Monday 9 May 2011

Fox News’ Juan Williams says Osama bin Laden was victim of murder

HEADLINE: Fox NewsJuan Williams says Osama bin Laden was victim of murder







OVERVIEW: Fox News' Juan Williams says that the killing of Osama bin Laden was really a murder committed by Navy Seals.





LINK: http://www.examiner.com/american-politics-in-vancouver/fox-news-juan-williams-says-osama-bin-laden-was-victim-of-murder

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Sunday 8 May 2011

[LAFD ALERT] Traffic Collision w/Entrapment 5/8/2011

*Traffic Collision w/Entrapment* 16400 Burbank Bl; MAP 561-E2; FS 83; NFD (No Further Details); Ch:8,17 @ 2:42 PM -Brian Humphrey###

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[LAFD ALERT] Structure Fire 5/8/2011

*UPDATE: 1722 W 20th St* KNOCKDOWN; 29 FF's took 16 min; Confined within 1 apt; No injury; http://bit.ly/mOr5HW - Brian Humphrey###

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[LAFD ALERT] Structure Fire 5/8/2011

*Structure Fire* 1722 W 20th St; MAP 634-A6; FS 13; 2 story apt w/one 1st floor unit well involved; NFD; Ch:9,12 @ 2:02 PM -Brian Humphrey###

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Peter King warns of upcoming and spectacular Al-Qaeda sleeper cell attack in the US

HEADLINE: Peter King warns of upcoming and spectacular Al-Qaeda sleeper cell attack in the US







OVERVIEW: Congressman Peter King warns Americans about a looming and upcoming Al-Qaeda attack in the US, done by a sleeper cell.





LINK: http://www.examiner.com/american-politics-in-vancouver/peter-king-warns-of-upcoming-and-spectacular-al-qaeda-sleeper-cell-attack-us

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Paul Shanklin Sings " The Man Who Shot Osama Bin Laden "


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Saturday 7 May 2011

[LAFD ALERT] Train vs. Pedestrian 5/7/2011

*UPDATE: 9080 Corbin Av* One patient (apparent pedestrian, no age or gender) found dead on tracks; No other injuries; Media contact = LAPD, Sheriff Transit Bureau; Amtrak & Coroner; NFD - Brian Humphrey###

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[LAFD ALERT] Train vs. Pedestrian 5/7/2011

*Train vs. Pedestrian* 9080 Corbin Av; MAP 500-F7; FS 70; Contrary to first report from Amtrak crew, this is apparently pedestrian (no vehicle) struck by train; NFD; Ch:8,17 @ 9:08 PM -Brian Humphrey###

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[LAFD ALERT] Train vs. Vehicle 5/7/2011

*Train vs. Vehicle* 9080 Corbin Av; MAP 500-F7; FS 70; PRELIM: Amtrak passenger train vs. unk type vehicle; NFD; Ch:8,17 @ 9:08 PM -Brian Humphrey###

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Britain must not support US-style justice By Yvonne Ridley

Britain must not support US-style justice

There are a number of men being held without charge or trial in Britain's own version of Guantanamo Bay.

And while David Cameron's government is willing to condemn the existence of this boil on the face of human rights in occupied Cuba it remains silent about those being held in Wiltshire's Long Lartin prison.

Most of them are fighting extradition to the US … a fight that has become even more urgent now that we have all seen US justice in action in recent days.


US justice means extrajudicial killings, targeted assassinations and doing away with the need for a fair trial: any trial for that matter.


I would hope, and expect, all of their legal teams now, as a matter of urgency, submit new appeals on behalf of their clients to stop extradition immediately to a country that simply cannot deal justly with those it suspects of terrorism.

Can anyone really give guarantees these men will not be put up against a wall and shot in the back of the head the moment they arrive on US soil?

Read Full Article at: http://www.markthetruth.com/articles/1717-britain-must-not-support-us-style-justice.html

Fox News focus group refuses to give Obama credit for Osama killing

HEADLINE: Fox News focus group refuses to give Obama credit for Osama killing






OVERVIEW: Fox News' focus group put on by Frank Luntz refuses to give Obama any credit at all for ordering bin Laden killed.






