Wednesday, May 4, 2011

More reasons for doubting the official Bin Laden story

But first, I just discovered the following very interesting items on the 'net. From the NY Times:  Obama Says He Won't Release Photos of Bin Laden's Corpse. And from Citizens for Legitimate Government: CIA Denies Bin Laden Was Captured Before Killed. "The CIA categorically denies two stories coming out of Pakistan, sourced to bin Laden family members: 1) that Osama bin Laden was captured at the scene and then killed minutes afterward; this from his daughter. 2) that a second bin Laden son, Mohammed, was thrown on the chopper as it departed Abbottabad. "We categorically deny both of those," said a CIA spokesman."

Both stories, sadly, confirm my suspicions, as expressed in the previous post. And also my deepest fears, not only about what actually may have happened (which seems bad enough) but also regarding what all the conspiracy theorists are going to make of them and also what ordinary people all over the world are going to think. In short, this REALLY LOOKS BAD!!!!!

Here are my reasons for doubting the story they've put out:

First, we have to consider how unlikely it would have been for Bin Laden to choose that particular place to hang out. Even if he was under the "protection" of the Pakistani military, the man had a huge price on his head -- so why tempt some soldier who might spot him or get wind of his presence and decide to rat him out?

How could he possibly have entered that compound un-noticed? Did they find a tunnel? Not that I've heard. By helicopter? How many suspicions would that have raised? It's a military site and they have checkpoints everywhere. People have to present ID. We're talking about a 6'5" Arab whose age is known. How does he get past the guards? Even assuming they've been bribed, how do you risk even one of them deciding to blow the whistle and collect millions in reward money?

How could they be sure they weren't being deliberately set up? Suppose Bin Laden hatched a plot to make it look like he was there, complete with "wife" to rush to "his" defense and then ID "him." They said his "wife" called out his name. What would she have said? "Get out of here Osama Bin Laden, they're after you"? Isn't that a bit wordy? Did any of them speak Arabic? Could they even understand what she said? If it's a setup then it's a great one. Either the mission fails and they have to admit an embarrassing mistake. Or the mission "succeeds" and they manage to convince the world he's dead when he's not. Clearly a win win for Bin Laden and a disaster for the rest of us.

Also, how do you claim he was IDed by his wife? If you don't know the guy's identity then you don't know the "wife's" identity either. Who IDed the "wife"?

We learned recently from Panetta what I'd already suspected (see yesterday's post): they actually had no evidence whatsoever that Bin Laden was on the premises. They were operating on a hope and a prayer. Chances of failure were awfully high, as were chances of a major embarrassment. Somebody stuck his neck way out there and it looks like that somebody might well be trying really hard to cover his ass with a raft of lies.

So what if it's a "Muslim custom" to bury the dead within 24 hours. Show me a directive from any branch of the US military insisting that all Muslim combatants killed on the battlefield get buried within that time frame. Suddenly this is official US policy? If you want to convince us then prove it. Show us the directive.

If they were looking for OBL and he was unarmed, as they now admit, then the first concern would be to identify him, NOT shoot him in the head and blow half his brains out. So the story I've quoted above, which is apparently coming from his "daughter," rings true. If they actually found someone that resembled Bin Laden, they'd have photographed him and sent the photos off for identification. They'd have then taken a blood sample. And they would have held this person until they were sure it was actually him. Once he's been IDed, and if it actually was him (which I strongly doubt) then a decision would have to be made whether to hold him for trial or simply execute him on the spot. There's NO WAY they'd have decided to immediatly get him on board a boat and bury him at sea, that makes no sense at all. Unless it's not really him, in which case it does make some (twisted) sense, because if it's not him, you and your buddies are guilty of murdering those people on the first floor (remember them?). And if it IS him, then the first thing you want to do is make sure the rest of the world accepts that it's him by encouraging an independent autopsy and DNA testing by independent agencies. All we have at this point is the word of the (ever-(un)reliable) CIA. How convincing is that?

I feel sure they have photos. Of some guy who maybe looks a bit like Bin Laden, but isn't him. The photos probably reveal no wound, because they would have been taken prior to executing the poor guy, for identification purposes. How do you identify a face with a huge hole in it? And why take a picture after you've done such an awful deed? As proof of your guilt?

I've been defending Obama up till now because I've always been convinced of his basic honesty. But now I have doubts, because by now he has to be extremely suspicious, and he has to have seen whatever photos were taken. But I suppose he sees that it's too late now to back down and confess that, "Hey folks, maybe we goofed. Maybe it wasn't Bin Laden after all."

And I'm sorry, but this is the 21st century folks, and we've been subject to all sorts of violent images for many years now. I remember seeing a horrible photo in the National Enquirer of Jayne Mansfield after her auto accident, with most of her brains hanging out. I remember seeing a large gathering of high school students, fascinated by the video of Daniel Pearl being beheaded, as transmitted via a school computer. I couldn't watch, but they did.

So when Obama tells us it would be "inappropriate" to make public the one piece of evidence that might be used to confirm the story he's putting out, I have to confess: I cringe.

