Some readers here have contended that those of us who doubt the official story of bin Laden's death are not using our critical thinking skills. I maintain that the opposite is true: those of us who have analyzed the news releases most cannot be anything but skeptical. Contradictions, omissions, and discrepancies abound, so that more questions are raised than answered.
Osama bin Laden's death may have been only the third time the New York Times actually stopped their presses, but maybe they should go for four, because Glenn Beck and many Muslims both agree that the terrorist shouldn't have been given a burial at sea.
While much of America celebrated the dramatic killing of Osama bin Laden, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists still had questions. For them and a growing number of skeptics, the plot only thickened.
Where was bin Laden’s body? Why was the most wanted mujaheddin on Earth buried in an undisclosed location in the northern Arabian Sea? Why was the news announced mere weeks after President Obama’s campaign kickoff and just days after his birth certificate was released? Why so late on a Sunday night?
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“This has not put a single of the 9/11 questions to bed,” said Steven Jones, a retired Brigham Young University physics professor and contributor to the 9/11 Truth Movement. Jones, along with other members of the movement, a loose coalition of people who distrust Washington’s version of the attacks, say the collapse of the twin towers is best explained as controlled demolition.
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Alex Jones, a radio personality out of Austin, Tex., who gives voice to the 9/11 Truth Movement, and runs the Web site Infowars.com, sent out a Web headline that screamed, “Red Alert. Inside Sources: Bin Laden Corpse Has Been on Ice for Nearly a Decade.”
The “king of conspiracy,” as he is known by the media, pointed out discrepancies that went instantly viral. He lists FBI officials and counterintelligence leaders from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan who have said for years that bin Laden was dead. Former Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R. Pieczenik even told Jones on the air in 2002 that bin Laden’s corpse had been dead for months.
“Obama just relaunched his election bid, and nabbing bin Laden is the main kickoff campaign rally.
Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world. And we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.
Zardari and Chinese leaders reportedly discussed investment opportunities in numerous sectors, including port development, hydropower, roads, railways, mining and others.
Among the projects discussed between Beijing and Islamabad is a proposed railway to link Kashgar to the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar. If realized, it would give China direct access to the Arabian Sea and provide an alternative route should a naval blockade cut oil supplies from the Middle East.
“All Chinese plans for gaining access to resource-rich Central Asia and building energy pipelines pass through Gilgit-Baltistan,” said Syed. “Gilgit, the northern areas capital, has acquired the status of gateway to Central Asia after Pakistan-China barter trade agreement and accords with Central Asian States.”
Benazir's husband is voted in amid muted rejoicing, but army hostility and militant violence could threaten hopes for stability, reports Jason Burke
Phi Beta Iota: The Op Ed is “party line” stuff. Not in the Op-Ed is the fact that China is the President's primary ally, and the military and the tribes do not like him. Not in the Op Ed is China's enormous success across multiple fronts in Pakistan, including its ownership of the port of Gwadar, previously addressed here at Phi Beta Iota. While the USA has been waging war, badly, without a strategy and without a return on investment in mind, China has been waging peace. We are reminded of how Iran lured the US neoconservatives into Iraq. In the absence of intelligence and integrity at the highest levels of the US Government, China wins, Russia ties, and US loses, across Central Asia, over the next decade. Ultimately this region is about water and rare metals. The region is not conquerable. Brzezinski and his disciple Obama don't get that yet. President Zardari is not the man his wife was (see our review of her book below).
1. Waterboarding produced the first “lead”–waterboarding is good, this is the silver bullet on waterboarding.
2. Intelligence Community nailed it, over the years, and finally did this without Pakistani assistance to include surveilling the courier in what is the equivalent of a denied area.
3. Bin Laden's presence so close to the military academy in Pakistan is proof positive of the duplicity of the Pakistani government and military, the time has come to “get tough” with them.
4. Afghanistan is a much needed base from which to attack Pakistan, we need to do more of that.
Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up. As skeptical as we are of everything coming out of the White House on this, mindful of the high probability that Bin Laden died years ago, if he does turn out to have been “cornered” in this villa, we are certain he was brought there, put there, by the Pakistanis, as a sitting duck, for the theater operation, with very specific quid pro quos vis a vis US withdrawal from Afghanistan. CIA retirees (Robert Grenier) are now spinning on CNN that the Pakistanis were not aware of Bin Laden's being hidden 1.3 kilometers from the Pakistani military academy. The furniture has been cleared out, the press is not allowed into the compound, and it will probably be refurbished and returned to its original owner, probably a senior Pakistani general who loaned it for the one act play.
President Obama’s May Day announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Forces has been a cause of general rejoicing in the U.S. and, apparently, a good deal of backslapping among the National Security Establishment. Yet prudence would suggest that some caution might be in order until more information is available.
There are a number of questions about this event which really have not been asked or answered that would greatly assist in verifying the account given by the President:
The courier: a false name for the preferred courier of bin Laden was extracted from detainees at Gitmo and later intelligence was able to discover his real name, yet how did intelligence know what this courier looked like? Also how was an American able to unobtrusively follow a courier daily in a small town like Abbotabad? Why did nobody in the town notice the Americans conducting a six month surveillance of the compound in question?
The faithful number two man: Osama bin Laden supposedly routinely travels with his doctor and chief lieutenant Ayman al Zawahiri, where was he when the attack occurred?
Proof by DNA: whose DNA was bin Laden’s compared to and where was the comparison test conducted? I would add one note. In the case of Osama bin Laden (or any Arab for that matter) DNA matches are tricky. For example, bin Laden has 50 sibelings by the same father but different mothers so not all his sibelings would have the same DNA although it should be possible to determine 50 to 60 per cent matches with all, but only a few 80 to 99 per cent matches with only a few.
Allowing for the sensitivity of this event in the Islamic World and the burial within 24 hours rule, bin Laden’s body should have been examined by a forensic pathologist to determine his medical condition at time of death. More to the point why burial at sea?
When the President made his announcement, there already was a crowd of mostly young, mostly white demonstrators with hand held American flags in front of the White House Gates. Where did they come from and how did they know what the President was going to announce?
Having listened to John Brennan’s noon news conference this day (2 May) one can’t help but conclude this whole event was a put up job, possibly representing collusion between the U.S. and Pakistani Governments. Was this entire event a staged show to bolster this administration’s counter-terrorism credentials and open the way for quick exit from Afghanistan?
Phi Beta Iota: As with 9/11, we believe the Administration is engaged in impeachable activities that are not in the public interest. There is absolutely ZERO evidence to back up the Administration's wild claims, and all common sense questions such as asked above cannot be answered by the Administration. The “system” is corrupt; we pray this is the final outrage that opens the eyes of the millions of naive US citizens that want to believe in America the Beautiful but cannot get a grip on just how evil neo-facsism can be.
As of March 2011, Congress had approved a total of more than $1.2 trillion dollars for costs associated with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other post-9/11 “war on terror” operations, the Congressional Research Service said in its most recent update on the subject. See “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” March 29, 2011.
Other new or newly updated CRS reports include the following (all pdf).
