Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24463723-20140205192108/@comment-44061-20140205195736

Thats actually all incorrect. If not for Ichigo and his friends then Rukia would have been killed and Aizen, Gin and Tosen would have gotten away with their plan without anyone being the wiser and thus would have been uninterrupted in their plan. What Aizen was referring to was the fact that SS was so concerned about ichigo and the others that it further allowed him to go unnoticed. If Aizen were allowed to operate his plan then he would have eventually attacked Karakura Town easily taking it out before Soul Society had any time to react or mount an actual defense. Thus if not for the intervention of ichigo and his friends SS would have never been aware of what Aizen was doing. They had been manipulated by Aizen for over a century, to make the case your making you would have dwell on vastly unimportant components. Aizen's plan was in place before ichigo showed up, the fact that ichigo provided a distraction is because Aizen manipulated the situation to his needs and not because it was part of the plan. Aizen played alot of angles that had noting to do with ichigo, from having rukia sentenced to death, manipulating momo and hitsugaya, killing the central 46. So ultimately it was ichigo and friends intervention that shed light on what Aizen truly was. Not every win is black and white nor does it have to be a physical battle victory. They saved them from making a big mistake and were instrumental with them realizing the truth after so long.