4 comments:

  1. Didn't Sadam have 5 or 6 doubles who could stand in for him all too willing to take a bullet for him? It could have been disinformation fed to the CIA who might have been getting a little too close to the real deal. Oh dear God, don't let this be the case. Not when Obamas' approval rating is finally getting to be where it should have been all along.
    I don't know how identifiable a face with a bullet through the forehead would be anyway(especially with the miracles of Photoshop). A body would have been nice. I wonder who gave the order to dump the body ahem....bury it at sea. Surely they must have discussed the plans for after the kill for many months in the CIA war room. I doubt it was an on the spot decision made by the fellows on the boat in the heat of battle.
    Ashevillekat

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  2. I admire the skepticism but it's all going way off course, and a dead end one at that. I think this was a timed hit/murder. It was Osama and it was his time to die. The big lie here is not that some fake Osama was killed or that the job was "botched." The big lie is that Obama is really in control of anything besides that which his puppetmasters allow him to be. He knows that. Everyone around him knows that. Only his supporters don't seem to get it.

    My main beef is not that Bin Laden was unarmed and simply murdered but that the administration has lied about it from night one. Notice how the whole story has developed and changed and continues to change on a daily basis. First, there was a firefight. But there was no such thing. Second, Osama was "resisting." WTF does that mean, oh wise and honest press secretary? He was reaching for a gun. What's next? He was reaching for his childhood toy named "Rosebud?"

    There's too many checkable hard facts here which will eventually come out, to put forth some wild-eyed "conspiracy" theory that Bin Laden wasn't the murder victim. Of course he was. The question is not whether it was him or not, it's that there was ever any intention to capture him alive. It was Obama's hit, that's all. No need to make it any more complicated or obtuse.

    Obama is simply NOT what most of his never say die supporters and excusers seem to wish he is, or ever was. It's that simple really. No need to invent crazy conspiracy theories or with the lazy good for nothing mainstream media, do any
    real investigative journalism. But even that obviously doesn't matter because most Americans wouldn't care one way or another if we murdered him in cold blood. And they don't care if Obama and their government lies to them, or acts like they're taking some higher moral ground. They justified torture and now murder.

    A bit of fuss will be stirred up for awhile, but soon everyone will be talking about gas prices and "royal" weddies and American Idol soon enough. Meanwhile the billions will continue to flow uninterrupted into the middle east with new Pentagon weapon contracts and so forth. Neverending war, what a concept. Make no mistake, the war on "terror" goes on, and will go on, because the very concept of a an endless war on a "concept" never has and never will have any real "end."

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  3. Hello again, Kat. Yeah, the manner in which this story is being told is extremely upsetting. And it's really hard to understand why Obama and Co. would try so hard to make themselve look so bad unless something had gone terribly wrong and they have no choice but to dissemble and stonewall. If Bush and Co had behaved this way, liberals would have been all over it, but Obama is being given a pass. At least so far. We'll see.

    I do NOT think this was a deliberate plan to assassinate Bin Laden, because he was just too valuable an information source and also because putting him on trial would have been a huge coup for Obama. Also I seriously doubt Bin Laden was there at all, because they had no evidence he was there and were basically winging it.

    What makes this whole thing so suspicious is 1. the dumping of the body; and 2. the various versions of what happened. I really can't imagine that if they had actually killed Bin Laden that they would have gotten rid of the body. The only way to convince the world that they had really gotten to him would have been to invite a team of independent experts to conduct an autopsy and do an independent DNA confirmation. That's how it's done in the civilized world, you don't just dump someone into the ocean and claim you were following Sharia law. Obviously there was no effort to bury the other murder victims with the same consideration and my guess is that they are right now in a Pakistani morgue.

    No, when you get such wildly varying versions of the same story, you know something went very wrong. Someone tried to cover his ass by putting out the most heroic version he could think of. And it might have worked, only there were witnesses who told a different story, so the "official" story had to be changed. If things had gone as officially reported there would have been no need to lie about it in the first place. And that's what the early versions clearly were: lies.

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  4. You make some good points, Anonymous, and you could be right.

    "There's too many checkable hard facts here which will eventually come out, to put forth some wild-eyed "conspiracy" theory that Bin Laden wasn't the murder victim."

    There ARE checkable facts for sure, but I see no sign that the administration is eager to have them checked. They could have showed copies of the photo to independent experts from various countries but so far there's no sign they have any interest in doing that. They could inform us that the credentials of Bin Laden's "wife" and "children" have been checked, but again no sign of any interest on their part in doing that.

    However, if third parties DO inform us that they've seen the photos and agree that this has to be Bin Laden, I'll be happy to accept that it is. Also if it turns out that the others on the scene were actually who they are being claimed to be then that too will satisfy me. Until then I remain skeptical. There was never any solid reason to assume Bin Laden was there in the first place, which is one reason I'm so skeptical. And if they had actually killed him they would have handled things very differently. That's how I see it and I could certainly be wrong. I hope to God I am.

    As for the rest, as I say I am NOT a conspiracy buff and for very good reasons, because the sort of consipiratorial thinking that's going around these days is simply not credible. I don't think it likely there is some huge plot to control the US presidency, no. I think it much more likely that some CIA eager beavers got caught with their pants down, filed a false report and after the fog cleared Obama was somehow convinced to cover for them because it would be too embarrassing and also damaging to him politically to have to back down at this point and admit it was all a huge mistake.

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