So the criticism against Toby Young is that he didn’t know that the information given by the Obama administration was incorrect before it was retracted?

What should he have done then?

Whereas he should completely trust the information given by Donald Rumsfeld…

@1, excellent attempt at slipping in a false equivalence. It could have come straight out of the Phil Hendren cookbook.

On a more shameless note, the full version of the blogpost can be read here:

http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2011/05/bin-laden-got-that-wrong.html

Not to worry, folks, the Mail isn’t alone:

“Speaking at a fundraising event Monday evening, Sarah Palin credited President Bush by name for the death of Osama bin Laden but omitted the name of President Obama in her remarks. Palin spoke to a crowd at Colorado Christian … ”
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-palin-bin-laden-remarks-20110503,0,4220829.story

For readers who may not be up to speed on the illustrious political career of Sarah Palin, try this video on her greatest hits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrzXLYA_e6E

Are you not guilty of confusing News stories with comment? The rules on credibile sources apply to news, not so much comment which is there to get readers talking/thinking.

It is not Toby Young’s job to check facts, it his job to say something people will talk about. He has, you are doing so. His job is done.

Are you not guilty of confusing News stories with comment?

Think you’re guilty of mixing up facts, as asserted by Young and Littlejohn, and comment.

I think that this sort of criticism would be more appropriately applied to Obama’s press office, for issuing incorrect and misleading information, rather than to journalists who were misled by it.

5: As opposed to facts as asserted by you? You are attacking opinion writers for using facts that were pretty much as stated by the White House which later turned out to be wrong. Don’t criticise Obama, no its all the fault of the Daily Mail!

Why on earth is every other story on here concerning the rubbishing of America, Americans as people, any journalist who isn’t an Islamist/Stalin fanboy employed by the Guardian and seemingly endless hand wringing and “tut tutting” about a mass murdering zealot finally being killed?

Man. LC really isn’t happy about Bin Ladin being killed is it!?

@ 8 Bills and Orders

“Why on earth is every other story on here concerning the rubbishing of America, Americans as people, any journalist who isn’t an Islamist/Stalin fanboy employed by the Guardian and seemingly endless hand wringing and “tut tutting” about a mass murdering zealot finally being killed?”

Um, because you live in a fantasy world and project your paranoia onto this site?

“Man. LC really isn’t happy about Bin Ladin being killed is it!?”

You see?

Nobody, even those with pea brains give a flying fudge what Little John or little jerk have to say.

@6, the White House was not the source of either Young’s assertion regarding water-boarding, or Littlejohn’s exaggeration and factual error.

But good to see the usual partisan claptrap from you.

@10: “Nobody, even those with pea brains give a flying fudge what Little John or little jerk have to say.”

If only that were true. Try this headline in Wednesday’s Mail:

Vote No tomorrow to stop Clegg and his cronies destroying democracy in Britain – forever
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1383314/AV-referendum-Vote-No-tomorrow-stop-Nick-Clegg-destroying-democracy.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

That’s right – voting for AV tomorrow means voting to abolish democracy forever.

If Mail readers are willing to accept that sort of utter rubbish without protest, they will believe anything.

Littlejohn asserts that the bin Laden compound was “100 yards away from a Pakistani army garrison”. It wasn’t: the distance is 800 yards, and the army training unit is not a garrison.

Is this really important?

And as for waterboarding and Guantanamo, they probably have got information from the prisoners. Names and such. How useful it was would then be put to the test, but I don’t see any point denying that they could have got the name of a courrier from a prisoner there. I don’t really see the point of the thread. Of course there was going to be some crowing about the killing of Bin Laden. But it’s not such a big deal in the end.
Pakistanis don’t seem to think so anyway.

@6, the White House was not the source of either Young’s assertion regarding water-boarding, or Littlejohn’s exaggeration and factual error.

But good to see the usual partisan claptrap from you.

Toby Young’s claims about Bin Laden cowering behind his wife were taken directly from a White House briefing that has since been retracted. You can blame Young for that, but you’d have to be an idiot to do so.

His claims about waterboarding are the subject of a bit of controversy in the US. It’s nice to see you leaping to take dear old Donald Rumsfeld at his word (I know what a favourite he is on here), but he has been flatly contradicted by the Director of the CIA, who said that some of the information behind the raid came from detainees who had been subject to waterboarding.

http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/04/rumsfeld-vs-panetta-on-the-val

It’s an odd sort of partisan claptrap where I repeat the official comments of the Obama administration (of which the CIA is part), and you cling to what Donald Rumsfeld says.

Waterboard away!

I weep no tears for the supernatural delusionist and zealot who would kill and maim in the name of his invisible being, his outdated cultural stance and un-evolved barbarity.

Waterboard away….

If we’re getting antsy about who has the best personal knowledge of Abbottabad:

“the army training unit is not a garrison.”

Unfortunately for you, there is the army training college *and* separately a garrison, as Abbottabad is the location of the Headquarters of a Brigade of the Pakistani Army.

So there.

We are all missing a point here.

This whole Bin Laden story is nothing but an intelligence test, and most British media sages, politicians and spokespersons seem to have failed it. How can anyone with a brain between his/her ears believe all this claptrap of ever-changing stories, missing DNA tests, angry Mrs. Bin Laden’s, and tossing bodies into the sea in a non-existent Muslim ritual burial. First Bin Laden was in a millionaire’s mansion armed to the hilt like a drug baron in a Steven Seagal or Arnold Schwarzenegger Hollywood movie. Next we hear he had a modest flat and was unarmed. I had read previous stories that he was already dead, and from several years past.

What we have here is thick media soup to mask some ongoing very dirty dealing in the Middle East, and to give Obama a boost in the electoral ratings in the US. The rest is detail – or almost certainly imagination.

Tony, Tony, Tony….
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Can we waterboard 99% of you cunts on here?

Oooh. Yes please.

What evidence is there concerning this story, apart from a lot of hearsay from ‘official sources’? I mean documentary evidence or direct independent testimony: something that might stand up in a court of law.

Do we not require that now? We just take Donald Rumsfeld’s word as gospel?

I know from direct experience as a political activist that official news sources lie blatantly all the time; they absolutely never give the unvarnished truth – because everyone has an agenda. It seems that most media and journalists these days are happy to parrot whatever they are told. Questions are strictly for the ‘tin-foil hat brigade’.

@ 20 Christ Whitlow

Honest question: what evidence would you accept? Even if someone could produce the body and brought it for you to inspect, you presumably couldn’t confirm with any certainty where or not it was Bin Laden.

*WHETHER or not. Sorry.

Toby Young is wrong on most everything. It comes as no surprise that he’s wrong on this.And he wants to run a school?

How can the detainees at Guantanamo have given any useful information on OBL’s whereabouts in 2011 – when most of them were detained several years ago?

Or are we really saying that OBL bought his house in Pakistan and moved in a decade ago, and everyone of his followers knew his address?