Remember that group of Taliban fighters that were gathered

[Roon]

for a funeral? We decided not to fire on them. I wonder if they were holding services for bin laden?

[janx]

1. Article from Telegraph--

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/17/wafg17.xml



It turned out that this was a surveillance drone, if I remember correctly, so the option of firing on the funeral wasn't really an option at all.

[Warpy]

2. First, that's what you're supposed to think

Second, how do you know it was a funeral? The photo was blurry and just showed men standing in fairly orderly ranks. There was no coffin held aloft, as is the custom when they're going to the burial site, nor was there evidence of either a hole in the ground or a coffin laying upon it.

This whole thing reminds me of Powell's "proof" of a chemical weapons plant in Iraq: a fuzzy photo of the top of a large building surrounded by semi trailers. It could have been a WalMart distribution warehouse for all that photo said.

[lonestarnot]

3. Acute display of observational skills! Good on you warpy!

[janx]

4. All that is true.

Fuzzy photos and assumptions don't prove anything. Still, the photo is interesting.

[Warpy]

5. Look at the fuzzy white stuff in front of the ranks

and the shadow within it that looks like another figure.

This looks like reviewing the troops, not a funeral.

[janx]

6. It could be anything.

The original intel photo might be more revealing than this shoddy reproduction, but we'll never know.

[Bucky]

7. My Shi'ite Muslim friend says crowd-surfing caskets is a poor, urban thing

Country people don't do that. Of course the Talibani aren't Shi'ites, but he's got plenty of experience traveling around the Middle East. Also, I suspect they don't hold them aloft for the whole time. You can do that in an urban setting where the cemetary is a few blocks away. It looks like they're in an open field, where carrying a casket over their heads for a long march could lead to, well, dropping it, among other logistical problems.

The Talibani recruit from the poor urban regions of the ME, but by & large their leaders are upper class & educated and wouldn't go in for the same kind of maudlin displays you see on footage from Baghdad or the West Bank.

[Warpy]

10. Good points

but the crowd formation is still highly suspect. They'd be much more likely to pay their respects in a tidy circle or even U-shaped formation than in ranks that prevent most of them from seeing anything.

Again, this looks more like reviewing the troops than a funeral.

[sutz12]

8. Not enough women and children to waste a bomb on, I guess.

:evilgrin:

[Freedom_from_Chains]

9. I had that same thought this morning or at least

it might get spun up that way before the day was over.