Fathers Canada

ALEX NEWMAN
New American
June 8, 2011

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Osama bin Laden unit, told the U.K. Daily Telegraph in a recent interview he was prevented from capturing or killing the terrorist by his superiors on at least 10 separate occasions.

The 22-year CIA veteran-turned-whistle=blower resigned from the agency in 2004, disgusted by the government’s lies surrounding the terror war. And he’s been embarrassing the U.S. establishment ever since.

In 1995, Scheuer was selected to lead the spy agency’s bin Laden efforts. By then the militant Islamist was exiled in Sudan after angering Saudi authorities. Bin Laden was running several businesses in the African nation that Scheuer suggested disrupting. “We formulated operations and submitted them for approval but they would not approve any of them,” the ex-CIA official told the Daily Telegraph. “If we had been able to deal a serious economic blow it could have been a show-stopper.”

The next year, bin Laden declared war on the American government. And in 1997, when bin Laden was again living in Afghanistan, Scheuer said his team groomed a band of Afghans to capture the suspected terror boss. There were at least two “clear opportunities” to bring down bin Laden by the middle of 1998, according to Scheuer. But in both cases, he said, CIA bosses refused to proceed.

Then, in August of that year, bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network bombed two American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was targeted for serving as a U.S. intelligence hub for the CIA. The attacks killed numerous U.S. diplomats and at least two CIA agents, according to the Associated Press.

Scheuer told the Telegraph that following the missed opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden in 1998, there were at least eight other chances to get the terror mastermind. By that point, bin Laden was supposedly among the U.S. government’s most wanted criminals. But for some unknown reason, senior officials refused to authorize his capture or assassination.“One 50-cent round could have put us all out of our agony,” Scheuer explained. But that didn’t happen, as high-level authorities consistently ordered the CIA unit not to stop bin Laden.

In 1999, Scheuer told the paper that he sent an angry letter to higher-ups demanding to know why his men were risking their lives for somebody the U.S. government did not seem to want stopped. “I don’t know what you are doing when you talk to the President but he will not get a better opportunity than this,” Scheuer explained to his superiors.

Eventually, the bin Laden-unit chief, Scheuer, was dismissed from his position before being reinstated after the September 11 attacks. A few months after that, the U.S. government and its allies had bin Laden surrounded in the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. But yet again, high-level officials let him escape.

A Senate investigation from 2009 explained some of the details in its summary. With bin Laden trapped, “calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan,” the document states. “The vast array of American military power … was kept on the sidelines.”

And according to the report, the decision not to capture or assassinate bin Laden, or at least cut off his escape route, was made by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks. Despite subsequent Bush administration protestations to the contrary, “the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora,” the Senate report concluded.

More than a few other reported examples of bin Laden being deliberately allowed to escape by senior officials in the United States and other governments have surfaced over the last decade. But according to the current version of President Obama’s ever-changing narrative, the terror leader was finally shot through the head by U.S. forces after being found unarmed at a hideout in Pakistan. His body was then supposedly dumped in the ocean for unknown reasons.

But questions continue to plague the government on almost every front. Since resigning over government lies, Scheuer in particular has been a persistent thorn in the side of American officials. He has published several widely acclaimed books criticizing U.S. policies including Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror and Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. And he regularly makes inflammatory statements in media appearances and speeches, too.

Last month, speaking in the U.K., Scheuer said American and British officials including Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron “don’t have a clue” about the terror war or what is going on in the West. “The main recruitment sergeant for al Qaeda is Barack Obama,” he charged.

And according to Scheuer it has nothing to do with America‘s rapidly vanishing freedoms, as the government continues to claim. “We are being attacked in the West and we will continue to be attacked in the West as long as we are in Afghanistan, as long as we support the Israelis, as long as we protect the Saudi police state,” Scheuer told the crowd. “They can’t cope with the fact that it’s nothing to do with the way we live. It doesn’t have anything to do with elections or democracy or liberty.” He asserted that the West was being attacked for “supporting fascism across the Middle East,” not so-called “gender equality” or any such notions.