LINK: http://www.examiner.com/american-politics-in-vancouver/fox-news-focus-group-refuses-to-give-obama-credit-for-osama-killing

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Friday 6 May 2011

Eight Questions from Leftists for Obama

[[  Are there any loonie-lefties that can even read this?]]


 

May 6 -8, 2011
If Eichmann Could Be Put on Trial Why Not Bin Laden?
Eight Questions for President Obama
By MITCHEL COHEN
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen05062011.html

A number of significant questions arise with the announced killing of Osama bin-Laden. Here are some that members of the Green Party are asking:

1) Why would the U.S. government order the summary execution of an unarmed and frail individual – even an alleged terrorist, criminal, and former CIA "asset" like bin-Laden?

2) Why would they dump the body – and thus the proof of his identity and wounds -- into the ocean, preventing an autopsy? Is there something they are trying to hide?

3) Why would the rulers of the most powerful country on the face of the earth be afraid to capture and arrest Osama bin-Laden and put him on trial, as was done with the World War 2 Nazi Adolf Eichmann?

4) Why was bin-Laden not captured and at least questioned about further terrorist plans if he was the mastermind, as charged?

5) Why did the President not re-visit former President G.W. Bush's rejection of the offer of the Taliban to turn bin-Laden over to the U.S. for prosecution following the 9/11 attacks?

6) Who was responsible for initial reports released to the media and the public that bin-Laden was armed and that he was using his wife as a human shield, when neither of those were true?

7) When will President Obama allow the questions by the 9/11 families to finally be heard, recorded, and answered? When will he order a criminal investigation of the events of 9/11?

8) When will the President order home the troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and provide them with the medical support they need, but which has been to a large extent cut out of the budget?

Mitchel Cohen is an organizer with the Brooklyn Greens / Green Party, and is currently Chair of the WBAI radio (99.5 FM) Local Station Board*. (*For ID purposes only)





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USA Releases Photo of Bin Laden's Funeral









US Releases Photo of Bin Laden's Funeral

 

 

 

 

cid:1.3785299147@web31603.mail.mud.yahoo.com

 

 


 


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Dry As A Bone


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The Queen of England: WOW







 There is something to be said for tenure.

 

 

 

A bit of history.  

The Queen Of England

I  was a little shocked by the  pictures when  it penetrated my brain how long she's been around. She  gives new meaning to the  phrase "Long  Live the Queen".

How old does this one make  you feel? Keep scrolling...

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I  don't know about you, but  I went OMG somewhere between  Eisenhower and  Truman.

( P.S. After  looking at this I  am shocked at how long I've been around, too...)


 

IF YOU REMEMBER ALL OR MOST OF THESE PRESIDENTS, YOU'RE NO SPRING CHICKEN EITHER!


 


 


 


 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 



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Radical Math


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Bin Laden Killing





I love this phrase posted over on lucianne.com.

 

"Obama killed Osama and we got 72 versions."

 

 


 


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Another blonde joke.







 


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A PLANE IS ON ITS WAY TO TORONTO, WHEN A BLONDE IN ECONOMY CLASS GETS UP, MOVES TO THE FIRST CLASS SECTION AND SITS DOWN.

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT WATCHES HER DO THIS, AND ASKS TO SEE HER TICKET.

SHE THEN TELLS THE BLONDE THAT SHE PAID FOR ECONOMY CLASS, AND THAT SHE WILL HAVE TO SIT IN THE BACK.

THE BLONDE REPLIES, "I'M BLONDE, I'M BEAUTIFUL, I'M GOING TO TORONTO AND I'M STAYING RIGHT HERE."

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT GOES INTO THE COCKPIT AND TELLS THE PILOT AND THE CO-PILOT THAT THERE IS A BLONDE BIMBO SITTING IN FIRST CLASS, THAT BELONGS IN ECONOMY, AND WON'T MOVE BACK TO HER SEAT.

