'Hunting Osama bin Laden was women's work'

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2013-11-14 20:57

Article here. Excerpt:

'Navy SEALs may have killed Osama bin Laden, but women led them to their prey.

Women made up the majority of analysts – at one point all the analysts -- in “Alec Station,” the unit charged with finding Bin Laden, managed the ramp-up at the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center after 9-11, and participated in the interrogation, and the waterboarding, of al Qaeda suspects. They were critical to the first capture of a major al Qaeda target, Abu Zubaydah; helped find and kill Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq; ran "black sites," the secret CIA prisons used to interrogate terror suspects; and in the case of two senior analysts, died in an attack by al Qaeda on a CIA compound in Afghanistan.
...
Some of Moore’s male colleagues are more effusive. In a speech this January, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said an "incredible band of sisters” led the search for Osama. Michael Scheuer, who ran “Alec Station,” told Newsweek last year that, “If I could have put out a sign on the door that said ‘No men need apply,’ I would have done it.”
...
Whatever the intangibles, even two years before 9-11, all the staffers in "Alec Station" except Scheuer were female. After 9-11, women were involved in setting up the earliest "black sites,” and participated in the controversial interrogations themselves. Officials told NBC News that both Zubaydah and ”KSM” -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9-11 mastermind -- were interrogated by women, sometimes with the aid of "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, the simulated drowning technique since outlawed.

A former CIA official told NBC News that he thought women might have been especially effective at interrogating terror suspects because of the combination of surprise and shame. Jihadis were stunned that women, whom they saw as inferior, had been chosen to question them.'

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Shows a woman can "enhanced interrogate"/waterboard as good any any man.

But of course, Michael Hayden has to go all-out and throw his sex under the bus in praise of woman-kind. Typical.

And the women-are-just-plain-better blatherings of this article were unnecessary. I would have liked this article a lot better if it simply said: "Guess what? Contrary to perhaps *everyone's* per-conceived ideas around "gender roles", most of the people involved in hunting down bin Laden just so happen to have been female-- and here's a bit on how and what."

Instead, it's a women-good, men-bad article. And notice how since women were part of the water-boarding efforts, it's now not so aggressively condemned-- if at all. When men did it, even if it did produce terrorist-defeating information, it was still considered wrong. Yet now that we know women were part and parcel of it-- you go girl!

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2013-11-15 02:29

"Whatever the intangibles, even two years before 9-11, all the staffers in "Alec Station" except Scheuer were female," said Hayden.

Ok, so if they were all female and 9/11 still happened, do we blame women?

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Submitted by ThomasI on Fri, 2013-11-15 05:34

I dunno, sometimes I suspect the reported women's participation in the physical and dangerous aspects of military operations are somewhat exaggerated. Even if women participated in waterboaring I bet it is after the men do the capturing and major physical work and stick around for back up.

I have read a few books on the navy seals and the capture of Osama. In "No Easy Day" the author does give his respect to the female analyzers who did the tracking, but IMO, it is nothing compared to the danger and physical demands the men went through on the field. Sure it's great that women filled these roles, but I am also sure male analyzers could have done just as good of job of tracking Osama.

I dont believe for a minute that women alone could have orchestrated the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

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Submitted by Kris on Fri, 2013-11-15 06:30