In the recent past, Scheuer also accused the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission of deliberately hiding the truth about the attacks. “It was a whitewash and a lie from top to bottom,” he told Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano.

Numerous lawmakers and high-level officials have also made various allegations about why it took the government 10 years to get bin Laden. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), for example, accused then-President George W. Bush of “intentionally” allowing bin Laden to elude capture to justify the invasion of Iraq.

As The New American reported recently, bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and other Islamic extremistshave indeed enjoyed a sort love-hate relationship with the American government for decades. Even now,the Obama administration and the United Nations are backing an insurgency in Libya against its former ally, dictator Moammar Gadhafi, where certain leadership elements are known to be affiliated directly with al-Qaeda and related groups.

Why high-ranking officials in the U.S. government would have let bin Laden escape on so many occasions is certainly a matter that should be investigated by the press and authorities. Speculation has been running rampant for years. But unfortunately for Americans, analysts don’t expect serious inquiries to happen any time soon.

Day of the Dead: The Hit Man as Hero

Already the story is starting to unravel, mutate, transmogrify. Government statements that were presented as gospel truths in every media outlet in the world, and which served as the basis for ten thousand earnest, serious commentaries, turn out, one day later, to have been false.

CHRIS FLOYD
Empire Burlesque
May 6, 2011

Already the story is starting to unravel, mutate, transmogrify. Government statements that were presented as gospel truths in every media outlet in the world, and which served as the basis for ten thousand earnest, serious commentaries, turn out, one day later, to have been false.

We had been told – by the president’s top “counterterrorism adviser,” John Brennan – that Osama had been “engaged in a firefight” when he was gunned down by American agents. This was not true; it turns out that he was unarmed when they shot him in the head. We were told that the base coward used his wife as a human shield while he pumped hot lead at America’s boys. This was not true. There were no human shields – although Osama’s wife was shot in the leg, while another woman, wife to a bin Laden aide, was shot and killed by the agents.

Of course, even these new officially released“facts” must be taken with a grain of salt, since they spring from the same impenetrable murk of the security apparat from whence the original story of the raid emerged. Will these new details change tomorrow?

(Meanwhile, actual reporters doing actual reporting independently uncovered another falsehood in the first story: the compound that was raided in Abbottabad was not a “million-dollar mansion,” but a rather ordinary house in a middle-class area, worth about $250,000.)

In any case, we are told by the Fightin’ Patriotic Progressives who now stand foursquare behind the apparat that we should not trouble our little heads over these “discrepancies.” Such things are to be expected in the “fog of war.” (But didn’t the president and his national security team – including John Brennan – actually watch the raid unfold on live video feed? Didn’t Brennan see what happened with his own eyes?)

Or if not fog, then the original misinformation can be put down to “subconscious” mythologizing, as Digby tells us. (“I think it was mythologizing for the sake of mythologizing, even if it was subconscious.”) Our leaders wanted an old-fashioned cowboy shoot-out for the big climax of the bin Laden story, and so, somehow, the counterterrorism chief of the United States just, you know, subconsciously rearranged the facts to fit the myth. But as Digby sternly warns us: “Let’s not get stupid. The fact that they embellished doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” That’s true; but “the fact that they embellished” does mean that we would be, well, stupid to accept anything that belches forth from the Secret State at face value.

I don’t mean to pick on Digby; but the post linked above serves as an almost perfect example of the moral schizophrenia that has gripped the progressive movement since the advent of Obama. At one point, she rightly notes that no one would have been bothered if the Administration had admitted from the start that bin Laden was unarmed when they killed him. As she says, the assassination scenario was duly praised by such rock-ribbed liberal icons as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; and she notes, astutely, “I don’t think there’s any political downside, and in fact it probably makes them look more macho in the eyes of the people.”

(Indeed; all manner of liberals have been exulting in the new image of Obama the Heroic Hit Man. For example, Juan Cole and James Wolcott – both long-time scourges of the witless, brutal militarism of the Bush Regime – posted up a lolcat-style photo of a cool, grinning Obama in shades, emblazoned with the tagline, “Sorry it took so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate – I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden.”)

