It has been very surreal watching Americans enthusiastically celebrate a killing that may have never occurred... of a man that may not have existed for a very long time. They are saying a US Navy SEAL team valiantly killed Osama Bin Laden deep inside Pakistan. Well, I'm not buying it! Call me un-American but I refuse to graze on the White House lawn with the rest of the cattle.
What happened on May 2 was nothing but theatrics, clearly a staged military operation meant to finally close the chapter on the Osama Bin Laden fairytale.
Osama Bin Laden was reported by credible international sources to have been suffering from a serious ailment and he is said to have died in the early 2000s. When it comes to such information, I much rather believe various credible independent sources than agenda driven government officials that have consistently and persistently lied to us. Nevertheless, reading newspaper articles about the staged assassination, a well orchestrated Black Operation, has been like reading a cheesy Hollywood script - with all the tacky clichés, all the roughneck jargon and all the gung-ho rhetoric.
One of the things that also caught my attention was the highly publicized and obviously choreographed picture from the White House where Barack Obama and company are striking impressive poses around a busy table. It was said to be a special glimpse inside the - "situation room"! Obama looks focused, serious and in control. Biden looks stern and confidant. Panetta looks a bit bored, like he's seen the show before. Clinton looks like she is having acid reflux We are even told that the blurred picture in front of Clinton is that of the dead Bin Laden - aka "Geronimo"!
How dramatic! How Americana!
Incidentally, the photo laying in front of Clinton is said to have been intentionally blurred because it was gory... as if anything could be discerned from the distance and the angle the picture was taken from, as if the public has not already been totally desensitized to viewing government sanctioned violence... The point of the picture was to let us, the sheeple, know that they, our freedom loving politicians, had in their possession the picture proving the death of the main "Al-Qaeda" terrorist but they were sensitive enough and caring enough to make sure we don't get to see his blood.
As usual, there are treating we the people as if we are children. And who can blame them? Americans stubbornly refuse to learn lessons from their past and they have shown time-and-again that they are not capable of critical thinking or seeing the big picture.
Anybody remember the Jessica Lynch story?
What happened on May 2 was nothing but theatrics, clearly a staged military operation meant to finally close the chapter on the Osama Bin Laden fairytale.
Osama Bin Laden was reported by credible international sources to have been suffering from a serious ailment and he is said to have died in the early 2000s. When it comes to such information, I much rather believe various credible independent sources than agenda driven government officials that have consistently and persistently lied to us. Nevertheless, reading newspaper articles about the staged assassination, a well orchestrated Black Operation, has been like reading a cheesy Hollywood script - with all the tacky clichés, all the roughneck jargon and all the gung-ho rhetoric.
One of the things that also caught my attention was the highly publicized and obviously choreographed picture from the White House where Barack Obama and company are striking impressive poses around a busy table. It was said to be a special glimpse inside the - "situation room"! Obama looks focused, serious and in control. Biden looks stern and confidant. Panetta looks a bit bored, like he's seen the show before. Clinton looks like she is having acid reflux We are even told that the blurred picture in front of Clinton is that of the dead Bin Laden - aka "Geronimo"!
How dramatic! How Americana!
Incidentally, the photo laying in front of Clinton is said to have been intentionally blurred because it was gory... as if anything could be discerned from the distance and the angle the picture was taken from, as if the public has not already been totally desensitized to viewing government sanctioned violence... The point of the picture was to let us, the sheeple, know that they, our freedom loving politicians, had in their possession the picture proving the death of the main "Al-Qaeda" terrorist but they were sensitive enough and caring enough to make sure we don't get to see his blood.
As usual, there are treating we the people as if we are children. And who can blame them? Americans stubbornly refuse to learn lessons from their past and they have shown time-and-again that they are not capable of critical thinking or seeing the big picture.
Anybody remember the Jessica Lynch story?
Initial media reports on Lynch's recovery in Iraq were incorrect. Lynch, along with major media outlets, fault the U.S. government for creating the story as part of the Pentagon's propaganda effort.[2][3][4][5] Jim Wilkinson is credited for fabricating the government narrative.[6] She denied the claims that she fought until being wounded, reporting that her weapon jammed immediately, and that she could not have done anything anyway. Interviewed by Diane Sawyer, Lynch claimed, concerning the Pentagon: "They used me to symbolize all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things."[30] She also stated "I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember." She reported being treated very well in Iraq, and that one person in the hospital even sang to her to help her feel at home. On April 1, 2003, U.S. Marines staged a diversionary attack, besieging nearby Iraqi irregulars to draw them away from Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah. Meanwhile, an element from the Joint Special Operations Task Force Task Force 121, U.S. Army Special Forces, Air Force Pararescue Jumpers (PJs), and Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs launched a nighttime raid on the hospital and successfully retrieved Lynch and the bodies of 8 other American soldiers.[17] One witness account, claimed in an opinion article written by a correspondent within the BBC, included the opinion that the Special Operations Forces had foreknowledge that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they raided the hospital, and that the entire event was staged, even going so far as to use blanks in the Marine's guns to create the appearance that they were firing.[11] In the initial press briefing on April 2, 2003 the Pentagon released a five-minute video of the rescue and claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.[19] The authorized biography, I Am A Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg states that Lynch had been raped during her captivity, based on medical records and her pattern of injuries.[21] Lynch does not recall any sexual assault and was "adamantly opposed to including the rape claim in the book", but that Bragg wore her down and told her that "people need to know that this is what can happen to women soldiers".[22] According to the book Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, Pat Tillman and his brother played a marginal role in her retrieval, being assigned as perimeter guards in the city's outskirts.Anyone remember the Pat Tillman story?
A report described in The Washington Post on May 4, 2005, prepared at the request of Tillman's family by Brig. Gen. Gary M. Jones revealed that in the days immediately following Tillman's death, Army investigators were aware that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire, shot three times in the head.[12] Jones reported that senior Army commanders, including Gen. John Abizaid, knew of this fact within days of the shooting but nevertheless approved the awarding of the Silver Star, Purple Heart, and a posthumous promotion. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal approved the Silver Star citation on April 28, 2004, which gave a detailed account of Tillman's death including the phrase "in the line of devastating enemy fire," but the next day he sent a P4 confidential memo warning senior government members that Tillman might actually have been killed by friendly fire.[13] Jones reported that members of Tillman's unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide the fact that he was killed by friendly fire.[17] His notebook, in which – according to author Jon Krakauer, Tillman had recorded some of his thoughts on Afghanistan – was also burned; “a blatant violation of protocol”.[18] Tillman's family was not informed of the finding that he was killed by friendly fire until weeks after his memorial service, although at least some senior Army officers knew of that fact prior to the service.[17] According to Krakauer in his book Where Men Win Glory, the extensive cover-up that followed his death included the military's order to Tillman's comrades to lie to his family at the funeral.[18] Tillman's parents have sharply criticized the Army's handling of the incident; Tillman's father charges that the Army "purposely interfered in the investigation" because of the effect it could have on their recruiting efforts, while Tillman's mother charges that "this lie was to cover their image."[19] Tillman's diary was never returned to his family, and its whereabouts are not publicly known.[25] On July 26, 2007, Chris Matthews reported on Hardball that Tillman's death may have been a case of deliberate murder by Tillman's fellow soldiers – specifically that the bullet holes were tight and neat, suggesting a shot at close range. After reports of Tillman's anti-war views became public, Ted Rall who had previously written a comic calling Tillman a "fool" and "idiot," said that he was wrong to have assumed Tillman to be a "right wing poster child" when Tillman regarded the invasion of Iraq as illegal.[42][43] The September 25, 2005, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that Tillman held views which were critical of the Iraq war. According to Tillman's mother, a friend of Tillman had arranged a meeting with author Noam Chomsky, a prominent critic of American foreign and military policy, to take place after his return from Afghanistan. Chomsky has confirmed this.[59]There is a very good possibility that Pat Tillman was murdered by his own government. When he abandoned his promising career in the National Football League to join the US military in 2002, US officials heralded Pat as the all-American poster child of war. As a result of patriotic fervor brought upon by the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Pat had decided to put his civilian life on hold and serve his nation. Consequently, military officials were very happy to turn Pat into the proud face of the US army. The party, however, would not last long. Pat eventually began getting very disillusioned by what he had experienced as a soldier in Afghanistan and he had begun publicly stating that the war in Iraq was illegal. More importantly, he may have wanted to join the anti-war effort in the States upon his return. Pat Tillman had unexpectedly become a nightmare for the pentagon's PR department. It is very probable that someone in power wanted Pat to die a hero. His death, as a result of three closely placed bullets to his head, is to this day considered very suspicious.
The Jessica Lynch story and the Pat Tillman story were just two of many little sideshows of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and they were crafted by government officials to condition/manage public sentiments. These stories are not unique cases but they are nonetheless stories that are quite telling of the nature and character of those running the US government today. The government choreographs many "high profile" events; the citizenry only becomes aware of those that backfire due to poor execution. But none of this seems to matter much to the American public these days. For most Americans, silly things like accuracy, integrity, reality, verification or truth simply cannot compete with White House press releases.
Similar to the Jessica Lynch story, the Bin Laden assassination story was a Hollywood-inspired drama orchestration by high level Pentagon officials and carried-out by worthless Rambo-wannabes known as US Navy SEALs. And the American sheeple are once again excitedly waving their Chinese-made American flags and proudly shouting - USA! USA! USA! It's very frightening. Ultimately, mindless expressions of nationalism is what it's all about - getting the American sheeple to wave their cheep flags as government officials plan their next major move.
Sensing something is just not right, some (those who are still capable of varying degrees of independent thought) are asking to see pictures of the dead Bin Laden.
Would pictures of a dead body resembling America's public enemy number one resolve this matter? It should not, in my opinion. Expecting government officials to provide pictures, or DNA test results for that matter, would be a serious conflict of interest in this case. It would be like asking the criminal to investigate his crime.
Despite the fact that government provided evidence would ultimately prove nothing, US officials are now saying they don't want to release pictures of Bin Laden's body because it would "upset" Muslims... and that in compliance with Islamic law, the US Navy was nice enough to immediately get rid of the body - by dumping it into the sea!
Suggestions that they don't want to "inflame passions in the Muslim world" by showing a picture of a dead Bin Laden is ludicrous, to say the least. They have been displaying their trophy kills for years. Remember Saddam Hussein and his sons? Pretty soon, we might even have the morbid honor of seeing a dead Qaddafi. In reality, Osama Bin Laden has virtually no following in the Muslim world! Even in best of times, the "evil one" would only draw several hundred brain-dead fanatics to the streets. Showing pictures of a dead Bin Laden will not inflame passions across the Muslin world. What they should instead be worried about is the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Libya to Afghanistan...
Initially, it was even reported that US Navy SEAL team's "head-cam" videos of the assassination existed. After growing demands that the government release those videos, they are now saying there was in fact a "blackout" and that there exists no video footage of the assassination of Bin Laden. What happened Sunday was clearly one of Washington's meticulously planned Black Operations, it was also a powerful Psy-op directed against us all. It was orchestrated bullshit for the brain-dead sheeple of this world. It was Washingtonian theatrics at its worst.
Alarmingly, the controlled mainstream news media, both left and right, are fully on-board with the official agenda set by Washington. This might come as a surprise for many but the reality is that there is no free press in the United States! For the past several decades, specifically for the past twenty years, the nation's mainstream news media (television, radio and print) has more-or-less been functioning as the nation's ministry of propaganda.
