Althouse: What's on bin Laden's bookshelf?

May 20, 2015

What's on bin Laden's bookshelf?

Noam Chomsky, Bob Woodward....

35 comments:

Bob Boyd said...: I don't see Catcher In The Rye.; 5/20/15, 9:06 AM
Sebastian said...: Syntactic Structures?; 5/20/15, 9:08 AM
Xmas said...: Noam Chomsky "MIT Linguist".

Well, I suppose that's his day job.; 5/20/15, 9:12 AM
Anonymous said...: What they won't be releasing (at least officially) is the massive amount of porn that he kept.

US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were (are) always befuddled by the large porn collections of Islamic jihads leaders.

Porn dogs of epic proportions.; 5/20/15, 9:13 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Nobody so well read could possibly be evil.; 5/20/15, 9:14 AM
damikesc said...: Jihadi movements are frequently sausage fests; 5/20/15, 9:16 AM
rhhardin said...: Transformational grammar was pretty good. It accounts for a lot and is the basis of computer-driven nonsense memorandum generators, a resource in mocking management everywhere today.

C.C.Festoon arose from a $1.00 Woolworth book sale table edition of Lester's _Transformational Grammar_.

It's badly flawed though in that lexical constraints are actually very big and transformational grammar doesn't capture that at all.

Language is actually about the disassembly and reassembly of cliches.; 5/20/15, 9:20 AM
Etienne said...: I am just amazed the government has declassified this information.

Amazed...; 5/20/15, 9:21 AM
sparrow said...: The west is contributing to it's own demise by inspiring folks like Oxford trained Bin Laden- Chomsky is just one of the easier to ID examples.; 5/20/15, 9:28 AM
Mick said...: All nonsense BS of course. The Hersh story and now this are meant to quiet the notion that no "Bin Laden killing" by the order of Usurper Hussein Obama actually happened, as Bin Laden died long before of renal failure.

ST6 was even killed to quash any telling that the "killing" never happened.

Hussein Obama was trying to quiet questions about his BC at the time by Trump.

It was all manufactured nonsense. No pictures, the "burial at sea," all of it.; 5/20/15, 9:32 AM
Michael K said...: Mick must have a conspiracy theory book on the bookshelf not yet released.

"in fact Pakistan had known bin Laden’s whereabouts for years. "

This I believe and is why the Paks were not warned about the raid.; 5/20/15, 9:41 AM
Anonymous said...: Woodward makes sense as Open Source Intel; 5/20/15, 9:53 AM
J. Farmer said...: Bin Laden's death was a missed opportunity. The US should have used the opportunity of his death to dust off Bush's old "Mission Accomplished" banner, declare victory, and bring its 10-year military campaign against al Qaeda to a close. Instead, thinks to idiotic "credibility" arguments, the US has allowed itself to get suckered into a fight not with al Qaeda the 9/11 attackers but al Qaeda the brand. Virtually all of what calls itself al Qaeda today is little more than local jihadi nationalist fighting local grievances. The shock of 9/11 and the emotionalism it evoked has so short circuited people's ability to reason and use elementary logic that they actually believe that the US needs to maintain military involvement in Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in order to keep us safe despite the fact that what military intervention in those countries has largely resulted in is anarchy that has strengthened and emboldened the very jihadists we believe our such a threat to us. The US has bitten off more than it could chew from the very beginning and yet people still cling to pathetic cliches like Obama lost Iraq or that if we somehow muster enough resolve and provide enough global "leadership" then victory will be at hand. Can anyone even explain what victory in this so called war would look like or how we would even know that it had been achieved? Can Americans ever get over their raging hard ons for all things military? Do we still need to approach young guys in fatigues in airports and thank them for "protecting our freedoms" (a stupid, meaningless slogan)?; 5/20/15, 9:57 AM
Hagar said...: I don't think I believe anybody's story of the bin Laden raid beyond the pictures we have all seen showing that, indeed, there was a raid.; 5/20/15, 9:59 AM
Anonymous said...: He's got Chomsky but no Sy Hersch?

WTF?; 5/20/15, 10:31 AM
Michael K said...: "Do we still need to approach young guys in fatigues in airports and thank them for "protecting our freedoms" (a stupid, meaningless slogan)?"

I suspect they would just as soon you don't.

By the time the left can no longer deny what is happening, it will be too late.; 5/20/15, 10:32 AM
James Pawlak said...: What? Nothing by Obama? No wonder that out-of-date, non-functioning, terrorist was killed.; 5/20/15, 10:34 AM
Birches said...: Mollie Hemingway tweeted out a link to a climate change letter he sent out. Bizarro world.; 5/20/15, 10:51 AM
Hagar said...: The bin Laden raid is like "Benghazi." None of the more or less official stories put out make any sense.; 5/20/15, 11:01 AM
richard mcenroe said...: 50 Shades of Gray
The Complete Works of Laurel K. Hamilton
The Harold Robbins Omnibus
Mandingo The Early Years
My Life by Hillary Clinton
Love Letters of Great Men: The Collection of Love Letters Drawn from by Carrie Bradshaw in "Sex in the City"
Confessions of a Yoga Stripper
Play Something Dancy
The Art of Toshio Maeda; 5/20/15, 11:31 AM
damikesc said...: Do we still need to approach young guys in fatigues in airports and thank them for "protecting our freedoms" (a stupid, meaningless slogan)?

