How very convenient - by Richard... Monday, May 02, 2011

How very convenient - by Richard... Monday, May 02, 2011

Obama is in trouble, not least after putting out what is widely thought to be a forged birth certificate. And, hey presto! He suddenly announces that Bin Laden is dead, supposedly killed on Sunday in a compound in Pakistan during a raid by US Navy Seals - the day after the anniversary of Hitler's death.

Diverse sources have been claiming for some time that Bin Laden was killed a while ago. There is no hard evidence for any of these assertions but, looking at the multiple reports of Obama's claim, there seems to be a similar lack of confirmation.

The US military has long been used to scepticism when it comes to its claims of taking out key terrorists, and has thus variously offered three types of evidence – photographs of the body, independent witness reports, and DNA identification evidence.

Obama claims that the Seals "took custody of his body", but so far we have seen no photographs, although The Daily Mail is claiming a "confirmed kill", showing a screen grab from Pakistan's Express TV, purporting to show bin Laden's "maimed face" (below).

A better photograph has already been dismissed as a photoshop fake, with an illustration of how it was done here.

Nor, yet can we have had any details from an independent post mortem examination it is too early. Some might argue, though, that we need reliable evidence that excludes any possibility of the body having been preserved. We have, after all, been there before.

And we are now told that it is planned to bury the body at sea, "to avoid his grave site becoming a focus as Saddam Hussain's grave has become in Iraq". The Taliban in Pakistan, however, are claiming that their leader is still alive and reports of his death are baseless. This is according to Karachi-based GEO Television, citing a statement from the group. Are they going to be going fishing?

Nevertheless, in the absence of anything in the way of independently verifiable evidence, all we have is an unsupported claim by a tarnished president. We can be absolutely assured, though, that US presidents never lie, and have never been mistaken about anything. We can safely believeeverything we are told.

As thousands of journalists and commentators recycle exactly the same material, you just know this makes sense. Never mind the quality, feel the width. There is no way the media would be publishing this if it was not 100 percent true. And now, so many people have an investment in it being true that any alternative is not permitted.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how history is made.

COMMENT THREAD

RESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCES: BIN LADEN STILL DEAD (updated)

May 1, 2011 posted by Gordon Duff · 32 Comments

“KILLED IN PAKISTAN – BODY RECOVERED BY U.S. TROOPS”

NATIONAL VICTORY OR CHILDISH SNAKE OIL TO AID THE 9/11 COVERUP AND BOOST OBAMA POLLS?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

We got our first reports of bin Laden’s death “yesterday” about a week ago. Reports outlining his trek to Pakistan began dotting the internet and news services. We began to “smell” something “cooking.”

As to reports made today and the President’s speech, we are highly skeptical. Issues of “timing,” citing the release of Obama’s birth certificate and the crushing of top contender Donald Trump could be seen as sources for doubt but coincidence and circumstance can go either way, any way or no way at all.

Were bin Laden to have successfully faked his own death (as most “in the know” have long believed bin Laden dead) his actual death, if this is the case, is not the death of a terrorist leader at all.

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In fact, bin Laden is as much a “patsy” as Sirhan Sirhan, James Ray or Lee Oswald. There is reliable proof about bin Laden. It says he was always CIA.

Tonight, President Obama and network pundits, Wolf Blitzer and Geraldo Geraldo trumpeted the killing of the “mass murderer of all time.”

Bin Laden had been my “great white whale” for some time also. Several years ago, I contacted friends in Pakistan known to have access to those who might be able to locate bin Laden. It was my wish to ask bin Laden to intercede in the release of a captured American and I was willing to travel into Afghanistan or the Pakistan tribal areas, unarmed and alone to do so.

Yes, I am an idiot.

The response I got was that bin Laden had died years ago. This fact, now, if I am to believe what I am told, is not a fact at all. However, this fact led me on a journey to review the 9/11 attacks. That journey led me to Building 7 and the Pentagon. It also led me to others, some wildly inept and unreliable and others, discerning and capable.

TONITE

Tonite I saw those I find less than credible using wild and speculative words as fact, tying bin Laden to 9/11, something no court, no intelligence agency, no law enforcement group ever did.