Edit:
Defense officials just released "proof" that Bin Laden has indeed been assassinated! This may actually be the lowest point in the history of government sponsored psychological operations. Due to growing public skepticism, they are clearly becoming desperate. Please watch the following video link but try not to laugh too hard because this is ultimately a very dangerous state of affairs in the United State. This is the kind of childish bullshit that is shamelessly being fed to the world via global propaganda outlets such as CNN -
Osama Bin Laden said to be watching himself on televison: http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/05/07/exp.new.video.bin.laden.compound.cnn?hpt=T1
The story about the supposed assassination of Osama Bin Laden last week continues to unravel, but Americans are too busy waving Chinese-made American flags to notice.
As soon as I head about the operation in Abbottabad, I was wondering what Pakistanis living in the neighborhood were thinking... Luckily, so was the BBC (see BBC video link below). Unsurprisingly, Pakistanis in Abbottabad are expressing serious doubt about the validity of the "assassination" story. Interestingly, according to one Pakistani living in Abbottabad, the old man watching television seen in the government released video was a neighbor of his, a man named Akhbar Han. Many aspects of the story has been falling apart... But who's paying attention? Like obedient dogs, the mainstream news press has been propagating the official story.
BBC video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13329078Although they are denying it, Pakistan was fully involved in this operation. What's more, I wouldn't even be surprised if the five year old dilapidated compound Bin Laden was said to have been living in (touted by the media as "the million dollar mention") was most probably built for the very purpose of staging his "assassination" when the time was right. There is no doubt that military officials in Pakistan and the United States staged this assassination. To make it look authentic, Pakistan was to act surprised and indignant.
Why would Pakistan be willing to play an important role in Washington's way-off-Broadway thriller?
For one, affiliations between the American CIA and the Pakistani ISI goes back over thirty years (and it has cost American tax payers countless billions of dollars). For many years, the ISI functioned as a regional department of the CIA. Recently, however, there has been some serious infighting between the two spy agencies. We do not yet know the exact reason for their fallout. Perhaps Pakistan has begun moving closer to China. Perhaps Washington has been warming to India. I simply do not know the answer to this complex question. Time will tell. Nevertheless, at this point, it seems that intelligence officials in Islamabad were more than willing to accommodate any Pentagon/CIA ploy if it meant Washington would be closing the chapter on the Osama Bin Laden fairytale and/or begin pulling troops out of the region.
Back to Osama Bin Laden.
If Bin Laden did what he is said to have done, something that is still open to debate because there is no hard evidence connecting him to the terror attacks that occurred in America in 2001, he certainly did it on the behalf of his bosses in Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence and US intelligence. As a matter of fact, there was never a trial accusing or convicting Bin Laden of masterminding the September 11, 2o01 terror attacks. It is well known that Osama Bin Laden was the Soviet era creation of the CIA and his so-called "Al-Qaeda" network was basically the Islamic military wing of Western intelligence for many years.
Traditionally, the aforementioned Wahhabi Islamic terrorist organization's main battlegrounds, locations where they worked hand-in-hand with Western intelligence, were the following theaters of operation: Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, Bosnia against Serbia, the north Caucasus against the Russian Federation, Kashmir against India.
Recently, there have been many reports of "Al-Qaeda" operatives working hand-in-hand with Libyan rebels; the same guys the Western alliance is currently arming and training. Coincidence? Not in the least bit. Not only that, there was also a New York Times story about a rebel in Libya that was until recently being held as an Islamic terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay. This Islamic militant was sent to Libya by American military officials. And another Guantanamo Bay captive, yet another Islamic militant, had been working for the British MI-6 (see corresponding articles towards the bottom of this page). The following blog entry addresses the Al-Qaeda inspired Islamic insurgency in southern Russia and its Western connections -
The West Masterminded Chechen War to Destroy USSR and Russia: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-is-now-known-that-twenty-year-old.html
Thus far, every single one of their actions have proven to be catastrophic for the Muslim world. The reality is that Islamic militancy and Wahhabi fanaticism has been covertly hijacked by Western intelligence through the help of Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence officials.
Anytime we are shown some over-the-top Islamic leader threatening the world with annihilation (especially like the ones we see in London from time to time), chances are they are covertly working for Western intelligence or, at the very least, they are being manipulated by them. Looking into court cases of Islamic terror suspects that have been caught in the West, in many cases (if not most) you'll be sure to find some undercover government agent that made it all possible for the would be terrorist. In my opinion, most failed terror operations carried out by Islamic militants in the West have been coerced and/or set-up by under-cover Western intelligence agents. The "underwear bomber" and the "shoe bomber" are examples of this. What's more, there have been documented cases of Western special forces disguised as Islamic militant engaging in sabotage, car bombings and assassinations.
When I discuss Western connections with militant Islamic organizations, I am essentially talking about its top leadership and not its foot soldiers. Islamic militants, the foot soldiers, are derived from a massive pool of young, uneducated, undernourished, unemployed and psychologically/mentally damaged religious fanatics. The following blog entry is good insight into the dark and dangerous world of special services and how they manipulate religious militants around the world:
Special Forces and Islamic Terrorism: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2009/02/fascinating-look-inside-dark-world-of.html
I don't know who specifically was involved in carrying-out the terror attacks against the United States and I don't know how they exactly managed to do it. What I do know is that the official version of the events in question reads like an outlandish fairytale. I much rather believe in Santa Clause than in the official version regarding what happened on September 11, 2001. What is clear to me is that the terror operation in question was meant to draw the US military into the Middle East and Central Asia with the full consent of the American public. To gain the public's consent for such a massive and expensive undertaking, one must seriously scare the public. Needless to say, September 11, 2001 seriously scarred the American public and in doing so gave military planners in Washington the green light they had been seeking.
The long-term agenda, the end game, for the political elite running the show in Washington has been more-or-less the following: make billions of dollars for the US military industrial complex, make billions of dollars for the oil lobby (and replenish their dwindling reserves), revitalize the lucrative opium trade in Afghanistan, protect the Zionist state from emerging regional threats, secure China's energy dependency, undermine the rise of the Russian Federation and finally destroy a growing Iran. There may be other agendas as well... but the above is more-or-less what has been noted thus far.
To maintain its hundred year old global hegemony, the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance has to somehow manage the aforementioned global agenda. As a matter of fact, controlling energy production in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as undermining Russia, China and Iran may simply be a matter of survival for the West in the 21 century. Thus, in the big geopolitical picture, three thousand dead Americans and some property damage for a historic opportunity to carryout this agenda is in reality a bargain.
Have they succeeded in their grandiose plans? Unless their intentions were to create quagmires for themselves and destroy nation-state's in the process, no, it has mostly been a failure.
Initial signs of trouble in their master plan emerged when Iraqis greeted Western invasion forces in 2003 with bombs and bullets instead of the flowers and the kisses we were promised. The second failure occurred when as a result of Western invasions Iran's influence began growing in Afghanistan and Iran. Yet another setback was their inability to pacify Afghan tribes after all these years. Moreover, for the past several years, the Russian Federation has been rolling back Western advances throughout Eurasia. China is also gradually making its presence felt in the region. In short, the plan that was set in motion as a result of the terror attacks against America in 2001 has stalled and in some cases (as in Georgia 2008) backfired terribly. But there is still too much at stake... so there wont be a turning back, at least not as of yet.
Timing is everything. Let's make no mistake about it, there must have been a very good reason why they chose to create their latest action thriller. One working theory is that they will be pulling out combat forces from Afghanistan (as they did from Iraq) to ready them for the coming attack on Iran. With Bin Laden officially gone, US forces have a good excuse now to scale down their presence in Afghanistan. Another theory suggests that the staged assassination was carried out to boost Barack Obama's slumping ratings and give tens of millions of economically depressed Americans some reason to feel good about their government. Most likely, the reality may be a combination of the two - Boost Obama's slumping ratings and begin preparing for the Iran show-down.
By officially, publicly and - spectacularly - killing the already-dead-and-long-forgotten, they are closing the chapter on the decade long "war on terror". And in doing so, they are also attempting to derive maximum political benefit on the domestic front. With Bin Laden officially gone, many political observers today may be nervous about what military planners in Washington may be planning next. A long-term global military campaign needs a tangible and scary enemy. Who will be that next enemy/boogeyman for the Western alliance and after what terrible event will it be designated as such? Is it Iran or is it something else? The real reason why they announced the death of a spent CIA asset in Pakistan will be revealed in due time. We just need to watch their actions on the ground in the meanwhile.
The recent event will naturally be used as a powerful PR tool to make sure that the "peace" president retains power after the next presidential elections in the US. Barack Obama is in fact a great asset to the Anglo-American-Zionist global order. Obama has captivated the nation's left while remaining a tool of the war-machine in Washington. After all, that is precisely what Obama's presidency was meant to accomplish. And I'm afraid that's not all, we can also expect this show to spawn Rambo-like Hollywood crap in the very near future...
The following video presentations are information and analysis Americans are intentionally deprived of by the controlled mainstream press in the United States; a well informed citizenry is not what officials are looking for. I have also added some relevant articles for further perspective on this very important topic, including a curious piece about Pakistani officials encouraging Hamid Kharzai to abandon the American bandwagon, an interesting Serbian piece highlighting the role Al-Qaeda payed in Bosnia and a piece discussing Bin Laden's death nearly ten years ago.
Arevordi
May, 2011
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'Zero transparency in Bin Laden killing - media needs to raise questions': http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/6/Tek2bCSvXmk
Osama bin Bogeyman? 'CIA getting rid of old asset':http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/3/hi2Mphoaaos
'Osama death huge boost for Obama, timing strategic':http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/5/DIwfp6YDXTM
'Osama Bin Laden was enemy symbol vital for US - who's next?':http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/13/m3razHvHzq0
Adam's reaction to Osama Bin Laden Announcement:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pEKywWV5qs&feature=player_embeddedDeath & Division: CIA black ops fuel post-Osama fury in Pakistan:http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/13/SGVcBJRF6aE
Image Not Found: Obama keeps Bin Laden 'proof pix' private: http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/14/7PKi5b_8mzU
Ex-ISI Chief Hamid Gul: CIA “Choreographing” Osama Assassination Hoax:http://www.infowars.com/ex-isi-chief-hamid-gul-cia-choreographing-osama-assassination-hoax/
Gen. Hamid Gul: US will start WW3 if war expands to Pakistan:http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/14/MH8WUHjo1ms
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Media Scrambles as Bin Laden Story Crumbles
While the establishment media was busy parroting President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s supposed assassination, reporting the unsubstantiated claims as if they were unquestionable facts, much of the so-called “alternative” press was far more cautious — and accurate, it turns out. But more importantly, with the new official storyline indicating that bin Laden was in fact unarmed, bigger and much more important questions are beginning to emerge. In terms of coverage, it turns out that the skeptical approach proved far superior in terms of getting it right. Countless mainstream sources were so confident in Obama’s word that they reported many of the claims as fact without even attributing them to the President.
But the official White House narrative has been changed so many times in recent days that now it’s almost unrecognizable. There wasn‘t even a fire fight; yet this was one of the crucial elements of the original story that justified the assassination of a person the government painted as the most valuable source of information on the planet — the leader of al-Qaeda. And in reporting the statements as fact, the establishment press has officially been left with egg all over its face again.
"[Bin Laden] was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said terror czar John Brennan. Similarly, Obama said that “after a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” The next day, however, the White House spokesman admitted bin Laden “was not armed." Trying to save face and justify the killing of an unarmed man, the spokesman added, without elaborating, that “resistance does not require a firearm."