You're free to spit on them, as you seem wont to do.; 5/20/15, 11:32 AM
Rob said...: How said that he passed before he had a chance to experience "Mohammed Gets a Boner."; 5/20/15, 11:50 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: James Pawlak said...

What? Nothing by Obama?

Well, considering that there is nothing by Obama...; 5/20/15, 11:58 AM
averagejoe said...: Lots of anti-American, anti-Jew, anti-republican propaganda written by conspiracy theorists. Probably looks a lot like Obama's bookshelf.; 5/20/15, 12:20 PM
Sigivald said...: Too good to check, honestly.

(Chomsky. Well, who could be surprised?

If I thought America was a font of evil and wrongdoing, I'd stuff my bookshelves with Chomsky, no doubt, for reinforcement.

At least, if I was the kind of person who sought out only information that reinforced what I already thought.); 5/20/15, 12:23 PM
averagejoe said...: Bob Boyd said...
I don't see Catcher In The Rye.

5/20/15, 9:06 AM
LOL! Nothing written by a woman, either. Not even Emily Dickinson.; 5/20/15, 12:24 PM
Greg Hlatky said...: Chomsky? Well, that explains a lot.; 5/20/15, 12:48 PM
William said...: There was also some election material from Sarah Palin with electoral districts shown in crosshairs. Psychologists speculate that this was the root cause of his homicidal rage.; 5/20/15, 1:52 PM
Robert Cook said...: Given the lies the White House has told about the raid and killing of bin Laden--and much else, of course--we have no reason to believe this, either. It's just too convenient, too obvious a way to smear critics of America by implied association with a mass murderer.; 5/20/15, 2:30 PM
Temujin said...: …and surprisingly, he also had a well worn paperback copy of Richard Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America", with a stamp on the inside cover from the UW Library- Madison.; 5/20/15, 2:55 PM
J. Farmer said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/20/15, 4:09 PM
J. Farmer said...: @damikesc:

"You're free to spit on them, as you seem wont to do."

Right. Because that's the only alternative to mindless idolatry.

Strange how those who profess such love, respect, and admiration for the members of our military are also those most likely to cavalierly advocate sending them off to die in faraway lands fighting pointless, unwinnable wars.; 5/20/15, 4:12 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: What they won't be releasing (at least officially) is the massive amount of porn that he kept.

US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were (are) always befuddled by the large porn collections of Islamic jihads leaders.

That's not befuddling at all. Perfectly explicable. When you take a natural impulse and ruthlessly suppress it, it will then express itself in the most bizarre and perverted ways. Just ask any Catholic priest, televangelist or socially conservative politician (Mark Foley, Larry Craig, etc., etc., etc.); 5/20/15, 6:53 PM
RecChief said...: Do we still need to approach young guys in fatigues in airports and thank them for "protecting our freedoms" (a stupid, meaningless slogan)?

If you feel so obligated, please don't say it, the words ring hollow, and we can tell. I've never heard that particular phrase, but I have had innumerable people say, "Thank you for your service." Some sincere and some not, and believe me, it's painful for both of us when I'm confronted by someone saying it who doesn't believe it. The ones that are sincere make my day because there was a time in my career when we were advised to travel in civilian clothes to avoid harassment, and I'm not even going to get into my family members who are Vietnam Vets. Seriously, I don't have any problem with you (and people like you) not saying anything. That's much more honest.

Finally, you choose to focus on Iraq, presumably because all of us in uniform are bloodthirsty killers who've been duped into going to war and population doesn't have the brains to ask why, but do you know how many countries have US troops in them right now? And I'm not talking embassy personnel. UN peacekeeping missions for example. Just recently 6 Marines died aiding in earthquake relief efforts in Nepal. A worthy mission. And I would argue that a deployment like that is protecting the freedoms we enjoy here at home, or maybe such missions are a celebration of those freedoms since you don't see North Koreans using its military in such fashion, or
Cuba, or Burma.

Have a great day; 5/20/15, 8:45 PM
J. Farmer said...: @RecChief:

"Seriously, I don't have any problem with you (and people like you) not saying anything."

You have completely missed my point, and it's interesting how people have chosen that one particular question in my comment while ignoring all the others. I have no problem with members of the military or the military itself. I am criticizing bad policy and stupid military interventions. If I said that our military shouldn't be conducting relief efforts, then quote that and refute. But of course I haven't. I said that we should not be fighting stupid, unwinnable wars. If you read the sentence immediately preceding the one you quoted, I am talking about the way that the military is venerated to an absurd degree in this country, such that we fail to see that there are missions that the military cannot accomplish and instead incessantly blame politicians for a lack of will or resolve.; 5/21/15, 10:31 AM