THE CO-PILOT GOES BACK TO THE BLONDE AND TRIES TO EXPLAIN THAT BECAUSE SHE ONLY PAID FOR ECONOMY SHE WILL HAVE TO LEAVE AND RETURN TO HER SEAT.

THE BLONDE REPLIES, "I'M BLONDE, I'M BEAUTIFUL, I'M GOING TO TORONTO AND I'M STAYING RIGHT HERE."

THE CO-PILOT TELLS THE PILOT THAT HE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE THE POLICE WAITING WHEN THEY LAND TO ARREST THIS BLONDE WOMAN WHO WON'T LISTEN TO REASON.

THE PILOT SAYS, "YOU SAY SHE IS A BLONDE? I'LL HANDLE THIS. I'M MARRIED TO A BLONDE. I SPEAK BLONDE."

HE GOES BACK TO THE BLONDE AND WHISPERS IN HER EAR, AND SHE SAYS, "OH, I'M SORRY."AND GETS UP AND GOES BACK TO HER SEAT IN ECONOMY.

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT AND CO-PILOT ARE AMAZED AND ASKED HIM WHAT HE SAID TO MAKE HER MOVE WITHOUT ANY FUSS.

I TOLD HER, 'FIRST CLASS ISN'T GOING TO TORONTO."



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Americans, Everything You Do Is Monitored


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Obama's Sputnik Moment with Taxes

Give Obarfo a free ride on a sputnik.  One way.





The Looking Spoon Blog


Obama's Sputnik Moment with Taxes

Posted: 05 May 2011 06:23 PM PDT

Frank J at IMAO has it right when he says we've really lost sight of the point of this whole freedom thing. President Obama doesn't waste anytime balancing out his victory over Osama bin Laden by bringing his "crappy president" meter back to 0 with his new proposal to tax on how much we drive.

"The power to tax is the power to destroy" is something people with a brain keep in mind every time the word comes up. That's why liberals love to play in that lion's den, they just don't get it.

Since I guess there is nothing off the table for the government to tax maybe we can put just more than our latest odometer reading on the table...

Environmentalism

  • Since vegetarians depress demand for beef they will be taxed in anticipation of scientists eventually figuring out the how important it really is to have methane in the atmosphere.
  • Anyone who agrees to equal civil rights for animals must pay taxes on their behalf.
  • Carbon credits will now be paid for with a tax on Global Warming summits held at 5 star resorts.
  • Liberals who own private jets will be taxed by how much exhaust they emit into the air, and a fee will also be assessed for the planes exhaust.

Abortion

  • A tax will be assessed based on how much in tax collection the government missed out on over the life of the person that wasn't.
  • If the "mother" was poor a tax will also be assessed offset the loss of public sector wages for prisons and schools that is caused by depressing demand for those services.
  • An Orwell tax will be applied to Planned Parenthood, since abortion has absolutely nothing to do with either part of that moniker.

Stupidity

  • ABC would have no choice but to change "The View" to "The Elisabeth Hasselbeck Show."
  • Joe Biden would now pay us to be Vice President.
  • A $1000 dollar licensing fee will be required to purchase a bongo or any other object whose sole purpose is to tap or hit with no rhythm while wearing dreadlocks.
  • Death penalty activism will be regulated and anyone who wants their voice heard can submit an essay that is 100 words or less on why they can't just pretend it's another late term abortion, and pay a $500 essay processing fee.
  • Democrats can consider taxes on stupidity to be like "paying dues."

Taxation

  • The ambition levels of every American will be assessed and the world's first truly progressive tax system will be set up to tax Americans with lower ambition at higher levels.
  • A tax will be assessed to every American that proposes a new tax that hinders liberty and freedom (this list is excluded, obviously)
  • Put a tax on bad ideas, that way only good ideas, like this one, will see the light of day.
  • Your own level of taxation will now be based on how much you think other people should pay.

All the stuff we can tax is certainly not limited to the above, the sky is the limit, really. If you want to be honest about it this is really one of those Sputnik moments Obama told us about.

Obama's Attempts To Fix Biden's Gaffe Problem

Posted: 05 May 2011 10:00 AM PDT

This is meant to be a potential solution to Biden's latest blabbermouth move....