More than a few other important parts of the storyline have been altered, contradicted, or simply exposed as false, too. Everything from which of bin Laden’s sons was supposedly killed to the claim that his wife was killed after being used as a “human shield” — all of it has changed for some reason or another. The transcript after Brennan’s speech was altered to change the name of the dead son. The new and improved narrative now says that not only was bin Laden’s wife not killed, but that she was not used as a human shield.
Originally the White House also suggested top officials watched the raid live through a video feed. Terror czar Brennan, for example, claimed that they “had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.” CIA boss Leon Panetta later exposed that claim as false in an interview with PBS, saying: “There was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."
That means the “photo op” of Obama and other officials intently “watching” the operation in the “Situation Room” was almost certainly staged for the press. And almost every media outlet that ran the picture used inaccurate captions parroting the White House claims. And there’s more. The night of the raid, one administration official told reporters that a helicopter was lost due to mechanical failure. During that same briefing, another administration official said, "We didn't say it was mechanical." Now they claim the crash had something to do with the temperature at bin Laden’s supposed compound.
A poorly photo-shopped image of a dead bin Laden embarrassed a large swath of the world press and several Senators, too. Shortly after newspapers and television stations around the globe ran the image, it was exposed as a shoddy forgery that had been circulating for years. Now Obama said he “decided” not to release any pictures — or any other evidence that any element of the story is true, for that matter.
And then there’s the burial issue. The Obama administration originally claimed no country would accept the body; so, it was dumped at sea — Mafia style — in accordance with what Obama alleged were Islamic traditions and customs. When prominent Muslim theological leaders repudiated that lie and noted that it was actually a violation of Islamic tenets to bury Osama bin Laden in the ocean, the new line was that the decision was to avoid the creation of a “shrine.” That lie fell apart, too, when it was widely reported that bin Laden’s brand of Islam calls for unmarked graves — building any sort of shrine would have been blasphemous. So far, no new excuses have been concocted for allegedly feeding the body to the fish.
After the numerous discrepancies and falsehoods in the storyline became painfully obvious, the Associated Press, USA Today, Fox News and other outlets slowly and begrudgingly started to report it. “From the first moments, a good number of the details about bin Laden's killing, on points large and small, have been wrong,” admitted a Fox reporter in one of the more candid acknowledgements to appear in the mainstream press.
But of course, most of the media were also dutifully offering and parroting all manner of excuses. “Fog of war” was to blame for the confusion, claimed the White House spokesman after that excuse was suggested to him by a member of the “press” corps asking a question. Virtually every major news outlet reporting the changes in the official story promptly blamed “fog of war,” too. An apologist reporter at USA Today wrote that “the administration did its best to get the story quickly,” adding “it's common situation with military action.” The paper quoted a Pentagon spokesperson under the Bush administration to bolster its case.
The AP offered a similar excuse along with the “fog of combat” line offered by the White House. “The contradictions and misstatements reflect the fact that even in the case of a highly successful and popular mission, the confusion inherent in a fast-paced, unpredictable military raid conducted under intense pressure in a foreign country does not lend itself immediately to a tidy story line,” the reporter claimed, citing “some experts.”
Several excuses for the ever-changing story were offered by other publications, too. The possibility that they were deliberate lies or worse was virtually never addressed. But the U.K. Independent noted: “The impression persists that the administration sought to cast the operation in the most heroic light possible, at the expense of the facts.” Now, the President and his spokespeople and subordinates are refusing to offer more details or explanations. The government has also announced that it will not be releasing pictures or any other evidence to support its claims even as suspicions continue to mount.
But as analysts pointed out, the newly revealed fact that there was no fire fight begs the question about where the “fog” may have come from. And even more importantly: Why, in the absence of a fire fight, would U.S. forces put a bullet through the brain supposedly containing the most valuable intelligence on the planet? What if bin Laden knew where that alleged nuclear bomb in Europe was located that was set to detonate after his capture or death? None of those questions have been addressed so far.
But prominent critics are sounding the alarm. “When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged ‘discrepancies’ that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place,” noted Paul Craig Roberts, a senior official in the former Reagan administration in a piece entitled “The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event.”
Roberts raised several important questions, too, as well as some comparisons. “The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex,” he suggested, citing a series of government deceptions that have led to war based on lies and other atrocities.
Roberts suspects there are more lies about the bin Laden narrative than those exposed so far. And he’s certainly not alone. It emerged recently that the man who owned the house next to bin Laden’s supposed compound doesn’t even believe the story either. “To be honest, it’s not true,” he told Al Jazeera.
As the official story continues to be re-written by the administration and those in the media who simply re-package government press releases, critics and skeptics would seem to be justified in wondering what other lies and "fog of war" changes may emerge in the coming weeks and months. And perhaps even more importantly, we might also wonder if there are lies that may never be exposed in their entirety?
"[Bin Laden] was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said terror czar John Brennan. Similarly, Obama said that “after a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” The next day, however, the White House spokesman admitted bin Laden “was not armed." Trying to save face and justify the killing of an unarmed man, the spokesman added, without elaborating, that “resistance does not require a firearm."
More than a few other important parts of the storyline have been altered, contradicted, or simply exposed as false, too. Everything from which of bin Laden’s sons was supposedly killed to the claim that his wife was killed after being used as a “human shield” — all of it has changed for some reason or another. The transcript after Brennan’s speech was altered to change the name of the dead son. The new and improved narrative now says that not only was bin Laden’s wife not killed, but that she was not used as a human shield.
Originally the White House also suggested top officials watched the raid live through a video feed. Terror czar Brennan, for example, claimed that they “had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.” CIA boss Leon Panetta later exposed that claim as false in an interview with PBS, saying: “There was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."
That means the “photo op” of Obama and other officials intently “watching” the operation in the “Situation Room” was almost certainly staged for the press. And almost every media outlet that ran the picture used inaccurate captions parroting the White House claims. And there’s more. The night of the raid, one administration official told reporters that a helicopter was lost due to mechanical failure. During that same briefing, another administration official said, "We didn't say it was mechanical." Now they claim the crash had something to do with the temperature at bin Laden’s supposed compound.
A poorly photo-shopped image of a dead bin Laden embarrassed a large swath of the world press and several Senators, too. Shortly after newspapers and television stations around the globe ran the image, it was exposed as a shoddy forgery that had been circulating for years. Now Obama said he “decided” not to release any pictures — or any other evidence that any element of the story is true, for that matter.
And then there’s the burial issue. The Obama administration originally claimed no country would accept the body; so, it was dumped at sea — Mafia style — in accordance with what Obama alleged were Islamic traditions and customs. When prominent Muslim theological leaders repudiated that lie and noted that it was actually a violation of Islamic tenets to bury Osama bin Laden in the ocean, the new line was that the decision was to avoid the creation of a “shrine.” That lie fell apart, too, when it was widely reported that bin Laden’s brand of Islam calls for unmarked graves — building any sort of shrine would have been blasphemous. So far, no new excuses have been concocted for allegedly feeding the body to the fish.
After the numerous discrepancies and falsehoods in the storyline became painfully obvious, the Associated Press, USA Today, Fox News and other outlets slowly and begrudgingly started to report it. “From the first moments, a good number of the details about bin Laden's killing, on points large and small, have been wrong,” admitted a Fox reporter in one of the more candid acknowledgements to appear in the mainstream press.
But of course, most of the media were also dutifully offering and parroting all manner of excuses. “Fog of war” was to blame for the confusion, claimed the White House spokesman after that excuse was suggested to him by a member of the “press” corps asking a question. Virtually every major news outlet reporting the changes in the official story promptly blamed “fog of war,” too. An apologist reporter at USA Today wrote that “the administration did its best to get the story quickly,” adding “it's common situation with military action.” The paper quoted a Pentagon spokesperson under the Bush administration to bolster its case.
The AP offered a similar excuse along with the “fog of combat” line offered by the White House. “The contradictions and misstatements reflect the fact that even in the case of a highly successful and popular mission, the confusion inherent in a fast-paced, unpredictable military raid conducted under intense pressure in a foreign country does not lend itself immediately to a tidy story line,” the reporter claimed, citing “some experts.”
Several excuses for the ever-changing story were offered by other publications, too. The possibility that they were deliberate lies or worse was virtually never addressed. But the U.K. Independent noted: “The impression persists that the administration sought to cast the operation in the most heroic light possible, at the expense of the facts.” Now, the President and his spokespeople and subordinates are refusing to offer more details or explanations. The government has also announced that it will not be releasing pictures or any other evidence to support its claims even as suspicions continue to mount.
But as analysts pointed out, the newly revealed fact that there was no fire fight begs the question about where the “fog” may have come from. And even more importantly: Why, in the absence of a fire fight, would U.S. forces put a bullet through the brain supposedly containing the most valuable intelligence on the planet? What if bin Laden knew where that alleged nuclear bomb in Europe was located that was set to detonate after his capture or death? None of those questions have been addressed so far.
But prominent critics are sounding the alarm. “When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged ‘discrepancies’ that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place,” noted Paul Craig Roberts, a senior official in the former Reagan administration in a piece entitled “The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event.”
Roberts raised several important questions, too, as well as some comparisons. “The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex,” he suggested, citing a series of government deceptions that have led to war based on lies and other atrocities.
Roberts suspects there are more lies about the bin Laden narrative than those exposed so far. And he’s certainly not alone. It emerged recently that the man who owned the house next to bin Laden’s supposed compound doesn’t even believe the story either. “To be honest, it’s not true,” he told Al Jazeera.
As the official story continues to be re-written by the administration and those in the media who simply re-package government press releases, critics and skeptics would seem to be justified in wondering what other lies and "fog of war" changes may emerge in the coming weeks and months. And perhaps even more importantly, we might also wonder if there are lies that may never be exposed in their entirety?
Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/7387-media-scrambles-as-bin-laden-story-crumbles
Gunfight at Abbottabad: Dismantling the Myth of an American Hero
In Hollywood Westerns, the sheriff engages in a shootout with bad guys and wins. Such was the story of Wyatt Earp, who killed rustlers in the "Gunfight at OK Corral". Then there is the American cowboy, represented by John Wayne — tall, handsome, Anglo-Saxon — who rides into town whistling before he dispatches the "bad guys" sometimes represented by "Indians" like Geronimo, the Apache, who supposedly terrorized innocent settlers.
Into that tradition, late on the night of May 1, stepped President Barack Obama, with a tale of a 40-minute gun battle that he personally monitored from the White House (complete with a photo of his national security team at work), to take out the world’s most dangerous terrorist who used his own wife as a human shield. The bad guy was hiding out in a fortified million-dollar mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the "good guys" had no choice but to kill him.
"Justice has been done," said Obama in his midnight address. His lurid tale of a team of new American heroes was backed up by his team. "He (Osama) was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said John Brennan, White House security adviser. "It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight."
"Justice has been done," said Obama in his midnight address. His lurid tale of a team of new American heroes was backed up by his team. "He (Osama) was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said John Brennan, White House security adviser. "It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight."
In reality, historians are still debating whether Wyatt Earp was a heroic lawman or settling a personal feud in the town of Tombstone, Arizona. Many cowboys were either poor blacks or Mexican, not daredevil fighters. And Geronimo came from a long tribal history of defending his people against Spanish settlers, Mexican and U.S. soldiers who were stealing the land of the Chiricahua Apache.
Like the story of Wyatt Earp, John Wayne and Geronimo, the facts behind Sunday’s gunfight at Abbottabad are dubious at best or simply untrue. What makes matters worse is that numerous laws and human rights rules were broken. Finally, the operation to kill Osama bin Laden shows a complete failure in the fabled intelligence apparatus in the U.S. Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday, "We provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you … and obviously some of the information came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on."
