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Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

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Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#31
post #2

The amount of effort that would need to go into creating that video and the facts that the article asserts is just impressive: -figuring out the group of people -how everyone entered the country -all of their phone communication while they were in the country, including finding out their numbers -how they spent money inside the country -their motions inside the country -where they went after they left the country

Why do you find it impressive? I have a distinct feeling they know much more then this... I'd be surprised if they didn't have by now a file of at least half of them. What we've seen is simply competent police work, nothing more. The police are trained, paid and well funded to do exactly this kind of thing... I'm really not surprised to find it worked for once.

I am surprised though to see it public. In the good ol' days this would have been handled much more discreetly.

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#32
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping for someone to discuss the implications as they relate to technology, PR, security, and privacy. What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. PR. What's to gain from releasing this? It's fascinating but long. It's definitely not put toge…

What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. The technology is CCTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television . It is imported from all over the place and is probably not feeding into a central hub. In most countries UAE included it is…

Accounts from previous Mossad agents have explained one technique they have employed for this kind of murder: They give the victim hardly traceable anesthetic and fever inducing drugs, then, when his body temperature is exceedingly high, he is submerged in icey water (f.ex. in a bathtub). Apparently this causes heart attack in the victim and is very difficult to distinguish from a natural cardiac arrest.

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#33

Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror amongst our own people and imprison hundreds of innocent people because our government's criteria for 'wrong place and wrong time' were basically Afghanistan and post-invasion. However the allegedly Israeli approach causes virtually no terror to our own people (in fac…

This should be the long term goal of US security policy. Israel has been dealing with terrorism long enough to have developed an optimal strategy. I think the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan reflect that US intelligence and covert operations just weren't ready to deal with Islamic terrorism so we had to fall back to conventional warfare to prove a point. If there's anything good to come out of this at least we have even more proof that fighting conventional wars even on a relatively small scale is just too costly, destructive and ineffective even for a super power. Hopefully it gives the whole world less incentive to escalate into war. It seems as though over the generations we're heading in that direction. Wars are generally getting smaller and less deadly as technology actually allows them to become bigger and more deadly. That's some reason for optimism.

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not enter your mind that this video comes from Dubai security services and not Israel? The real question is the motivation of Dubai in making and releasing this video. I highly doubt that it's as an advertisement for the mossad (even if it may end up coming off as such).

Somehow "Dubai security services" sounds like a joke instead of a beacon of Arabic intelligence to this mid-eastern ears of mine. Thus I think this whole thing ended up as a Best of Mossad episode.

[deleted]

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#36
post #17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is who decides who gets killed and who not. You could argue that Bush caused the massacre of thousands of Iraqis, or something similar for past Israeli leaders. Does that mean that we can assassinate them? W/out even a fair trial? Once you go through that path, things get scaringly fuzzy. It reminds me of the idea -popular in Latin America- that there are bad dictators and good dictators (pro markets, etc.)…

Good/bad dictators is a well known debate. "King" is an old term for "[military] dictator". One bad problem is that most every king/dictator made certain to put his own relatives in positions of power. That means that the leadership competence in future generations will be very varied. From history studies, somewhere between 25%-75% of my country's royalty were total asshats. When you have a fixed incompetent leaders…

Interesting HN comment about that Churchill quote:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#37
They went to a lot of trouble to make the death look like a heart attack, even somehow having the door locked from the inside as they left.

But it seems like it was immediately obvious to the police that this was a murder, so what was the point of going to all that trouble?

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is interested in self-preservation, the United States is interested in imperialism. This is the root difference in the strategies; we stay in Iraq or Afghanistan because our leaders want to establish friendly governments there. If we left, the people would reject the sham governments we've installed and resort back to something that provides their needs, fundamentally, stability and security. It's a privilege…

The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men', Saddam, for all his shortcomings functioned remarkably well in that role as did for instance Tito in former Yugoslavia. Tribal friction needs an equally strong force to overcome it if a country is not to explode into its constituent parts. So if you remove the strong man once he's established terrible stuff can happen, sometimes worse t…

> The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men'

Maliki seems to be on course for fulfilling that role in Iraq.

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#39
post #37

They went to a lot of trouble to make the death look like a heart attack, even somehow having the door locked from the inside as they left. But it seems like it was immediately obvious to the police that this was a murder, so what was the point of going to all that trouble?

I'd say just to save time and face. If he was found with a bullet through his head or something like that it is not unreasonable that all airports and roads would be closed for a while, but if it looked just like a heart attack the murderers have a bit of extra time to leave the country.

Re: Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

#40
post #35

The Mossad Kidon (it's assassination branch) is rumoured to only have about 50 or so operatives. Which means they potentially compromised almost 20% of their resources to take out this one target.

This was almost certainly not Mossad, for precisely that reason. Mossad is not known for sloppy work, and this was nothing if not sloppy. The passports were bad fakes; several of them were duplicates of real innocent Israeli lookalikes; 11 people to kill one guy with no security detail, all of them with their faces on camera? Yeah, pretty sure this wasn't Mossad.
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