Digby then goes on to offer up another telling – and damning – insight:

Besides, the question of whether the president could order an assassination was settled some time ago. They assert the right to keep prisoners in jail forever and kill American citizens, and nobody cares, so why in the world would there be any domestic blowback for ordering the death of the world’s most wanted man?

Here is where the schizophrenia sets in. It is obvious, from this and other posts, that Digby is horrified and outraged at Obama’s open claim of this universal license to kill and imprison with impunity. That is, she fully recognizes that the United States government is led by a man who believes he can murder anyone he pleases, at any time, at his own arbitrary decision. She knows that he has used this power over and over, most extensively in Pakistan, where even by the most conservative estimates hundreds of innocent people – including many women and children – have been killed in Obama’s drone missile campaign.

She knows, in other words, that Obama has killed hundreds of innocent people. Hundreds of innocent people. Little children, women, old folks, young marrieds, fathers, mothers, teenagers – he has killed them in their own homes, in the streets of their villages, in their cars, at their weddings and funerals and birthday parties and family gatherings, raining down missiles, without warning, with no way to escape, no defense, killed them, the babies, the children, the old, the sick, ripped their bodies to shreds, buried them under rubble, tore off their heads, set them on fire to die in the purest agony. She knows this. She decries this. She believes it is wrong. Yet the general thrust of her widely read blog is that this man who does these things, who commits these horrors, who claims these murderous, tyrannous powers, should, at all costs, be retained in power so that he can carry on doing these things which sicken and horrify her.

But this is not simply a case of lesser evilism in a system where all the alternatives are grim – i.e., “Well, Göring is a monster but he’s probably marginally better than Hitler; let’s support a bloody coup to install him as Führer”. No; Digby and many other progressives whose writings show they are perfectly aware of the atrocities that Obama has committed and the evil policies he embraces – such as the unrestricted license to kill – still display an active affection and celebratory support for him. To them, even though he has killed these people and claimed these awful powers, he is still one cool guy.

Witness their delight at Obama’s comedy routine at the Correspondent’s Dinner last week, when he poked fun at the pathetic Donald Trump, garnering big yocks from the Beltway elite – even as NATO missiles were killing three young grandchildren of Moamar Gadafy: more child sacrifices offered up on the altar of our modern Molochs. They didn’t even notice.

Oh, they often shake their heads sadly or waggle their fingers sternly at some action or policy of Obama’s. They often can’t understand why he does these things – cut taxes for the rich, bail out the bankers, torture Bradley Manning, form commissions to gut Social Security, escalate and prolong the Terror War, kill hundreds of people with drone missiles, etc., etc. But nothing douses their fundamental (fundamentalist?) fervor to keep him in power and to scorn those who oppose him. Nothing keeps them from seeing themselves as his true and faithful “base,” still waiting for him to return to them, despite his many betrayals. (Subconsciousbetrayals, no doubt.)

And we can expect more encomiums to the president’s eloquence and heroism from these quarters on Thursday, when, with the good taste and tact so characteristic of our bipartisan ruling class, Obama goes to the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City to celebrate the shooting of an unarmed man in the head.

Yes, the president of the United States, accompanied by various Establishment worthies and doubtless a few dignified clerics, will stand at Ground Zero to glorify a killing that his own minions tell us will change nothing whatsoever: the wars will go on, “vigilance will be redoubled” (i.e., civil liberties will continue to be eroded, black ops will continue in the 70 countries or more where America is carrying out covert operations), the Secret State will keep growing, the universal license to kill and snatch and incarcerate and torture will remain in full force. So what exactly is being celebrated?

A cynic – or someone being skeptically “stupid” in the Digbyian sense – might say the occasion is more exploitation than celebration: exploiting the grief of the families of 9/11 survivors who will be trotted out to express their tearful gratitude to the president who has given them “closure” – and who will reap the poll bounce from this moment of “national unity,” just as his predecessor rode a similar exploitation of death to his own re-election.