The house that Osama bin Laden lived in was downgraded from a million-dollar mansion to a value of 250,000 dollars after inquiries by reporters from local property dealers. The latest property records, unearthed by the Associated Press news agency, show that the land was actually bought for just 48,000 dollars. The White House has backtracked on the gun battle, stating that only one of Bin Laden’s men fired a gun from an adjoining house. The "wife" who was used as a "human shield" turned out to be neither Bin Laden’s wife nor a human shield, nor did she die.
The famous photograph of Obama watching the raid live in the White House turns out to be suspect also since the video transmission of the raid failed. CIA director Leon Panetta told PBS television, "Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on."
While the story has unraveled, serious questions are starting to be raised about the legal nature of the killing. And that’s not to mention the repeated flouting of international law by the White House in ordering deadly military operations inside Pakistan, a country with which it has not declared war.
Amnesty International senior director Claudio Cordone said in a statement, "Given that bin Laden was not armed, it is not clear how he resisted arrest and whether an attempt was made to capture him rather than kill him." Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a "full disclosure of the accurate facts" on the operation. "The United Nations condemns terrorism but it also has basic rules of how counter-terrorism activity has to be carried out. It has to be in compliance with international law."
Even religious leaders have weighed in. Dr Rowan Williams, the head of the Anglican church, told the Telegraph newspaper in Britain: "The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it does not look as if justice is seen to be done." Some have condemned Obama outright. Geoffrey Robertson, a human rights lawyer in Britain, told the BBC that Obama’s claim that justice was done "is a total misuse of language". "This is the justice of the Red Queen: sentence first, trial later," he said, in a reference to "Alice in Wonderland".
Yet perhaps the biggest question of all is why it took U.S. intelligence almost 10 years to track down their quarry when he was apparently living under their noses for roughly half of that, in a compound next to a premier Pakistani military academy with no security other than a couple of guns. Either the Pakistanis fooled the U.S. military, or neither the CIA nor Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency had any idea, suggesting that the 54-year-old man on dialysis outwitted them. The answer to the question, unfortunately, lies deep under the Arabian Sea where the U.S. dumped the body of Bin Laden, since the U.S. claims to have killed what could have been their biggest information source in a decade.
There are several survivors who could help shed light. But not one of them is in U.S. hands. Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, the youngest of bin Laden’s three wives, has already told Pakistani interrogators details of Bin Laden’s final years.
No matter. CIA officials are already spinning new tales for the U.S. media, based on documents and data they claim to have captured. "He (Osama) wasn’t just a figurehead," one U.S. official told The New York Times on condition of anonymity. "He continued to plot and plan, to come up with ideas about targets and to communicate those ideas to other senior Qaeda leaders." Like the story of the fish that got away, there is no proof of any of the new allegations. But like Wyatt Earp, the story of the gunfight at Abbottabad is sure to be coming to a movie theatre near you.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/pratap-chatterjee/2011/05/06/gunfight-at-abbottabad-dismantling-the-myth-of-an-american-hero/
Doubts grow on US version of strike against bin Laden
The head of the CIA has admitted that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events. Leon Panetta said there was a 25-minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off. A photograph issued by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening for long periods.
It has emerged that US commandos were told to assume bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest and must be killed, unless they found him naked. They would have accepted surrender only if they could be sure he had nothing hidden under his clothing, meaning his fate was sealed as soon as he was found in his bedclothes. The admission by John Brennan, the chief US counter-terrorism adviser, will add to the growing belief that there was no real intention of taking bin Laden alive.
Mr Panetta said the US Navy SEALs made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the President. Even so, ''the authority here was to kill bin Laden'', he said. ''And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him.
''To be frank, I don't think he had a lot of time to say anything.''
While the White House has decided not to make photos of bin Laden's corpse public, Reuters news agency has issued a series of bloody pictures of the attack's aftermath that it said depicted the deaths of three men who were with bin Laden when he was killed. Mr Obama knew the mission was successful only after the SEALs commander heard the word ''Geronimo'' on the radio, code meaning bin Laden had been killed. The absence of footage added to the confusion about what happened in the compound. Pakistani authorities say one of bin Laden's daughters, who was present during the raid, said her father was captured alive before he was killed.
There was also growing doubt about the US claims that Pakistan was not involved in the raid. Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, a former head of Inter-Services Intelligence, said it was ''inconceivable'' that his government was unaware of the US raid. He said that his country was forced to deny any knowledge of the raid to avoid a domestic backlash. The ISI's official line has been that bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad had ''slipped off our radar'' after it raided the building in 2003 while hunting for another senior al-Qaeda operative. The agency says it did not know bin Laden was there.
Staged: White House “Situation Room” Photos Part Of Bin Laden Fable
In addition to images of President Obama’s address to the American public on Sunday night, it has emerged that the dramatic photos of Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton and members of the White House security team watching the assassination of Bin Laden “live” were in fact completely staged, casting further doubt on the ever-changing official account of the operation. On Tuesday, the White House released provocative images that purported to show, “US President Barack Obama watching live footage of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.”
In one particularly dramatic photo, Hillary Clinton is seen with her hand anxiously clasped over her mouth as if reacting to a crucial event. Other photos show Obama and his staff with stern faces as they discuss the operation while it unfolds. The photos were described by many as having “historical significance,” forming a “captivating” record of Obama’s greatest success and being the “defining moment” of his Presidency. We were also told by the media that, “The leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.”
“US president Barack Obama along with his high-level team, watched live coverage in the White House, as the commandos gunned down the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a US Navy Seal,” it was also reported. US chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan claimed that the head cameras that fed audio and video back to the White House, allowed Obama and his staff to track the operation “on an ongoing basis”. But the claims have been proven to be completely fraudulent.
Alongside the crumbling official narrative of the operation to kill Bin Laden, it has emerged that Obama, Clinton and their staff saw virtually nothing whatsoever of the mission that allegedly led to the assassination of Bin Laden, because according to CIA director Leon Panetta, there was a 25 minute blackout of the live feed which was cut off before the US Navy SEALS even entered the building.
“A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound,” reports the London Telegraph. In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: “Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
The notion that Obama “saw the terror chief shot in the left eye” live on video is a total fabrication. At best, the photos were cynically misrepresented by the White House and the mainstream media, at worst, they were completely staged to add a contrived dramatic spin to the unfolding wall-to-wall press coverage of the Bin Laden fable, which is becoming more convoluted with each passing day.
The key image that clearly indicates the photos were staged is the shot of Hillary Clinton with her hand over her mouth. Clinton looks shocked as if she has witnessed something disturbing, obviously implying that she is watching a live shootout or someone being assassinated, when in fact she saw nothing of the kind because the feed was cut before the SEALS entered the compound. The White House was careful to not describe this image as representing the moments during which the SEALS stormed the building, but the implication was clear, and the establishment media did the work for them, reporting that the picture depicted Obama and Clinton, “watching intently as the raid takes place,” another total falsehood.
Former top spymaster Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who worked under five different US Presidents, has been proven correct in his assertion that the photos were “Nonsense….total make-up, make believe,” and proof that Americans were being held captive to a “theater of the absurd”. The entire account of the Bin Laden raid is fast turning into a Jerry Bruckheimer-style fictional made for TV movie, just as the Jessica Lynch “rescue” was scripted for public consumption, solely to elicit contrived patriotism and pro-war sentiment amongst the American people. In addition to the dubious situation room pictures, it has also emerged that the images of Barack Obama that appeared on Monday morning’s newspapers after he had announced the death of Bin Laden the previous night were also completely staged.
“While the photo that ran on many newspapers and websites the next morning appeared as if it were taken during Obama’s address to the nation the night before, it was actually the result of an elaborate post-speech production,” reports the International Business Times. “As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent,” Reuters photographer Jason Reed explained in his blog. “Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.”
The staging of the Obama speech photo is embarrassing, but the staging of the situation room photos, which were heavily promoted by the establishment media, falsely presented as evidence that Obama, Biden and Clinton saw the assassination of Osama live, and used by the White House to lend credence to the fairytale they were busily scripting, are damning. We truly have entered the “theater of the absurd” when, even as the narrative of the Bin Laden fable crashes and burns, the establishment media that helped manufacture this work of fiction are still claiming that anyone who even questions the blaring inconsistencies of the official account are merely conspiracy theorists engaging in “black helicopter fantasies".
Source: http://www.infowars.com/staged-white-house-situation-room-photos-part-of-bin-laden-fable/
Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off. A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information."We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president. He said: "The authority here was to kill bin Laden. And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him. "To be frank, I don't think he had a lot of time to say anything. It was a firefight going up that compound. And by the time they got to the third floor and found bin Laden, I think it - this was all split-second action on the part of the Seals."
The President only knew the mission was successful after the Navy Seals commander heard the word “Geronimo” on the radio, a code word from commandos reporting that they had killed bin Laden. The absence of footage of the raid has led to conflicting reports about what happened in the compound. According to Pakistani authorities one of bin Laden’s daughter’s, who was present during the raid, claimed that her father was captured alive before he was killed. There was also growing doubt about the US claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies involved in the raid.
Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, former head of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, said it was "inconceivable" that his government was unaware of the US raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. He claimed his country was forced to deny any knowledge of the raid to avoid a domestic backlash. The ISI's official line has been that bin Laden's compound had "slipped off our radar" after it raided the building in 2003 while hunting for another senior al-Qaeda operative.The agency claims it was unaware that bin Laden was hiding there.
Lieutenant General Durrani, however, said that the denial was a "political" maneuver by the intelligence services to avoid claims that they were working too closely with the US. He said: "It is more likely that they did know [about the raid]. It is not conceivable that it was done without the involvement of Pakistani security forces at some stage. They were involved and they were told they were in position.
"The army chief was in his office, the cordons had been thrown around that particular place. The Pakistani helicopters were also in the air so that indicates that it was involved. "[There are] political implications back home. If you say that you are involved there is a large, vocal faction of Pakistani society that will get very upset because we are carrying out repeatedly these operations with the Americans."
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Blackout-during-raid-on-bin-Laden-compound.html
Bin Laden dead before U.S. raid - Iranian Intelligence Minister
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said Tehran has evidence that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had died of disease long before the United States' alleged raid on the terrorist, FARS Iranian news agency said. Bin Laden was killed on May 2 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, north of the capital Islamabad, during a raid by U.S. Navy Seals. "We have accurate information that bin Laden died of illness some time ago," Moslehi said. Bin Laden's body was buried at sea less than 24 hours after the operation. "If the US military and intelligence apparatus have really arrested or killed bin Laden, why don't they show him (his dead body) why have they thrown his corpse into the sea?" Moslehi continued. A DNA test proved that the corpse of the dead man belonged to bin Laden, who has topped the FBI's most wanted list for the past decade. White House spokesman, Jay Carney said on Wednesday that Washington would not release bin Laden's postmortem photos to avoid instigating propaganda and possible violence.
Source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20110509/163940737.html
The Death of bin Laden and a Strategic Shift in Washington
Two apparently distinct facts have drawn our attention. The first and most obvious is U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement late May 1 that Osama bin Laden had been killed. The second is Obama’s April 28 announcement that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will replace Leon Panetta as CIA director. Together, the events create the conditions for the U.S. president to expand his room to maneuver in the war in Afghanistan and ultimately reorient U.S. foreign-policy priorities.
