The explanation in the New Yorker piece for the helicopter crash raised a question for me. I don't know what kind of ship it was, nor the loading, but "settling with power" -- i.e. the explanation -- seemed unlikely to me.
On Aug 5, 2011, at 3:29 PM, raghu wrote: > Birth of another conspiracy theory or well-founded skepticism? > > http://www.registan.net/index.php/2011/08/04/the-schmidle-muddle-of-the-osama-bin-laden-take-down/ > -----------------------------snip > On Monday, August 1, the New Yorker ran a piece by Nicholas Schmidle, > a young freelance journalist, which proffered a breathtakingly > detailed account of the Bin Laden Take-down in May of 2011. [...] The > account was deeply detailed. He described how the commander of the > team, whom he called James “sat on the floor, squeezed among ten other > SEALs, Ahmed [the translator], and Cairo [the malimois]. [...] All of > this makes for a gripping read. Too gripping I thought to myself. As > it turned out, there is one very serious problem with Mr. Schmidle’s > account: Schmidle never met any of the SEALs involved, as reported > (with great tact and restraint) by Paul Farhi on August 3. > > One may ask at first blush why a feel-good story about the Bin Laden > raid is problematic or even merits sustained critique. From an > American point of view, the story reads like the film script Schmidle > may well aspire to write. It confirms all that we wanted to know about > the raid and the bravado of our SEALS. The shooter, who finally > killed Bin Laden, even managed to mutter “For God and Country” in the > femtoseconds that his synapses took to pull the trigger, according to > Schmidle. > > However, there are implications that go well beyond Mr. Schmidle’s > limits of journalism integrity and his own personal aggrandizement and > professional aspirations. > > First, many Muslims across the world fundamentally doubt the events of > the Bin Laden raid. Some believe Bin Laden is still alive. Others > believe he died long ago. Others believe that the events of May 2 were > staged to allow the Obama administration to make an exit from > Afghanistan. As Mr. Schmidle’s is the first (and so far only) account > of the drama, these problems cast a pale of doubt upon the events that > transpired that evening. > > [...] > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