Obama orders Bidens mouth shut


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Time to Thank "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"




[[  I personally support the Military and CIA using whatever means and methods available to extract vital information from terrorists. ]]




Time to Thank "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Posted By Alan W. Dowd On May 6, 2011

The successes of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the old saying goes, are never known and the failures are never forgotten. The takedown of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, who were guided onto their target by the work of hundreds of intelligence officers around the world, is a welcome exception to this rule. In a similar way, the successful strike on bin Laden forces us to take a fresh look at the notion that enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) are not useful or effective. If recent comments from high-level officials are any indication, EITs played an important part in the hunt for and elimination of the terror mastermind.

Ever since 9/11, the CIA has been pounded for not "connecting the dots." The "dots" in the world of intelligence-gathering can be anything—individuals, places, times, targets, dates, fragments of messages, inscrutable codes—but they mean nothing to policymakers unless or until an intelligence analyst can draw a line from one dot to another and thereby paint at least part of a picture.

That connecting line is crucial. And in the case of taking down bin Laden, that connecting line was apparently provided by sources that were subjected to EITs, according to an NBC interview of CIA director Leon Panetta.

The most likely source to provide what NBC calls "the thread of information" about bin Laden's trusted courier was Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), who masterminded the 9/11 attacks.

According to the Associated Press, KSM, while being held in a CIA prison somewhere in Eastern Europe, divulged nicknames of key bin Laden aides and couriers. Although he had been subjected to water-boarding, or simulated drowning, several times prior to divulging the names, KSM turned over these fragments of info long after agents had stopped using the technique. Obama administration officials concede, however, that "U.S. intelligence did not learn the identity of the courier until after the CIA interrogation program was terminated," Reuters reports. In other words, it is possible fear of another round of water-boarding had an impact on KSM.

"We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer, told AP.

In fact, Panetta says, "intelligence garnered from water-boarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and kill him," according to NBC's reporting. "We had a multiple source—a multiple series of sources—that provided information with regards to the situation," according to Panetta. "Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees, but we also had information from other sources as well."

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), was less opaque. "The road to bin Laden began with water-boarding," he told NBC News. As chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, King would know.



In the cold calculus of this war, King has concluded that the ends justify the means, that innocent life is more important than a terrorist's comfort: "I use the example of September 10th, 2001, if we had captured Mohammed Atta and we knew he was going to kill thousands of Americans but we didn't know when or where, are we saying now you wouldn't hold his head under water to save 3,000 lives?"

When put that way, most Americans would agree with King's sentiment, and understandably so. When characterized as torture, Americans become a bit more squeamish about EITs, and understandably so.

The reason the "thread" that led the CIA and the SEALs to bin Laden is such a big deal is President Barack Obama's very vocal views on EITs. Water-boarding "violates our ideals and our values," Obama said in 2009. "I do believe that it is torture…And that is why I put an end to these practices."

The Bush administration, on the other hand, rejected the characterization of EITs as torture and limited the use of EITs to a small handful of individuals. "We used this technique on three people," President George W. Bush said in an interview after leaving office. "We gained…information to protect the country. And it was the right thing to do as far as I'm concerned."

It's a policy difference, a difference of worldviews and philosophy, and that's what elections are about. Obama's 2009 executive order that reversed Bush administration policy on EITs authorizes only those interrogation techniques approved by the U.S. Army Field Manual. The problem is, those techniques may not have—probably would not have—persuaded KSM to say much of anything.

The intelligence community in general and the Bush administration in particular have been forced to defend their post-9/11 tactics ad nauseam and criticized for not connecting all the pre-9/11 dots. Now that those tactics are helping to connect the dots—and in fact clearing a path all the way to bin Laden—perhaps it's time to stop criticizing them.

Alan W. Dowd writes on defense and security issues.




Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/06/time-to-thank-enhanced-interrogation-techniques/

 

 


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Cost of bin Laden: $3 Trillion

All but $2 for the bullets has been a total waste.







http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110506/pl_yblog_exclusive/the-cost-of-bin-laden-3-trillion-over-15-years

 

The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years

·          

By National Journal national Journal – 2 hrs 55 mins ago

By Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley
National Journal

The most expensive public enemy in American history died Sunday from two bullets.