The U.S. mission in Afghanistan, as stated by Obama, is the destruction of al Qaeda—in particular, of the apex leadership that once proved capable of carrying out transnational, high-casualty attacks. Although al Qaeda had already been severely weakened in Afghanistan and has recently focused more on surviving inside Pakistan than executing meaningful operations, the inability to capture or kill bin Laden meant that the U.S. mission itself had not been completed. With the death of bin Laden, a plausible, if not altogether accurate, political narrative in the United States can develop, claiming that the mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished. During a White House press conference on Monday, U.S. Homeland Security Adviser John Brennan commented on bin Laden’s death, saying "We are going to try to take advantage of this to demonstrate to people in the area that al Qaeda is a thing of the past, and we are hoping to bury the rest of al Qaeda along with Osama bin Laden."
Petraeus was the architect of the American counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. He symbolized American will in the region. The new appointment effectively sidelines the general. By appointing Petraeus as CIA director (he is expected to assume the position in July), Obama has put the popular general in charge of a complex intelligence bureaucracy. From Langley, Petraeus can no longer be the authoritative military voice on the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama has retained Petraeus as a senior member of the administration while simultaneously isolating him.
Together, the two steps open the door for serious consideration of an accelerated withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The U.S. political leadership faced difficulty in shaping an exit strategy from Afghanistan with Petraeus in command because the general continued to insist that the war was going reasonably well. Whether or not this accurately represented the military campaign (and we tend to think that the war had more troubles than Petraeus was admitting), Petraeus' prestige made it difficult to withdraw over his objections.
Petraeus is now being removed from the Afghanistan picture. Bin Laden has already been removed. With his death, an argument in the United States can be made that the U.S. mission has been accomplished and that, while there may be room for some manner of special-operations counterterrorism forces, the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan no longer exists. It is difficult to ignore the fact that bin Laden was killed, not in Afghanistan, but deep within Pakistani borders. With the counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan dissipating, the nation-building mission in Afghanistan becomes unnecessary and nonessential. In addition, with tensions in the Persian Gulf building in the lead-up to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, ending the war in Afghanistan critically releases U.S. forces for operations elsewhere. It is therefore possible for the United States to consider an accelerated withdrawal in a way that wasn’t possible before.
We are not saying that bin Laden's death and Petraeus' new appointment are anything beyond coincidental. We are saying that the confluence of the two events creates politically strategic opportunities for the U.S. administration that did not exist before, the most important of which is the possibility for a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
The U.S. mission in Afghanistan, as stated by Obama, is the destruction of al Qaeda—in particular, of the apex leadership that once proved capable of carrying out transnational, high-casualty attacks. Although al Qaeda had already been severely weakened in Afghanistan and has recently focused more on surviving inside Pakistan than executing meaningful operations, the inability to capture or kill bin Laden meant that the U.S. mission itself had not been completed. With the death of bin Laden, a plausible, if not altogether accurate, political narrative in the United States can develop, claiming that the mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished. During a White House press conference on Monday, U.S. Homeland Security Adviser John Brennan commented on bin Laden’s death, saying "We are going to try to take advantage of this to demonstrate to people in the area that al Qaeda is a thing of the past, and we are hoping to bury the rest of al Qaeda along with Osama bin Laden."
Petraeus was the architect of the American counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. He symbolized American will in the region. The new appointment effectively sidelines the general. By appointing Petraeus as CIA director (he is expected to assume the position in July), Obama has put the popular general in charge of a complex intelligence bureaucracy. From Langley, Petraeus can no longer be the authoritative military voice on the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama has retained Petraeus as a senior member of the administration while simultaneously isolating him.
Together, the two steps open the door for serious consideration of an accelerated withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The U.S. political leadership faced difficulty in shaping an exit strategy from Afghanistan with Petraeus in command because the general continued to insist that the war was going reasonably well. Whether or not this accurately represented the military campaign (and we tend to think that the war had more troubles than Petraeus was admitting), Petraeus' prestige made it difficult to withdraw over his objections.
Petraeus is now being removed from the Afghanistan picture. Bin Laden has already been removed. With his death, an argument in the United States can be made that the U.S. mission has been accomplished and that, while there may be room for some manner of special-operations counterterrorism forces, the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan no longer exists. It is difficult to ignore the fact that bin Laden was killed, not in Afghanistan, but deep within Pakistani borders. With the counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan dissipating, the nation-building mission in Afghanistan becomes unnecessary and nonessential. In addition, with tensions in the Persian Gulf building in the lead-up to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, ending the war in Afghanistan critically releases U.S. forces for operations elsewhere. It is therefore possible for the United States to consider an accelerated withdrawal in a way that wasn’t possible before.
We are not saying that bin Laden's death and Petraeus' new appointment are anything beyond coincidental. We are saying that the confluence of the two events creates politically strategic opportunities for the U.S. administration that did not exist before, the most important of which is the possibility for a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
US Government Contractor Claims “Al-Qaeda” Has Confirmed Bin Laden Fairytale
One of the groups behind the endless fake Bin Laden tapes and a contractor for the US government tells us that “Al-Qaeda” has confirmed the death of Osama. Although Bin Laden has been dead since 2001, the fact the US government is having to rely on the notorious SITE Institute to prop up the crumbling Bin Laden fable that was manufactured on Sunday night shows how desperate the White House has become in its bid to sell the public on more terror fearmongering.
“Al Qaeda released a statement on jihadist forums confirming the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant messages,” reports CNN. “The statement, translated by SITE, lauded the late militant, threatened to take action against the United States, and urged Pakistanis to “rise up and revolt.”
SITE’s claim that “Al-Qaeda” has confirmed the official White House version of events concerning the death of Bin Laden, thereby lending presumed credence to a narrative that has quickly attracted derision and suspicion even amongst mainstream journalists, is about as credible as if Barney the Purple Dinosaur had made a statement assuring us that Osama was killed on Sunday evening.
SITE is a US military-industrial complex front and has been caught red-handed releasing fake Al-Qaeda tapes on numerous occasions. The SITE organization is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, the majority of which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers. The group was founded by Rita Katz, the daughter of an executed Israeli spy. Katz has worked closely with the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security.
SITE’s website content was found to be largely copied from the U.S. State Department. “SITE’s “Terrorism Library, on cursory investigation, looks to be a straight data scrape from the U.S. Department of State’s Patterns of Global Terrorism – 2003, Appendix B,” notes SourceWatch. This organization is nothing more than a dummy group which acts as a conduit for Pentagon propaganda. Everything about SITE indicates that it is nothing more than a trojan horse that is regularly used by the military-industrial complex to release staged Al-Qaeda videotapes as part of the ongoing propaganda offensive to justify the brutal, pointless and manufactured war on terror.
SITE was miraculously able to obtain the highly suspicious September 2007 Bin Laden video tape before it was released by the so-called Al-Qaeda group who had made it. SITE has been positively endorsed by Blackwater USA, the infamous military contractor co-founded by former Navy Seal Erik Prince that was found to have been involved in several massacres of innocent Iraqi civilians. SITE’s continued existence relies on fleecing the American taxpayer by way of contracts with the U.S. government and constantly invoking and hyping the hugely exaggerated threat of alleged Al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East.
The organization has proven itself adept at releasing Al-Qaeda propaganda tapes at the most politically expedient times for both the Bush and Obama administrations. For example, just two days after it was revealed that Al-Qaeda mastermind and CIA stooge Anwar Al-Awlaki had met with Pentagon top brass only a matter of months after 9/11, SITE released a video tape of Awlaki re-affirming his commitment to global jihad and praising the actions of the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber.
On the same weekend, SITE released a tape of Adam (Pearlman) Gadahn also praising Farouk AbdulMutallab and Faisal Shazad, the alleged Times Square bomber. Adam Pearlman is blatantly an Mossad spy who is releasing fake Al-Qaeda videos to bolster the geopolitical agenda of both the United States and Israel. We are being asked to believe that Pearlman, a former hardcore Jewish Zionist who once wrote stinging essays condemning Muslims as “bloodthirsty terrorists,” and enjoyed regularly beating up Arabs is now preaching the cause of global jihad. Pearlman’s grandfather was none other than the late Carl K. Pearlman; a prominent Jewish urologist in Orange County. Carl Pearlman was also a member of the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, which was caught spying on Americans for Israel in 1993.
SITE claimed it obtained the Pearlman video from As-Sahab, Al-Qaeda’s supposed media arm. As we previously documented, SITE’s sister organization IntelCenter was caught adding its logo to a supposed Al-Qaeda tape at the same time as the As-Sahab logo was added, indicating the two organizations were one and the same. Since the official narrative behind the Bin Laden myth has quickly crumbled as the White House flip-flops on the actual account of what happened, in addition to being caught staging the “situation room” photos which were erroneously passed off as depicting Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the assassination of Osama live on TV, holding together the flimsy fairytale of the Bin Laden fable is proving difficult.
That’s why we can expect more lurid fearmongering to distract from increasing suspicion towards the events of Sunday evening, like the supposed Al-Qaeda plot to derail trains in the U.S. on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, a plan described as “aspirational more than operational,” and one already rendered mythical based on the fact that no trains even operate at speeds over 500mph in the United States.
Source: http://www.infowars.com/us-government-contractor-claims-al-qaeda-has-confirmed-bin-laden-fairytale/
Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
Is Osama bin Laden still alive? I have dealt with this question in a recent little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? The present essay summarizes the main points of this book. Since the transference of power from the Bush administration to that of Barack Obama administration, the question of whether bin Laden is dead or alive has become more important.
Although George W. Bush famously said that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” he made clear that he was not serious about this. Besides stating that he was not concerned about bin Laden, he demonstrated this by diverting most of America’s military resources to Iraq. Bush could, of course, be unconcerned about bin Laden because he knew that, besides the fact that bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, he was probably dead anyway. I do not know what President Obama and his people think about these matters, but their rhetoric presupposes that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and is still alive. In November 2008, for example, a Washington Post story said:
In his White House address of March 27 of this year, President Obama said:
Obama has appealed regularly to these intelligence estimates, which have invariably claimed that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, somewhere along its border with Pakistan. This claim has been used to justify the extension of US military activity into Pakistan, with the result that people now speak of the “AfPak war.” One way to argue against this war is to point out that, if these intelligence experts do not even know whether bin Laden is alive, they certainly cannot know where he is and what he is thinking.
There are, to be sure, other good arguments against the this war, and many critics are making these arguments. But to point out that bin Laden is almost certainly dead provides an argument that goes to the heart of the publically articulated rationale for this war. Of course, another way to argue against this war would be to point out that bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11. But even though our own FBI has admitted that it “has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” a large part of the American population has been conditioned to reject all revisionism about 9/11 out of hand. As we saw recently with “the Van Jones affair,” people are considered unfit for public service if they once signed a document suggesting that the official account of 9/11 might not be fully true.
My little bin Laden book is primarily for people who, besides assuming that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, also believe that the AfPak war is justifiable because we need to prevent him from planning another attack. Many such people will turn against the war if they become aware of convincing evidence that bin Laden is almost certainly dead. There is considerable evidence for this conclusion. This evidence is of two types: objective evidence and testimonies.
Objective Evidence that Bin Laden is Dead
The objective evidence includes the following facts:
First, up until mid-December 13, 2001, the CIA had regularly been intercepting messages between bin Laden and his people. At that time, however, the messages suddenly stopped, and the CIA has never again intercepted a message. Second, on December 26, 2001, a leading Pakistani newspaper published a story reporting that bin Laden had died in mid-December, adding:
Third, bin Laden had kidney disease. He had been treated for it in the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, at which time he reportedly ordered two dialysis machines to take home. If you have ever wondered what bin Laden was doing the night before the 9/11 attacks, CBS News reported that he was being given kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Pakistan. And in January of 2001, Dr. Sanjay Gupta said – based on a video of bin Laden that had been made in either late November or early December of 2001 – that he appeared to be in the last stages of kidney failure.
