its 1935 again?
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Of course, the Germans had no foreknowledge of it, but we (meaning the US) turned around after WWII and helped Germany rebuild. Does the analogy between the US from Germany's perspective after WWII and al Qaeda today from the US perspective really work?
Besides, do you really even think that all Germans wanted to "win" the war - meaning Hitler stays in power? I doubt it.
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1935? Really? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that was a typo..
Ya, the USA in 2011 is just like Germany in 1945, except in every possible way. Because TSA's dumb laws totally are the same as the living conditions back then. Stop insulting those that have actually had to live through that.
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No pictures released because by most reports it was at least one, possibly two, shots to the head with an assault rifle. There are several reasons that you wouldn't want to show that picture. First, it wouldn't prove anything, because he almost certainly wouldn't be recognizable. Second, you'll just piss off his allies even more. Third, it's just plain gory, they want to let people celebrate the guy is gone, not be reminded just how violent an end he came to (not that there aren't many, many people arou
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"No pictures released"
http://imgur.com/im0ur.jpg [imgur.com]
Say what? Perhaps you should watch TMZ a little more often.
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Throwing him into the ocean assures that he never has a "shrine" gravesite.
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That expense is spread over many other goals. Trillions of dollars weren't spent to kill Bin Laden (but probably a few million were). Trillions of dollars were spent to overthrow the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, suppress Al Quaida, make profit for contractors who have friends in government, etc. Killing a particular person is only part of that overall objective.
Don't call me crazy!! (Score:3)
(Did you read my post?) No, I'm thinking that whatever money was spent on the Iraq war, can't be counted toward the cost of killing Bin Laden. MonsterTrimble tried to make it sounds like trillions of dollars were spent to kill Bin Laden. I have heard a lot of whackjob conspiracy theories and I have heard some very plausible explanations for why the Iraq war happened, but so f
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Well, to be fair, I don't think most people would ever have suspected that was where he was. I mean, that's some _legendary_ hiding in plain sight, reverse psychology concealment right there. To get more audacious, he'd have to holed up in like, Washington D.C., or New York or something.
This tops Radovan Karadzic's disguise [bbc.co.uk] by a long
Wasn't it a week ago...? (Score:2)
I thought I read somewhere that Osama was killed a week ago, not on Sunday. They were waiting for official confirmation before releasing the information that he was killed....
Did I mis-read? Was I mis-informed?
Or is this tweet mis-matched to the event?
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I thought I read somewhere that Osama was killed a week ago, not on Sunday. They were waiting for official confirmation before releasing the information that he was killed....
I think the confusion here is that the operation was authorized a week ago. It didn't happen immediately. I believe I saw/heard a report that there was a rehearsal done by the team before the actual op.
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Also, a few of the major news outlets repeatedly botched facts about it. Also
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Sounds reasonable. They've had intel. on the location since August. They've been collecting more over time, generating plans and probably rehearsing alternate scenarios for weeks (months?).
The raid happened as it was reported (TFA Twitter evidence backs this up). And I doubt there was much delay between the final go-ahead and the operation, as that produces opportunities for leaks.
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You were misinformed. A source I read said that Obama gave the 'go' order to the special ops guys during the Royal wedding.
That brings up an interesting image. Bin Laden, lounging in his chair watching TV with tears of joys in his eyes as William puts the ring on Kate's finger...and then gunfire erupts around him.
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I heard that Osama had been killed a week ago on MSNBC.
Osama was killed on MSNBC? Do they have the video?
Seriously; I've read about his death nearly every month for the past decade. It wouldn't be surprising if a news service covered the story of his death last week. And we'll probably still be reading stories saying he's just been killed for at least another decade.
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First link at the article you point to:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/01/usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources/ [foxnews.com]
(Fox article updated to match reported facts. Amazing).
How they finally found Osama (Score:4, Funny)
Dude on vacation (Score:5, Insightful)
I read about this dude, he's on vacation, "trying to get away from it all" and after all this breaks he's complaining that he can't get away from it all.
Dude, your problem is your idea of "getting away from it all" is warped, in that you're twittering every 30 minutes when you see a F-ing airplane. Give your cellphone a burial at sea, then chill on a lawn chair (they have those in pakistan, right?) with a religiously appropriate mood enhancing substance and enjoy the solitude.
Well, Osama's compound had no internet (Score:2)
Well, Osama's compound had no internet, anyways, so it's not like he could have gotten any early warning.
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Re:Huh. (Score:4)
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When someone posts a pic of the goatee guy's anus transparencied out and there's Glenn Beck with an iPad playing on a kinect.
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No, you should be expected to:
A: learn to read
B: learn about time zones
C: learn how to take multiple witness account and correlate them together
D: understand that you're not the sharpest tool in the shed
Those tweets are not the only first hand witness accounts of the action taking place. Everything that I've read supports the US government version of events pretty closely. The differences only help to support the story. I mean, if everyone gave out the identical same version of events, I'd be very suspic
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/. is the official home of the conspiracy theory... I'm sure plenty of them feel this isn't real anyhow.
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No, you've heard wrong. The raid was yesterday.
Re:All the reports say it was one week ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that the 24-hour news channels rarely fact-check anything, preferring instead to report "breaking news". This has the nasty side-effect of turning hearsay into well-reported "facts", which then stick around and confuse people.