I Don't Believe It

There is no question that, as I have aged, I have turned into a unabashed skeptic and cynic when it comes to ANY official pronouncements from my government. Whatever they tell us, it is dripping with "wag the dog" political overtones. Whatever they tell us, it serves a specific political objective. And, whatever they tell us, tends to contain only a slim thread of truth.

A hint of the truth only appears years, if not decades, later. We find out what was really going on through diligent independent research, scientifically-constructed models, newly released government documents, leaks (like WikiLeaks), deathbed confessions and former government officials who are hit with pangs of conscience.

Because the information uncovered lags so far behind the actual events or situation, almost any depiction that does not toe the official government version is labeled a conspiracy theory. For each such event or situation, there tends to be several of these theories competing with each other. In the end, what actually happened gets lost in a shroud of government disinformation, competing theories and time.

Last night we were told that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US Special Forces and his body was quickly buried at sea. Besides the fact that this quick burial means that nobody can verify independently that the deceased, if there actually is a deceased, was the person the government says it was, there are many who question if Bin Laden has not been dead for several years.

David Ray Griffin, for one, contends that Bin Laden has been dead for quite some time.

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:

A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement . . . stated . . . that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial.

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...

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is also suspicious of the "official" story.

Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?

Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that “bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia.” That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?

This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting “USA USA.” Could something else be going on?

And Dave Lindorff makes several excellent points in reference to the "official" announcement.

Think about it a moment. The US had the living Osama bin Ladin in their hands last night! After almost 10 years, they had successfully captured the guy who allegedly managed to mastermind the biggest, most disastrous attack on the US in the modern history of the country -- perhaps of all time -- a coordinated aerial assault on the financial and military hearts of the world’s most powerful country, carried with nothing but box cutters -- an attack which managed to neutralize the mightiest air defense system in the world! And instead of bundling him into an orange jump suit, putting a bag over his head and bringing him in for interrogation, like they’ve done to hundreds of other lesser captives in the so-called decade-long “War on Terror,” they “double-tapped” him on the spot?

What were they thinking?

Given the trove of information he could have offered about US terrorism vulnerabilities, about his far-flung terrorist organization and its future plans, I have to think the only conceivable answer is they had to have been thinking that this guy would have some pretty embarrassing things to say about the US and its dirty “War.”

There has been considerable controversy surrounding bin Laden’s origins, with news organizations such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, among others, all reporting that he had received funding, training and weapons during the 1980s from the CIA, which was reportedly using him as a conduit for supporting Arab volunteers fighting against the Soviet military forces in Afghanistan. The US has denied these claims, but the evidence is rather convincing that for at least some time, bin Laden was considered “our guy.” How embarrassing if he were to confirm that at a trial! How embarrassing if he went further, and said that his relationship with the CIA had extended beyond the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan.

But the potential for US discomfort with a living, talking Osama bin Laden goes well past his early relationship with the CIA. Shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2011, US forces, having toppled the Taliban government in Kabul, appeared to have surrounded and trapped bin Laden and his supporters in the mountains of Tora Bora. Then, suddenly, the siege was called off, and US forces were largely pulled out of the country, to join forces that were being assembled in Kuwait and the UAE in preparation for a war that the Bush/Cheney administration was secretly gearing up for against Iraq -- a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, and that posed no threat to the US or its allies. How embarrassing for Washington if bin Laden were to tell about how close he had been to capture back then, only to suddenly find that he and his men were being given a free pass to escape to Pakistan!

And then there is the matter of 9-11 itself.

One doesn’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, conjuring up all kinds of ideas about the attacks being an “inside job” planned by some nefarious cabal of plotters within the US, to believe that the true story of how those attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were able to go off so flawlessly has yet to be told. The 9-11 Commission has been thoroughly discredited as a cover-up, even by its own members. My own reporting has confirmed that the FBI lied to that commission about not having the flight recorders of all four of the planes involved.

There is also the mystery of the Israeli Mossad agents who, according to reports in the Jewish Forward newspaper, were observed filming the attacks from across the Hudson River and who were also seen apparently celebrating as the buildings came down, and who were later captured in their van by New Jersey police, only to be released under State Department pressure, and flown safely to Israel.

There are the curious put options that were placed on a few companies that were certain to have their shares tank after the attack -- American and United Airlines, and several of the financial companies that had offices in the Twin Towers -- puts that were arranged through the investment bank Alex Brown, whose chairman, until 1998, was a guy, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, who at the time was a high-ranking member of the CIA. The commission never even tried to find out who placed those incredibly prescient puts and who collected on them.

Would bin Laden have had anything to say about who or about which intelligence agencies might have had advance knowledge of his plans before the 9-11 attacks?

We’ll never know...

It is hard to know WHAT to believe. At this point, I have decided that, whatever the official storyline is, the truth is several light years away!