Fourth, In July of 2002, CNN reported that bin Laden’s bodyguards had been captured in February of that year, adding: “Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most-wanted man in the world is dead.” Fifth, the United States has since 2001 offered a $25 million reward for any information leading to the capture or killing of bin Laden. But this reward offer has produced no such information, even though Pakistan has many desperately poor people, only about half of whom have been supportive of bin Laden.
Testimonial Evidence that Bin Laden Is Dead
In addition to this objective evidence, we had considerable testimony in 2002, from people in position to know, that bin Laden was dead, or probably so. These people included:
For this reason, perhaps, the stories about the demise of bin Laden largely came to an end in the latter part of 2002, when the United States was gearing up for its attack on Iraq. From then until now, there have been few such stories. Recently, however, two former intelligence officers have spoken out. In October 2008, former CIA case officer Robert Baer suggested in passing during an interview on National Public Radio that bin Laden was no longer among the living. When Baer was asked about this, he said: “Of course he’s dead.” In March of 2009, former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla published an essay in the American Spectator entitled “Osama bin Elvis.” Explaining his title, Codevilla wrote: “Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his.”
This is an excellent article, with only one serious flaw. In 2007, Benazir Bhutto, being interviewed by David Frost, referred to Omar Sheikh as “the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” Codevilla cited this statement as further evidence that bin Laden is dead. But Bhutto had simply misspoken: She had meant to say “the man who murdered Daniel Pearl,” which is the standard way of referring to Omar Sheikh. That she misspoke was shown the next day, when she told CNN: “I don’t think General Musharaf personally knows where Osama bin Laden is.” Ten days later, speaking to NPR, she reported having asked a policeman assigned to guard her house: “Shouldn’t you be looking for Osama bin Laden?” This flaw aside, Codevilla’s article provides good support for his claim that the widespread belief in bin Laden’s continued existence is not backed up by evidence.
What about the “Messages from Osama bin Laden”?
Many people, of course, assume that there is a lot of evidence that bin Laden is still alive, namely, the dozens of audio tape and video tape “messages from bin Laden” that have appeared since 2001. These tapes provide good evidence, however, only if they are authentic. The longest chapter of my book is devoted to this question. I show, in the first place, that the technology for making fake audio and video tapes is now so advanced that even experts can be fooled. So although the press regularly tells us that intelligence agencies have authenticated the latest bin Laden tape, it is virtually impossible to prove a tape to be authentic.
It is sometimes possible, however, to prove a tape to be a fake. For example: If the person hired to play bin Laden writes with his right hand; if he is much heavier and darker than bin Laden was in a tape made about the same time; if he has fatter hands and shorter fingers; if his nose has a different shape. And if, in discussing the Twin Towers, he says that the fire melted the steel, whereas the real bin Laden would have known that a building fire cannot melt steel. I am speaking here of the video that was allegedly found by US troops in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in November 2001, which is widely known as the “bin Laden confession video.”
Also obviously fabricated was the “October Surprise” video, which appeared on October 29, 2004, just in time to help George W. Bush get reelected. One clue that it was a fake, aside from its timing, is provided by its language. Bin Laden’s own messages were saturated with references to Allah and the Prophet Mohammed. But in this October Surprise video, Allah was mentioned rarely and the only “Mohammad” mentioned was Mohamed Atta. Also, whereas undoubtedly authentic bin Laden messages portrayed worldly events as cause or at least permitted by Allah, the speaker on this October Surprise video gave a purely secular account of events, even telling the American people: “Your security is in your own hands.”
The most obviously faked video is one that, appearing in 2007, was identical to the October Surprise video of 2004, except that the bin Laden figure now had a completely black beard, leading me to call it the video from “Blackbeard the Terrorist.” Although pundits tried, with straight faces, to explain why bin Laden might have dyed his beard, or put on a fake one, this video was best treated with the respect it deserved by a YouTube video featuring a actor wearing a very long, very black, beard, and saying:
Hello, long time no see. It is me, Osama bin Laden. And no, this not to be confused with just-for-men hair color commercial. . . . I make this video to prove to world that me still alive and kicking. This video is very funny. But there is, of course, nothing funny about the fact that obviously fake bin Laden videos have been used, and are still being used, to justify the AfPak war, which continues to kill dozens if not hundreds of innocent people each week, including women and children attending weddings and funerals.
Conclusion
If my little book, by showing that bin Laden has probably long been dead, can help shorten this war, it will have served its main purpose. Its other main point, to which a separate chapter is devoted, is that these fake bin Laden tapes appear to be simply one part of an extensive propaganda operation, in which the US military intelligence is using tax dollars – illegally – to propagandize the American public, with the aim of furthering the militarization of America and its foreign policy. I hope my little book will stimulate the 9/11 truth movement, along with the anti-war movement in general, to take on more fully the task of exposing this propaganda effort, to which a growing portion of our tax dollars is being devoted.
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| David Ray Griffin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by David Ray Griffin | |
Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive?
As we approach the 9th anniversary of September 11 the big question is Osama bin Laden dead or alive has to be asked. His voice was detected regularly until December 14, 2001 by intelligence operatives monitoring radio transmissions in Tora Bora, according to the Pentagon. The Pakistan Observer reported that he died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader!
In Bad Health
Bin Laden was often reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is (was) suffering from Hepatitis C and could only have expected to live for two more years. According to Le Figaro, in 2000 he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, says he thinks Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead. Even Israeli intelligence says he’s dead. So what’s the hold up?! Make the call…
The Conspiracy
Now if you’ve been paying attention you’ve learned that Osama bin Laden was on the US payroll pre 9/11 to help fight the Russians in Afganistan …and you heard the theory that they set him up as a patsy to take the fall for the attacks …and that the bin Laden family and the Bush family were pretty tight, which perhaps got him a free pass back to Saudi Arabia as a ‘favour’ to the family…which is all a possibility, but come on! So why not just come out and say he’s dead? What good is a War on Terror without terror personified into a single easy to despise form? Imagine World War 2 without Hitler…not as menacing, eh?
Bad for Business
Without Osama bin Laden alive and as a continuing threat, the so-called “Military Industrial Complex” would find sales heading into a deep valley. Keeping Osama bin Laden alive in the minds of westerners with the help of mainstream media, is good for business on many levels.
You Decide: Dead or Alive?
So is he dead or alive? I think the answer is obvious. If you need any more convincing here is his death announcement in the Egyptian news paper al-Wafd, Wednesday, December 26, 2001.
If you don’t read Arabic here’s the English translation: al-Wafd, Wednesday, December 26, 2001
News of Bin Laden’s Death and Funeral 10 days ago
Islamabad - A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa’da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa’da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.
UPDATE – READ B4 COMMENTING: Bin Laden is STILL Dead!
I’m confused by the number of people who have left comments to this post that have not bothered to READ it. Osama bin Laden died 9 1/2 years ago! Please read the evidence above. The Pakistani press knew it…the FBI knew it…Israeli Intelligence knew it, but nobody wanted to tell the general population of the world that news. If it was generally known that bin Laden died in December 2001 there would have been no reason to invade Afghanistan and Iraq…and no reason for the military industrial complex to PROFIT from what happened in September 11, 2001. So why go through this elaborate charade now? Simple President Obama’s numbers are slipping and what better way to kick off his re-election campaign in the Fall? (which happens to coincide with the 10th anniversary of September 11th…)
Source: http://montrealradioguy.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/osama-bin-laden-dead-or-alive/
Related:
After Osama, China fears the next target
The United States' most vilified terrorist foe has been dead only a week but China is already haunted by the phantom of the next big US enemy. Almost simultaneously with the spread of the news of Osama bin Laden's death in a covert US operation in Pakistan, Chinese analysts had begun the guessing game of where Washington will focus its attention next.
"Why didn't they catch him alive?" speculated military affairs analyst Guo Xuan. "Because he was no longer needed as an excuse for Washington to take the anti-terror war outside of the US borders. It is because of bin Laden that the US were allowed to increase their strategic presence in many places around the world as never before. But Libya and NATO's attack there have changed the game. They (the US) no longer need bin Laden to assert their authority."
Even before bin Laden's death, Beijing had expressed concern that the US strategists are diverting their attention from the war on terror to containing the rise of China and other emerging economies. A long article on Libya stalemate published by the editor of Contemporary International Relations magazine, Lin Limin, argued that the US has been unwilling to take the lead role in the Libya conflict because it has "finally woken up to the fact that its main reason to worry are the emerging countries.
"If the US position on Libya is not only a tactical stance but a strategic one and they have really come to understand that they should not waste military power and energy in numerous directions 'spreading democracy' all over the world but should begin focusing their attention on the rise of emerging countries, then we do have a reason to worry," Lin argued.
The US presence in Afghanistan has always been a controversial one for Chinese politicians. China joined the global war on terror because bin Laden's political agenda of setting up an Arab caliphate and sponsoring terrorism presented a direct threat to its restive Muslim north-western region of Xinjiang. But Beijing has been suspicious of the US intentions, worrying that Washington is pursuing a broader agenda for long-term presence in the region, which China regards as its backyard.
Beijing officially hailed the killing of the terrorist leader by the US as "a milestone and a positive development for the international anti-terrorism efforts". "Terrorism is the common enemy of the international community. China has also been a victim of terrorism," foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying after bin Laden's death.
She was referring to Xinjiang, where Muslim separatists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Chinese rule. Beijing had linked the global war against terror with its struggle to quell separatist sentiments in the Muslim region, insisting insurgents are aided from outside. Chinese public reaction to the news of bin Laden's death has mixed reluctant admiration at the success of the secret mission played out reportedly on screens in front of US president Barack Obama with outright fear over what comes next.
"The whole thing seemed like an intelligence operation lifted straight out of '24' (a TV series about US counter-terrorism agents)," said Huang Mei, a TV producer with barely concealed awe. "How advanced and confident they must be to ask their president to watch the killing mission on screens live!"
But some see bin Laden's demise as a blow to efforts to promote a school of Anti-American thought. "The great anti-America fighter bin Laden was murdered by the US! How sad!" wrote one commenter on Sina's popular Weibo micro-blogging site. "Is this real? Excellent!" wrote another of the news. "Now the only terrorist left is the United States!"
Commentators have begun analysing the political capital reaped by Obama and preparing for the possibility that he may win a second term in office. Writing in Beijing's Xinjing Bao, commentator Chen Bing predicted the US will exploit the death of bin Laden to expand its influence in the Middle East and bring the Arab spring to an end. "What a great way to issue a warning to all anti-American politicians in the region," Chen said. "And a declaration that it (the US) intends to mould the Middle East according to its own design."
Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/201156132839140238.html
The Cost of Getting Bin Laden Lost lives, lost dollars, and lost liberty
As the world reacts to the death of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, important questions should be asked about the impact his life had on America’s liberty and financial security. It’s too soon to say whether bin Laden’s demise will make America safer or prompt a backlash of anti-American violence, but it’s clear that the federal government’s unprecedented response to his terror attack on September 11, 2001 has come at a steep price to citizens and taxpayers alike.
Given the thousands of American lives that have been lost and the mountain of borrowed money that has been spent financing our country’s so-called war on terror, a simple question needs to be asked: Was it all worth it? In assessing the post 9/11 world that bin Laden’s terror attack created, has our nation absorbed a cost that goes far beyond dollars and cents? In other words, have we ignored the advice of Benjamin Franklin and traded “essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety?”