As we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation—and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down.

What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt, which threatens to hobble the economy unless lawmakers compromise on an unprecedented deficit-reduction deal.

All of that has not given us, at least not yet, anything close to the social or economic advancements produced by the battles against America's costliest past enemies. Defeating the Confederate army brought the end of slavery and a wave of standardization—in railroad gauges and shoe sizes, for example—that paved the way for a truly national economy. Vanquishing Adolf Hitler ended the Great Depression and ushered in a period of booming prosperity and hegemony. Even the massive military escalation that marked the Cold War standoff against Joseph Stalin and his Russian successors produced landmark technological breakthroughs that revolutionized the economy.

Perhaps the biggest economic silver lining from our bin Laden spending, if there is one, is the accelerated development of unmanned aircraft. That's our $3 trillion windfall, so far: Predator drones. "We have spent a huge amount of money which has not had much effect on the strengthening of our military, and has had a very weak impact on our economy," says Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government who coauthored a book on the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

(TIMELINE: Obama's big secret. When he knew about bin Laden (and we didn't)

Certainly, in the course of the fight against bin Laden, the United States escaped another truly catastrophic attack on our soil. Al-Qaida, though not destroyed, has been badly hobbled. "We proved that we value our security enough to incur some pretty substantial economic costs en route to protecting it," says Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution.

But that willingness may have given bin Laden exactly what he wanted. While the terrorist leader began his war against the United States believing it to be a "paper tiger" that would not fight, by 2004 he had already shifted his strategic aims, explicitly comparing the U.S. fight to the Afghan incursion that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," bin Laden said in a taped statement. Only the smallest sign of al-Qaida would "make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations." Considering that we've spent one-fifth of a year's gross domestic product—more than the entire 2008 budget of the United States government—responding to his 2001 attacks, he may have been onto something.

THE SCORECARD

Other enemies throughout history have extracted higher gross costs, in blood and in treasure, from the United States. The Civil War and World War II produced higher casualties and consumed larger shares of our economic output. As an economic burden, the Civil War was America's worst cataclysm relative to the size of the economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the Union and Confederate armies combined to spend $80 million, in today's dollars, fighting each other. That number might seem low, but economic historians who study the war say the total financial cost was exponentially higher: more like $280 billion in today's dollars when you factor in disruptions to trade and capital flows, along with the killing of 3 to 4 percent of the population. The war "cost about double the gross national product of the United States in 1860," says John Majewski, who chairs the history department at the University of California (Santa Barbara). "From that perspective, the war on terror isn't going to compare."

On the other hand, these earlier conflictsâ€"for all their human costâ€"also furnished major benefits to the U.S. economy. After entering the Civil War as a loose collection of regional economies, America emerged with the foundation for truly national commerce; the first standardized railroad system sprouted from coast to coast, carrying goods across the union; and textile mills began migrating from the Northeast to the South in search of cheaper labor, including former slaves who had joined the workforce. The fighting itself sped up the mechanization of American agriculture: As farmers flocked to the battlefield, the workers left behind adopted new technologies to keep harvests rolling in with less labor.

(UPDATED: New pictures from Pakistani Obama's hideout)

World War II defense spending cost $4.4 trillion. At its peak, it sucked up nearly 40 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Research Service. It was an unprecedented national mobilization, says Chris Hellman, a defense budget analyst at the National Priorities Project. One in 10 Americans—some 12 million people—donned a uniform during the war.

But the payoff was immense. The war machine that revved up to defeat Germany and Japan powered the U.S. out of the Great Depression and into an unparalleled stretch of postwar growth. Jet engines and nuclear power spread into everyday lives. A new global economic order—forged at Bretton Woods, N.H., by the Allies in the waning days of the war—opened a floodgate of benefits through international trade. Returning soldiers dramatically improved the nation's skills and education level, thanks to the GI Bill, and they produced a baby boom that would vastly expand the workforce.

