SEAL book raises questions about bin Laden's death

[OnyxCollie]

19. Damn straight.

Last edited Wed Aug 29, 2012, 01:34 PM - Edit history (6)

I'm not falling over myself to buy anyone's account, whether it be the Obama administration or this alleged SEAL.

I'd like to hear from the Pakistani doctor who, with the aid of the CIA, set up a fake vaccination service to collect DNA from bin Laden's family.

The guy the Pakistanis view as a traitor. I'd like to hear his account.

((I think this is kinda important, since we don't have a body or pictures. All we have is the Obama administration saying, "We got his DNA. Trust us. He's dead." And since that contradicts Benazir Bhutto's (who was assassinated) claim that bin Laden was dead already, I'm skeptical.))

I think a few paragraphs from Cass Sunstein's (current administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) article on conspiracy theories is apropos.

Rumors and speculation. Of course it is necessary to specify how, exactly,
conspiracy theories begin.. Some such theories seem to bubble up spontaneously,
appearing roughly simultaneously in many different social networks; others are initiated
and spread, quite intentionally, by conspiracy entrepreneurs who profit directly or
indirectly from propagating their theories. An example in the latter category is the
French author Thierry Meyssan, whose book “9/11: The Big Lie” became a bestseller and
a sensation for its claims that the Pentagon explosion on 9/11 was caused by a missile,
fired as the opening salvo of a coup d’etat by the military-industrial complex, rather than
by American Airlines Flight 77. Some conspiracy entrepreneurs are entirely sincere;
others are interested in money or power, or in achieving some general social goal. Still,
even for conspiracy theories put about by conspiracy entrepreneurs, the key question is
why some theories take hold while many more do not, and vanish into obscurity.

Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable. Most
people are not able to know, on the basis of personal or direct knowledge, why an
airplane crashed, or why a leader was assassinated, or why a terrorist attack succeeded. In
the aftermath of such an event, numerous speculations will be offered, and some of them
will likely point to some kind of conspiracy. To some people, those speculations will
seem plausible, perhaps because they provide a suitable outlet for outrage and blame,
perhaps because the speculation fits well with other deeply rooted beliefs that they hold.
Terrible events produce outrage, and when people are outraged, they are all the more
likely to attribute those events to intentional action. In addition, antecedent beliefs are a
key to the success or failure of conspiracy theories. Some people would find it impossibly
jarring to think that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of a civil rights leader;
that thought would unsettle too many of their other judgments. Others would find those
other judgments strongly supported, even confirmed, by the suggestion that the CIA was
responsible for such an assassination. Compare the case of terrorist attacks. For most
Americans, a claim that the United States government attacked its own citizens, for some
ancillary purpose, would make it impossible to hold onto a wide range of other
judgments. Clearly this point does not hold for many people in Islamic nations, for whom
it is far from jarring to believe that responsibility lies with the United States (or Israel).

Here, as elsewhere, people attempt to find some kind of equilibrium among their
assortment of beliefs,34 and acceptance or rejection of a conspiracy theory will often
depend on which of the two leads to equilibrium. Some beliefs are also motivated, in the
sense that people are pleased to hold them or displeased to reject them.35 Acceptance (or
for that matter rejection) of a conspiracy theory is frequently motivated in that sense.
Reactions to a claim of conspiracy to assassinate a political leader, or to commit or to
allow some atrocity either domestically or abroad, are often determined by the
motivations of those who hear the claim.

~snip~

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do,
what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1)
Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind
of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government
might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy
theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in
counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such
parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential
effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions.
However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration
of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).