As the details of the hunt for bin Laden become part of the national lore, we must consider these questions—along with the harsh black and white numbers underlying them. First, a total of 4,452 American soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began in 2003. Meanwhile, a total of 1,566 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan—most of them within the last three years as the conflict has escalated. At last count, the direct taxpayer cost of both wars had eclipsed $1.1 trillion. With 47,000 American soldiers still stationed in Iraq and more than 100,000 fighting in Afghanistan, that tab is only going to increase. Also, because we are paying for these wars with borrowed money, financing costs will push the totals even higher.
Beyond the military costs—measured in both lives and dollars—hundreds of billions have also been spent on homeland security and intelligence gathering efforts since 9/11. In a special report published last September by The Washington Post, these efforts were described as “a hidden world, growing beyond control.” “After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine,” the Post report noted.
What we do know of these costs is staggering. Last October, the federal government revealed that it was spending more than $80 billion a year on intelligence gathering—more than twice the pre-9/11 amount. Meanwhile the proposed budget for homeland security efforts in the coming fiscal year will top $71 billion.
Beyond the cost of lost lives and borrowed dollars, though, we must also consider the incalculable tab that has come with our eroded liberties. America’s domestic surveillance program—with its warrantless searches, electronic eavesdropping, and indefinite “emergency” detentions—is every bit as much of a “clear and present danger” to this country as the terrorists it seeks to capture. By authorizing these measures, the government has trampled the First, Fourth, Fifth Sixth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments—all in the name of safeguarding our nation from itself.
In addition to these unconstitutional infringements on our liberties, Americans are being subjected to callous invasions of their privacy via intrusive pat-downs and obscene full-body scans at the country’s airports. Not only is this government-funded peep show reprehensible, it was recently revealed that these scans pose a much higher health risk than Homeland Security officials originally acknowledged. Lost lives, lost money, and lost liberty—these are the true legacies of America’s response to Osama bin Laden’s attack a decade ago. While an important chapter may have finally been closed in the war on terror, it is hard to justify the price our nation has paid in closing it.
Source: http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/04/the-cost-of-getting-bin-laden
Pakistan Urged Afghanistan to Distance Itself From the West, Officials Say
With Afghan discussions under way about the future involvement of the United States in the country and the prospect of long-term military bases, the Pakistani government has urged Afghanistan to distance itself from the West and tie its future more tightly to that of China and Pakistan, according to Afghans and Americans who are knowledgeable about a meeting between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. During a landmark April 16 meeting here in Kabul, for which the most powerful figures in the Pakistani government flew to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan suggested that Afghanistan needed to look to China, a power in the ascendance, rather than hewing closely to the United States.
“There was a mention of China in the meeting, China as a country, as an emerging economic power, and that maybe we should reach out to a new global economic power,” said an Afghan official knowledgeable about the meeting. “And there was the suggestion that Afghanistan and Pakistan should strengthen relations.” “You couldn’t tell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative to the United States, but they were saying it could help both countries,” the official said, referring to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The official asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject, which he was not authorized to speak about publicly.
The focus on China makes sense because it is a great power that would be acceptable to Afghanistan as an ally in ways that Russia never could be because of its history as a hated occupier of Afghanistan during the 1980s. And, from Pakistan’s point of view, China provides a counterbalance to India, its archenemy. The effort to draw Afghanistan away from the United States and toward China was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, and it was one of several proposals floated by Pakistan at the meeting, according to the Afghan news media. In Afghanistan, a number of Pakistan’s other supposed proposals have gotten far more notice — although it is not clear that they were portrayed accurately or proposed at all.
All the leaks, however, reflect the fears of different Afghan factions about the direction of Afghanistan’s policy. One supposedly leaked list of Pakistan’s proposals stated that the Pakistanis had asked that members of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally based in Pakistan, be given a share of government power. People close to the Afghan government emphatically denied that Pakistan requested anything like that. “It’s ridiculous,” said a government official. Another proposal apparently brought up again was an offer from Pakistan to train the Afghan National Army, said an American official knowledgeable about the talks, but who also did not wish to quoted by name because of the delicacy of the subject.
On Tuesday the Pakistani government released a statement saying that it rejected the “baseless assertions” made in the Wall Street Journal article and that “it fully supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process for peace and reconciliation,” as well as “the key role of the United States in promoting stability, peace and harmony in Afghanistan.” The statement noted that a trilateral meeting of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States was scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, early next month, with the purpose of having “strategic coherence and clarity.”
Stepping back, the jockeying seems reminiscent of the 19th-century Great Game days when larger powers sought to claim and influence Afghanistan. Then, Russia and England were vying for power. Today there are many more geopolitical actors: the United States, China, Iran, Russia, India and above all Pakistan, with which Afghanistan has close ties and deep enmities. Pakistan, more than any other country, has leverage over Afghanistan’s future because so much support for the insurgency in Afghanistan emanates from Pakistan’s tribal areas and because Afghanistan is landlocked and will always be reliant on Pakistan for supplies. If the Pakistani government moved decisively to halt the insurgent activity, the war in Afghanistan would be greatly diminished.
For now the Afghan government is weighing the Pakistani requests, according to people close to the government and to its opponents. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a onetime presidential opponent of President Hamid Karzai, who served as Afghanistan’s foreign minister and has been allied with the United States, said he saw this as a moment when Afghanistan was faced with a choice about which way to go. He said that he had some knowledge of what was discussed at the meeting and that the Pakistanis had brought a document with them that outlined their thinking.
“They said that the goals of the United States are confusing and uncertain, the American force is not reliable, and their power is not a reliable power,” Dr. Abdullah said. That perspective is influenced heavily by Pakistan’s increasingly negative view of the United States, said Mr. Abdullah — a point echoed by other officials knowledgeable about the meeting. “One of the schools of thought in the Pakistani establishment is that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is not for the stabilization of Afghanistan, but is for seizing Pakistan’s nuclear assets in due time,” Mr. Abdullah said.
However, the critical question for Afghanistan is what would it get out of closer ties with Pakistan and more distance from the United States, he said. “They have failed to recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign country,” he said, referring to Pakistani government officials. “They still consider it as their back yard.”
“There isn’t anything in it for Afghanistan,” he added. “It doesn’t talk about the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, so it’s like giving Pakistan a protectorate role vis-à-vis Afghanistan,” he said. People close to the talks said Mr. Karzai was considering Pakistan’s points carefully, but had not yet committed to most of them and viewed them with caution because of Pakistan’s long history of destabilizing Afghanistan through its support for the Taliban. “The discussions were a good start; there are many issues to be discussed,” said an official close to the talks. “Of course it’s a long way to go because in terms of our past experience with Pakistan, we would need to see some serious, pragmatic steps.”
Libyan, Once a Detainee, Is Now a U.S. Ally of Sorts
For more than five years, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was a prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay prison, judged “a probable member of Al Qaeda” by the analysts there. They concluded in a newly disclosed 2005 assessment that his release would represent a “medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.” Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade for his birthplace, this shabby port town of 100,000 people in northeast Libya. The former enemy and prisoner of the United States is now an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.
He was a tank driver in the Libyan Army in the 1980s, when the Central Intelligence Agency was spending billions to support religious militants trying to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Mr. Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, just as Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen were violently turning against their former benefactor, the United States. He was captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a member of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and sent to Guantánamo — in part because of information provided by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.
He was a tank driver in the Libyan Army in the 1980s, when the Central Intelligence Agency was spending billions to support religious militants trying to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Mr. Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, just as Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen were violently turning against their former benefactor, the United States. He was captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a member of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and sent to Guantánamo — in part because of information provided by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.
“The Libyan Government considers detainee a ‘dangerous man with no qualms about committing terrorist acts,’ ” says the classified 2005 assessment, evidently quoting Libyan intelligence findings, which was obtained by The New York Times. “ ‘He was known as one of the extremist commanders of the Afghan Arabs,’ ” the Libyan information continues, referring to Arab fighters who remained in Afghanistan after the anti-Soviet jihad.
When that Guantánamo assessment was written, the United States was working closely with Colonel Qaddafi’s intelligence service against terrorism. Now, the United States is a leader of the international coalition trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi — and is backing with air power the rebels, including Mr. Qumu. The classified Guantánamo assessment of Mr. Qumu claims that he suffered from “a non-specific personality disorder” and recounted — again citing the Libyan government as its source — a history of drug addiction and drug dealing and accusations of murder and armed assault.
In 1993, the document asserts, Mr. Qumu escaped from a Libyan prison, fled to Egypt and went on to Afghanistan, training at a camp run by Mr. bin Laden. At Guantánamo, Mr. Qumu denied knowledge of terrorist activities. He said he feared being returned to Libya, where he faced criminal charges, and asked to go to some other country where “You (the United States) can watch me,” according to a hearing summary. Nonetheless, in 2007, he was sent from Guantánamo to Libya and released the next year in an amnesty for militants.
Colonel Qaddafi has cited claims about Mr. Qumu’s past in statements blaming Al Qaeda for the entire Libyan uprising. American officials have nervously noted the presence of at least a few former militants in the rebels’ ranks. The walls of buildings along the road into Darnah are decorated with the usual anti-Qaddafi and pro-Western slogans, in English and Arabic, found all over eastern Libya. But there are notable additions: “No Qaeda” and “No to Extremism.”
Darnah has reason to be touchy. The town has a long history of Islamic militancy, including a revolt against Colonel Qaddafi’s rule led by Islamists in the mid-1990s that resulted in a vicious crackdown. Activists from here are credited with starting the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which later announced that it was affiliating with Al Qaeda, and which sent militants like Mr. Qumu to fight in Afghanistan.
Most famously, though, Darnah has a claim to being the world’s most productive recruiting ground for suicide bombers. An analysis of 600 suicide bombers in Iraq by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that of 440 who listed their hometowns in a recruiting roster, 52 were from Darnah, the most of any city, with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 40 times as populous, as the next biggest source, sending 51.
In addition to Mr. Qumu, local residents say the Darnah Brigade is led by Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another Libyan thought to be a militant who was in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule, when Al Qaeda had training camps there. Mr. Qumu did not turn up for a promised interview last week, but Mr. Hasadi did, in crumpled fatigues with a light beard and a lazy left eye, perpetually half-closed. He denied that Mr. Qumu was in his group, recently renamed the Martyrs of Abu Salim Brigade, after a prison in Tripoli where 1,200 inmates were slaughtered in 1996. Two of Mr. Qumu’s sons are in his brigade, he said.
“I don’t know how to convince everyone that we are not Al Qaeda here,” Mr. Hasadi said. “Our aim is to topple Qaddafi,” he added. “I know that you will never believe me, but it is true.”
For now, Western observers in Benghazi, the temporary rebel capital 180 miles from here, seem content to accept those assurances. “We’re more worried about Al Qaeda infiltration from outside than the indigenous ones” one said. “Most of them have a local agenda so they don’t present as much as a threat to the West.” Rod Nordland reported from Darnah, and Scott Shane from Washington. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Benghazi, Libya.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/world/guantanamo-files-libyan-detainee-now-us-ally-of-sorts.html?_r=2&hp
Guantánamo Bay files: Al-Qaida assassin 'worked for MI6'
An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military's Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida", was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay. But according to Hamlili's Guantánamo "assessment" file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence.
After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous "custodial interviews" with CIA personnel. They found him "to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan". The Guardian and the New York Times published a series of reports based on the leaked cache of documents which exposed the flimsy grounds on which many detainees were transferred to the camp and portrayed a system focused overwhelmingly on extracting intelligence from prisoners.