Tonite I heard many things I knew were untrue to help sell the import of bin Laden’s death, a death reported long ago by Benazir Bhutto.

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While accusations about bin Laden are bandied about, this surviving CIA transcript, the last verified words from a decade ago, tell another story:

Notes:

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

FOREIGN BROADCASTING INTERNATIONAL SERVICE:

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic [FBIS Report] Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic,independent television station financed by the Qatari Government, which can be accessedat URL: http://www.aljazeera.net, carries at 2011 GMT on 24 September the text of the following letter by Usama Bin Ladin “to the Pakistani people.”

• “We hope that these brothers would be the first martyrs in Islam’s battle in this age against the new Jewish crusade that is being led by the biggest crusader, Bush, under the banner of the cross. This battle is one of Islam’s immortal battles.”
• “We beseech God to grant him victory against the forces of infidelity and arrogance, and to crush the new crusader-Jewish campaign on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
• “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.”
• “Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. . Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle.”
• “All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”
• “Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US Government has stated.
• “The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.”
• “They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia.”
• “Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.”
• “Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 180)
• agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taliban and then this incident happened.”
• “Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat.”
• “President Bush or any other US President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.”
• “Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan.”
• “I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.”
• “This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel.”
• ”The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves.”
• “Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.”

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

END OF OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT

More notes received tonite:

• Bin Laden & CIA ~ Allegations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA-Osama_bin_Laden_controversy

• The BBC, in an article published shortly after the 9/11 attacks, stated that bin Laden “received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian.”^[1]

• In a 2003 article, Michael Powelson of the Russian journal Demokratizatsiya wrote:

It is difficult to believe that the United States played no role in the operations of the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it is much more likely that the United States knew full-well of bin Laden’s operation and gave it all the support they could.^[2]

• A 2004 BBC article entitled “Al-Qaeda’s origins and links”, the BBC wrote:

During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.^[3]

• In a 2006 In-Depth piece on Osama Bin Laden, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published that,^[4]

Bin Laden apparently received training from the CIA, which was backing the Afghan holy warriors – the mujahedeen – who were tying down Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

• An article in Der Spiegel, in 2007, entitled “Arming the Middle East”, Siegesmund von Ilsemann called Bin Laden “one of the CIA’s best weapons customers.” ^[5]

• According to author Steve Coll,

Overall, the U.S. government looked favorably on the Arab recruitment drives. … Some of the most ardent cold warriors at [CIA headquarters at] Langley thought this program should be formally endorsed and extended. … [T]he CIA “examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of international brigade” … Robert Gates [then-head of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence] recalled. … At the [CIA's] Islamabad station [station chief] Milt Bearden felt that bin Laden himself “actually did some very good things” by putting money into Afghanistan.^[6]

• Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, and Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2001-2003, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”^[7]

• In conversation with former British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American.^[8]Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, has also stated that bin Laden appreciated the United States help in Afghanistan. On CNN’s Larry King program he said:^[9]

Bandar bin Sultan: This is ironic. In the mid-’80s, if you remember, we and the United – Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn’t it ironic?

Larry King: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him.

• According to Iranian state-owned Press TV, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been fired from the agency for disclosing sensitive information, has claimed the United States was on intimate terms with the Taliban andAl-Qaeda, using them to further certain goals in Central Asia.^[10]

• According to author David N. Gibbs “a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests … direct Agency support for Bin Laden’s activities.”^[11] Both Bin Laden and the CIA “held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).”^[11] “Bin Laden worked especially closely with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar“^[12] who Gibbs calls “the CIA’s favored Mujahiddin commander”.^[11] Gibbs quotes Le Monde as saying bin Laden was “recruited by the CIA” in 1979,^[11][13] Associated Press as saying a former bin Laden aide told them that in 1989 the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden,^[11][14] and Jane’s Intelligence Review as stating Bin Laden “worked in close association with U.S. agents” in raising money for the Mujahiddin from “vast family connections” near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.^[11][15]

• In August 2010, Fidel Castro claimed that bin Laden was a spy, employed by the United States.^[16]