Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined?

May 3, 2012 6:58 AM

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has released its analysis of 17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid where Osama Bin Laden was killed. They also released the documents themselves, available in the original Arabic as well as in English translation. A Pastebin version of the English translations has been posted for easy searching.
posted by gemmy (12 comments total)

They are not to target visits by US Vice President Biden ... The groups will remain on the lookout for Obama or Petraeus. The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there. Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.

So, there's a terrorist plot to keep Joe Biden alive?
posted by griphus at 7:02 AM on May 3, 2012 [23 favorites]

That sounds straight out of a Dan Quayle joke book.
posted by kmz at 7:04 AM on May 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

If that's what they thought about Biden, imagine what they must have thought about Palin.
posted by kiltedtaco at 7:07 AM on May 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Obama is the head of infidelity

I THOUGHT THAT WAS BILL CLINTON HUR HUR HUR
posted by dubold at 7:15 AM on May 3, 2012 [6 favorites]

Remember that these are the product of selective declassification.

If for every e-mail bemoaning Muslim casualties of jihad there are 10 still classified ones invoking Muslim casualties of the American military, you would never know.
posted by Trurl at 7:16 AM on May 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Obama is the head of infidelity

There's the makings of one of those "Who said it, Osama Bin Laden or Fox News?" sites here.
posted by yoink at 7:57 AM on May 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

Fascinating. From PDF ending 004 for your amusement:

From the professional point of view, [American TV channels] are all on one level except (Fox News) channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too.
...
As for Fox News, let her die in her anger.

More seriously, to see things argued here by the anti-American terrorists directly is gripping. Bush was an fool whose policies aided Al-Qaeda. The Western media is happy to provide a sympathetic airing to fascist terrorists to get a story. Al-Qaeda really is about establishing a world Islamic caliphate, not righting human rights abuses in Palestine. Absolutely fascinating.
posted by alasdair at 8:14 AM on May 3, 2012

One-hundred-seventy-five out of 6000 or so captured.

Hard to be confident about any conclusions drawn from the sample.

Still, there's this:

"From the professional point of view, they are all on one level--except [Fox News] channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too," Gadahn wrote. "I used to think that MSNBC channel may be good and neutral a bit, but is has lately fired two of the most famous journalists--Keith Olberman and Octavia Nasser the Lebanese--because they released some statements that were open for argument."

Gadahn continued: "In conclusion, we can say that there is no single channel that we could rely on for our messages. [They] may ignore them, and even the channel that broadcast them, probably it would distort them somehow. Or they may ignore the message and conduct a smearing of the individuals, to the end of the list of what you know about their cunning methods."

He added: "As for Fox News, let her die in her anger."

That confirms everybody's suspicions.
posted by notyou at 8:16 AM on May 3, 2012

Based on the little I know about such things, mhy guess is that the important stuff has not been made available.
posted by Postroad at 8:17 AM on May 3, 2012

I imagine any document concerning apartheid on the West Bank will remain unreleased.
posted by wrapper at 8:54 AM on May 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wow, I need to read more slowly:

Combating Terrorism Center was Combating Tourism Center

That said, of course it's a selective release, they'd be nuts to dump it all.
posted by tilde at 10:56 AM on May 3, 2012

The translations posted on West Point's website were pretty slack. That said, it's not like factual accuracy is important in the war on trr.
posted by dougrayrankin at 4:06 PM on May 15, 2012