A further series of reports based on the files reveal:
• A single star informer at the base won his freedom by incriminating at least 123 other prisoners there. The US military source described Mohammed Basardah as an "invaluable" source who had shown "exceptional co-operation", but lawyers for other inmates claim his evidence is unreliable. • US interrogators frequently clashed over the handling of detainees, with members of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO) in several cases overruling recommendations by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) that prisoners should be released. CITF investigators also disapproved of methods adopted by the JTF's military interrogators.
• New light on how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora as American and British special forces closed in on his mountain refuge in December 2001, including intelligence claiming that a local Pakistani warlord provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan.
The Obama administration on Monday condemned the release of documents which it claimed had been "obtained illegally by WikiLeaks". The Pentagon's press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said in many cases the documents, so-called Detainee Assessment Briefs, had been superseded by the decisions of a taskforce established by President Barack Obama in 2009. "Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee," he said.
According to the files, Hamlili told his American interrogators at Bagram that he had been running a carpet business from Peshawar, exporting as far afield as Dubai following the 9/11 attacks. But his CIA captors knew the Algerian had been an informant for MI6 and Canada's Secret Intelligence Service for over three years – and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers. According to US intelligence the two spy agencies recruited Hamlili as a "humint" – human intelligence – source in December 2000 "because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan".
The files do not specify what information Hamlili withheld. But they do contain intelligence reports, albeit flawed ones, that link the Algerian to three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan during this time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks, told interrogators an "Abu Adil" – an alias allegedly used by Hamlili – had orchestrated the March 2002 grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave that killed five people, including a US diplomat and his daughter.
He said Abu Adil was also responsible for an attack that killed three girls in a rural Punjabi church the following December, and that he had given him 300,000 rupees (about $3,540) to fund the attacks. The church attacks have previously been blamed on Lashkar I Jhangvi, a Pakistani sectarian outfit that has developed ties with al-Qaida in recent years. Separately, US intelligence reports said that Hamlili was "possibly involved" in a bombing outside Karachi's Sheraton hotel in May 2002 that killed 11 French submarine engineers and two Pakistanis.
But the intelligence against the 35-year-old Algerian, who was sent home last January, appears deeply flawed, like many of the accusations in the Guantánamo files. Some of the information may have been obtained through torture. US officials waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times at a CIA "black site" in Thailand during his first month of captivity. And little evidence is presented to link Hamlili to the Karachi hotel bombing, other than that he ran a carpet business – the same cover that was used by the alleged assassins to escape.
What is clear, however, is that Hamlili was a decades-long veteran of the violent jihadi underground that extends from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan into north Africa. From the Algerian town of Oran, he left with his father in 1986, at the age of 11, to join the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Later he fell into extremist "takfir" groups, recruited militants to fight in the Algerian civil war, and gained a reputation for violence. Under the Taliban the Algerian worked as a translator for the foreign ministry and later for the Taliban intelligence services, shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the runup to 9/11.
Last January Hamlili and another inmate, Hasan Zemiri, were transferred to Algerian government custody. It was not clear whether they would be freed or made to stand trial. Clive Stafford Smith, whose legal charity, Reprieve, represents many current and former inmates, said the files revealed the "sheer bureaucratic incompetence" of the US military's intelligence gathering. "When you gather intelligence in such an unintelligent way; if for example you sweep people up who you know are innocent, and it is in these documents; and then mistreat them horribly, you are not going to get reliable intelligence. You are going to make yourself a lot of enemies."
The Guantánamo files are one of a series of secret US government databases allegedly leaked by US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The New York Times, which shared the files with the Guardian and US National Public Radio, said it did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. A number of other news organisations yesterday published reports based on files they had received from WikiLeaks.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-al-qaida-assassin-worked-for-mi6
Ossama Bin Laden Role in Bosnia: “Guidebook” for Al-Qaeda
Bosnian Muslim Army troops of the Al-Qaeda linked El Mujahedeen Unit parade in downtown Zenica in central Bosnia in 1995, carrying the black flag of Islamic jihad. Ossama Bin Laden played a key role in the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war. Alija Izetbegovic not only issued him a Bosnian passport through the Bosnian Embassy in Vienna in 1993, but met with him at least on one occasion in Sarajevo in November, 1994. Bin Laden came to Bosnia at least two times. Bin Laden organized the recruitment of Arab-Afghan mujadeheen “volunteers” for Bosnia. He also used Islamic front organizations and charities to funnel money to the Bosnian Muslim regime and army.
More importantly, according to many prominent anti-terror experts, Bosnia was the “guidebook” for Al-Qaeda. Bosnia was where Al-Qaeda was forged in the fires of Islamic jihad. In Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (NY: Free Press, 2004), Richard A. Clarke, who was the anti-terror czar in the George W. Bush Administration, a security and counter-terrorism advisor to three U.S. Presidents, wrote:
“What we saw unfold in Bosnia was a guidebook to the Bin Laden network, though we didn’t recognize it as such at the time. Beginning in 1992, Arabs who had been former Afghan mujahedeen began to arrive. With them came the arrangers, the money men, logisticians, and ‘charities.’ They arranged front companies and banking networks. As they had done in Afghanistan, the Arabs created their own brigade, allegedly part of the Bosnian army but operating on its own. The muj, as they came to be known, were fierce fighters against the better-armed Serbs. They engaged in ghastly torture, murder, and mutilation that seemed excessive even by Balkan standards.”
The funding and recruitment of the mujahedeen to Bosnia was organized by Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network: “Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic decided to take aid where he could… Better yet, al Qaeda sent men, trained, tough fighters. European and U.S. intelligence services began to trace the funding and support of the muj to bin Laden in Sudan, and to facilities that had already been established by the muj in Western Europe itself.”
The Afghan-Arab mujahedeen force in Bosnia was engaged in an “al Qaeda jihad”: “Although Western intelligence agencies never labeled the muj activity in Bosnia an al Qaeda jihad, it is now clear that is exactly what it was.” Clarke noted that “[m]any of the names that we first encountered in Bosnia showed up later in other roles, working for al Qaeda.” These included:
1) Abu al-Makki, who was seen in the December, 2001 video standing next to bin Laden “as al Qaeda’s leader extolled the September 11 attacks”;2) Abu al-Haili, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 for planning to attack U.S. ships;3) Ali al-Shamrani, who was arrested by Saudi police for attacking the U.S. military aid mission in 1995;4) Khalil Deek, arrested in 1999 for planning attacks against U.S. installations in Jordan;5) Fateh Kamel, part of the Millennium Plot cell in Canada;6) Khalid Almihdhar, 9/11 hijacker fought in Bosnia; and,7) Nawaf Alhazmi, 9/11 hijacker fought in the Bosnian civil war.
Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic, lower right, meeting with Al-Qaeda linked Arab-Afghan mujahedeen in Bosnia. One of the hijackers of the second attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, possessed a Bosnian passport. Senior Al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was granted Bosnian citizenship in November, 1995. He is allegedly the mastermind and planner of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. Mohammed was born in Kuwait to a family from the Baluchi region of Pakistan. He went to Bosnia in September, 1995. He went in the guise of a Muslim “humanitarian aid worker” for an Islamic charity front organization called Egyptian Relief, a front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood of Cairo.
The Bosnian government also issued a passport to Mahrez Amduni, a senior aide to Ossama Bin Laden, in 1997. In an Agence France Presse news report from September 24, 1999, “Bin Laden Was Granted Bosnian Passport”, it was reported: “Earlier this week the Bosnian government confirmed it had granted citizenship and passport to a Tunisian-born senior aide of bin-Laden in 1997. The government said citizenship was given to Mahrez Amduni, known in Sarajevo as Mehrez Amdouni.” The same report noted that the Bosnian government destroyed all the documents and files relating to Ossama Bin Laden: “’The Bosnian embassy in Vienna granted a passport to bin Laden in 1993,’ Dani magazine said, quoting anonymous sources, emphasizing that files and traces linked to his case have recently been destroyed by the government.
“‘High Muslim officials of the Bosnian foreign ministry agreed that it was the top priority. It was even more important than investigating a person responsible for granting a passport to the most wanted terrorist in the world,’ Dani reported.”
Marko Attila Hoare conceded that “Osama bin Lade himself … plays very much an off-stage role” in Bosnia “although he apparently hoped to use the mujahedeen presence in Bosnia to create a base for operations against the US and its allies in Europe.” Ossama Bin Laden was part of “How Bosnia Armed”, by violating the UN arms embargo against Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. Renate Flottau, an award-winning German journalist, reported seeing Ossama Bin Laden meeting with Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic in 1994. Born in Munich, she began her career working for newspapers and magazines in Germany. She worked in television as well in 1976.
In the 1980s she settled in Belgrade with her husband Heiko Flottau. She worked initially for the German television network Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF, Second German Television) and then became the Balkan correspondent for Der Spiegel in 1986. Flottau was one of the few Western journalists to meet Osama Bin Laden in Sarajevo when Bin Laden met with Izetbegovic. Flottau was waiting to interview Izetbegovic in his office when she met Ossama Bin Lade in Sarajevo in November, 1994. Bin Laden gave her his business card and informed her that he was planning to bring Afghan-Arab mujahedeen fighters to Bosnia. He was given VIP treatment and rushed in to meet with Izetbegovic.
Bin Laden spoke to Flottau for ten minutes in fluent English. Moreover, he told her that he had a Bosnian passport issued by the Izetbegovic government. Staff for Izetbegovic told her that Bin Laden is “here every day”. Flottau maintained that she again saw Bin Laden meeting at Izetbegovic’s office one week later. In addition, she witnessed Bin Laden in the company of senior members of Izetbegovic’s ultranationalist Muslim party, the SDA, Stranka Demokratske Akcije, Party of Democratic Action. She recognized members of the Bosnian Muslim secret police in an meeting that she later characterized as “incredibly bizarre”. Bosnian Muslim Sejfudin Tokic, who was the speaker of the upper house of the Bosnian parliament, confirmed these meetings between Ossama Bin Laden and Alija Izetbegovic. There is also purportedly a photograph of the meeting.
Flottau’s account was corroborated by veteran British London Times journalist Eve-Ann Prentice on February 6, 2006 when she testified under oath at the ICTY. Prentice stated that she witnessed Ossama Bin Laden “being escorted” into the office of Alija Izetbegovic in November, 1994. Ossama Bin Laden “was shown straight through to Mr. Izetbegovic’s office.”
Bosnian Muslim Army members of the Al-Qaeda linked El Mujahedeen Unit in downtown Zenica wearing green headbands with Arabic script to signify Islamic jihad, 1995. Ossama Bin Laden was able to effectively finance and organize Al Qaeda and mujahedeen recruits for the Bosnian Muslim Army. In the Los Angeles Times article “Terrorists Use Bosnia as Base and Sanctuary” from October 7, 2001, the report noted that there was a connection between Al-Qaeda and Ossama Bin Laden and the El Mujahedeen Battalion in the Bosnian Muslim Army:
“Bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan.”
Ossama Bin Laden relied on his experiences in Bosnia in the creation, development, and expansion of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Bin Laden also relied on his Bosnian experience in planning and organizing the 9/11 attacks.
Source: http://serbianna.com/blogs/savich/archives/1359
Arevordi, this is an amazing entry. You did an amazing job with the citations. The "defenders of democracy" are all too ready to publish demoralizing smut about any and every imaginable topic to degrade Armenia and its people. It's poetic justice to put together a response that shows that the democracy zombies need to get their own house (or the house of the nation who they are ready to bow their heads to) in order.
ReplyDeleteI know the intelligence business requires secrecy (after all, through deception they shall conduct war as the mossad proudly boasts), and quite frankly the US can feed its sheeple all the bullshit they can gorge on, but sometimes you need to call a spade a spade.