U.S. military spending totaled nearly $19 trillion throughout the four-plus decades of Cold War that ensued, as the nation escalated an arms race with the Soviet Union. Such a huge infusion of cash for weapons research spilled over to revolutionize civilian life, yielding quantum leaps in supercomputing and satellite technology, not to mention the advent of the Internet.

Unlike any of those conflicts, the wars we are fighting today were kick-started by a single man. While it is hard to imagine World War II without Hitler, that conflict pitted nations against each other. (Anyway, much of the cost to the United States came from the war in the Pacific.) And it's absurd to pin the Civil War, World War I, or the Cold War on any single individual. Bin Laden's mystique (and his place on the FBI's most-wanted list) made him—and the wars he drew us into—unique.

By any measure, bin Laden inflicted a steep toll on America. His 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa caused Washington to quadruple spending on diplomatic security worldwide the following year—and to expand it from $172 million to $2.2 billion over the next decade. The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole caused $250 million in damages.

(FALLOUT: U.S. Pakistani relations strained like never before)

Al-Qaida's assault against the United States on September 11, 2001, was the highest-priced disaster in U.S. history. Economists estimate that the combined attacks cost the economy $50 billion to $100 billion in lost activity and growth, or about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of GDP, and caused about $25 billion in property damage. The stock market plunged and was still down nearly 13 percentage points a year later, although it has more than made up the value since.

The greater expense we can attribute to bin Laden comes from policymakers' response to 9/11. The invasion of Afghanistan was clearly a reaction to al-Qaida's attacks. It is unlikely that the Bush administration would have invaded Iraq if 9/11 had not ushered in a debate about Islamic extremism and weapons of mass destruction. Those two wars grew into a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign that cost $1.4 trillion in the past decade—and will cost hundreds of billions more. The government borrowed the money for those wars, adding hundreds of billions in interest charges to the U.S. debt.

Spending on Iraq and Afghanistan peaked at 4.8 percent of GDP in 2008, nowhere near the level of economic mobilization in some past conflicts but still more than the entire federal deficit that year. "It's a much more verdant, prosperous, peaceful world than it was 60 years ago," and nations spend proportionally far less on their militaries today, says S. Brock Blomberg, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who specializes in the economics of terrorism. "So as bad as bin Laden is, he's not nearly as bad as Hitler, Mussolini, [and] the rest of them."

Yet bin Laden produced a ripple effect. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have created a world in which even non-war-related defense spending has grown by 50 percent since 2001. As the U.S. military adopted counterinsurgency doctrine to fight guerrilla wars, it also continued to increase its ability to fight conventional battles, boosting spending for weapons from national-missile defense and fighter jets to tanks and long-range bombers. Then there were large spending increases following the overhaul of America's intelligence agencies and homeland-security programs. Those transformations cost at least another $1 trillion, if not more, budget analysts say, though the exact cost is still unknown. Because much of that spending is classified or spread among agencies with multiple missions, a breakdown is nearly impossible.

It's similarly difficult to assess the opportunity cost of the post-9/11 wars—the kinds of productive investments of fiscal and human resources that we might have made had we not been focused on combating terrorism through counterinsurgency. Blomberg says that the response to the attacks has essentially wiped out the "peace dividend" that the United States began to reap when the Cold War ended. After a decade of buying fewer guns and more butter, we suddenly ramped up our gun spending again, with borrowed money.

The price of the war-fighting and security responses to bin Laden account for more than 15 percent of the national debt incurred in the last decade—a debt that is changing the way our military leaders perceive risk. "Our national debt is our biggest national-security threat," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last June.

All of those costs, totaled together, reach at least $3 trillion. And that's just the cautious estimate. Stiglitz and Bilmes believe that the Iraq conflict alone cost that much. They peg the total economic costs of both wars at $4 trillion to $6 trillion, Bilmes says. That includes fallout from the sharp increase in oil prices since 2003, which is largely attributable to growing demand from developing countries and current unrest in the Middle East but was also spurred in some part by the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Bilmes and Stiglitz also count part of the 2008 financial crisis among the costs, theorizing that oil price hikes injected liquidity in global economies battling slowdowns in growth—and that helped push up housing prices and contributed to the bubble.

