Barrel Strength

Obama told a news conference today that “… I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden’s head and if I’m president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive… What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism,”

He might want to recall the troubles that bedeviled previous attempts to capture bin Laden, during the Clinton administration, with the help of the full force of the US law. On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”, Michael Scheuer, a former CIA terrorism analyst shared the following:

“When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden‘s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn‘t irritate his beard.”

One hopes that a better tape has been manufactured and better seating is available since the last attempt.