The Angry Exile: Taking out Bin Liner - even more costly than we thought?

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 6 May 2011

Taking out Bin Liner - even more costly than we thought?

As pointed out by others in the blogosphere (I first saw it a couple of days ago on Max Farquar) and now the mainstream media, it turns out that on top of everything else - money, equipment, time, effort, lives - spent on getting the bastard who, inasmuch as he probably gave the go ahead to the people who actually thought of it, was responsible for 9/11, the US must add the dollar cost and any strategic value of an apparently secret helicopter that they wrecked in the process and failed to thoroughly destroy before they left. And which may even now be on its way to China if the operation sufficiently pissed off the sovereign nation on whose soil it took place.

It has become clear that US special forces used a previously unseen stealth helicopter for the mission in order to evade Pakistani radar or being heard on the final approach to the home of the al-Qaeda terrorist.
The American troops used thermite grenades to destroy the helicopter’s main body but its rear section was left intact and taken away by the Pakistani military soon after the night raid on Monday. It is feared that if Islamabad refuses a request from Washington for the return of the tail section that the issue could turn into a diplomatic rift.
Relations are already fraught after the Seal Team Six raid entered Pakistan airspace apparently without permission and after the government was accused in some quarters of “harbouring” bin Laden.
[...]
One of the aircraft crashed during the raid after it is thought the engines developed a problem. Experts believe that the shape and design of the aircraft is similar to that of the RAH 66 Comanche helicopter, a project that was scrapped after $7 billion [£4.26 billion] was spent on eight prototypes.
However, it now appears that the Americans might have adapted some of the technology and bolted it on to a Blackhawk. The modified tail boom would have reduced noise and appears to be covered in a hi-tech material used on stealth fighters.
Peter Felstead, the editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, said analysts had carefully studied the pictures and concluded that it was a “stealth helicopter that we have not seen before”. “The Americans will be extremely keen to get the wreckage back but there will also be real concerns about the technology finding its way to China,” he said. “This kind of technology would be extremely useful to them at this point.”
Pakistan has a well-established military relationship with China, working jointly on the JF17 Thunder fighter project. The Chinese have exclusive access to a naval port.
The People’s Liberation Army is in the early stages of developing an attack helicopter that would benefit significantly from stealth technology...

I'm not the slightest bit sorry the bastard's dead. Not the slightest bit. But seriously, was it really worth all that? Was the West, was even America, that badly hurt on September 11th that we needed to lose so much freedom and to spend so much money and so many lives getting the man - arguably the bogeymen - behind it? Was it worth well over a trillion dollars, thousands of allied lives, years of effort, loss of liberty, damage to international relations and now to cap it all the possible loss of military technology so secret that nobody knew about it and everyone is now speculating as to exactly what the hell it is, was it worth all that to waste one old man who was possibly suffering from diseased kidneys anyway?

Though I always thought the Iraq nonsense was a wasteful red herring ten years ago I was all for going into Afghanistan and getting Bin Liner. Almost certainly it could have been done differently but the way it's panned out... on balance I think America should have locked its cockpit doors and mourned its dead and shrugged Bin Liner off as beneath contempt and not worthy of attention, because in hindsight I don't think the prick was worth the cost. And now even if he is roasting somewhere warm I'm sure the thought that secret American technology could fall into Chinese hands would cheer whatever passes for the cunt's soul enormously.

'Kinell!