Most important, the fight against bin Laden has not produced the benefits that accompanied previous conflicts. The military escalation of the past 10 years did not stimulate the economy as the war effort did in the 1940s—with the exception of a few large defense contractors—in large part because today's operations spend far less on soldiers and far more on fuel. Meanwhile, our national-security spending no longer drives innovation. The experts who spoke with National Journal could name only a few advancements spawned by the fight against bin Laden, including Predator drones and improved backup systems to protect information technology from a terrorist attack or other disaster. "The spin-off effects of military technology were demonstrably more apparent in the '40s and '50s and '60s," says Gordon Adams, a national-security expert at American Univeristy.

Another reason that so little economic benefit has come from this war is that it has produced less—not more—stability around the world. Stable countries, with functioning markets governed by the rule of law, make better trading partners; it's easier to start a business, or tap national resources, or develop new products in times of tranquility than in times of strife. "If you can successfully pursue a military campaign and bring stability at the end of it, there is an economic benefit," says economic historian Joshua Goldstein of the University of Massachusetts. "If we stabilized Libya, that would have an economic benefit."

Even the psychological boost from bin Laden's death seems muted by historical standards. Imagine the emancipation of the slaves. Victory over the Axis powers gave Americans a sense of euphoria and limitless possibility. O'Hanlon says, "I take no great satisfaction in his death because I'm still amazed at the devastation and how high a burden he placed on us." It is "more like a relief than a joy that I feel." Majewski adds, "Even in a conflict like the Civil War or World War II, there's a sense of tragedy but of triumph, too. But the war on terror … it's hard to see what we get out of it, technologically or institutionally."

BIN LADEN'S LEGACY

What we are left with, after bin Laden, is a lingering bill that was exacerbated by decisions made in a decade-long campaign against him. We borrowed money to finance the war on terrorism rather than diverting other national-security funding or raising taxes. We expanded combat operations to Iraq before stabilizing Afghanistan, which in turn led to the recent reescalation of the American commitment there. We tolerated an unsupervised national-security apparatus, allowing it to grow so inefficient that, as The Washington Post reported in a major investigation last year, 1,271 different government institutions are charged with counterterrorism missions (51 alone track terrorism financing), which produce some 50,000 intelligence reports each year, many of which are simply not read.

We have also shelled out billions of dollars in reconstruction funding and walking-around money for soldiers, with little idea of whether it has even helped foreigners, much less the United States; independent investigations suggest as much as $23 billion is unaccounted for in Iraq alone. "We can't account for where any of it goes—that's the great tragedy in all of this," Hellman says. "The Pentagon cannot now and has never passed an audit—and, to me, that's just criminal."

It's worth repeating that the actual cost of bin Laden's September 11 attacks was between $50 billion and $100 billion. That number could have been higher, says Adam Rose, coordinator for economics at the University of Southern California's National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, but for the resilience of the U.S. economy and the quick response of policymakers to inject liquidity and stimulate consumer spending. But the cost could also have been much lower, he says, if consumers hadn't paid a fear premium—shying away from air travel and tourism in the aftermath of the attacks. "Ironically," he says, "we as Americans had more to do with the bottom-line outcome than the terrorist attack itself, on both the positive side and the negative side."

The same is true of the nation's decision, for so many reasons, to spend at least $3 trillion responding to bin Laden's attacks. More than actual security, we bought a sense of action in the face of what felt like an existential threat. We staved off another attack on domestic soil. Our debt load was creeping up already, thanks to the early waves stages of baby-boomer retirements, but we also hastened a fiscal mess that has begun, in time, to fulfill bin Laden's vision of a bankrupt America. If left unchecked, our current rate of deficit spending would add $9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That's three Osamas, right there.

Although Bin Laden is buried in the sea, other Islamist extremists are already vying to take his place. In time, new enemies, foreign and domestic, will rise to challenge America. What they will cost us, far more than we realize, is our choice.



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