Oh, but let us not be stupid. Let us acknowledge that the president kills innocent people and “asserts the right to keep prisoners in jail forever and kill American citizens” and puts out false information (subconsciously, of course! Always subconsciously!) about murky operations which we must take on faith like dutiful subjects in militarized state, not fully-fledged citizens in a republic – but let us still revel in his triumphs, delight in his eloquence, and work with all our strength to make sure he continues to invert, pervert and subvert every progressive value we hold dear.

That’s not “stupid” at all, is it?

***

UPDATE: Administration officials are now denying that Obama’s national security team watched the execution of bin Laden on video feed, as was originally reported. Officials now say that the team was receiving “minute-by-minute updates” — via unspecified technology — and that, according to CIA honcho Leon Panetta, “there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on.” That would be the 20 or 25 minutes when the actual killing took place, presumably.

It’s hard to understand how this wild story about the team watched the whole thing unfold in real time. Just one of those crazy urban myths, I guess. Or perhaps it was because of this bit of “subconscious mythologizing” that was offered up by the president’s own chief adviser on counterterrorism, John Brennan, just two days ago:

“We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement to its time on target to the extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the target… we were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation. I’m not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there, but it was – it gave us the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis.”

I suppose really vague language like “we were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation” from the start to the kill to the “extraction of the remains” and the grand skeedaddle could be twisted by stupid conspiracy theorists into some kind of cockamamie notion that Barry and Hill and, er, John Brennan, had, well, monitored the operation in real time. But now we know better.

UPDATE 2: There will doubtless be more backtracking and backfilling and sidestepping and subconscious mythologizing in the days to come. For it turns out that the crack crew of American agents left a whole group of eyewitnesses to the operation behind — including the 12-year-old daughter of bin Laden, who saw her father killed — and was also wounded in the attack.

As the Guardian reports, at least 10 people were left behind after the raid — presumably because the raiding party did not have room to cart them off after losing one of their helicopters before the kill. Pakistani officials found the survivors — including bin Laden’s wife and the wounded daughter — when they arrived on the scene just after the American exit. All of the survivors had been handcuffed, Pakistani officials said. The Americans also left four dead bodies behind: three men and a woman, taking only bin Laden and his dead son. From the Guardian:

Local authorities arrived on the scene of the raid as American special forces were leaving. It is believed that the attackers originally planned to evacuate all those in the compound but the breakdown of a helicopter meant there was no space to take them.

Instead, only the bodies of Bin Laden and his son Hamza, who was in his early 20s, were taken to the aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson and buried at sea. Survivors were left with their hands fastened with plastic handcuffs, a second Pakistani official said, adding that initial communications with the survivors had been difficult as the Pakistani police and military arriving at the scene did not speak Arabic.

The survivors are now being held by the Pakistanis, who say they will return them to their home countries as soon as the respective governments ask for them. At the moment, they are not allowing American agents to interrogate them — strenuously or otherwise. But no doubt as the survivors’ stories begin to emerge — and yes, they will have their own spin and agenda, just like Obama and his subconsciously mythologizing security apparatchiks — we will see several more “corrections” of the “historical record” now being woven and re-woven in front of our eyes.

Bin Had

Ignoring the above, it is still obvious that we’ve been had. Specifically, only 5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”. He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

 

George Washington’s Blog
Friday, May 6, 2011

Forget that Bin Laden likely received CIA training and support in fighting against the Russians in Afghanistan. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Forget the allegations by France’s oldest and second-largest newspaper that a CIA agent met with Bin Laden two months before 9/11, and the claim by a former FBI translator that Bin Laden worked with the CIA right up until 9/11.

Forget that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, and that government more or less heard the 9/11 hijackers’ plans from their own mouths.

Forget that Dick Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11 (see this Department of State announcement, this Department of State announcement, this CNN article and this essay), and that:

• In the 70′s – Cheney and Rumsfeld were instrumental in generating fake intelligence exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to undermine coexistence between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which conveniently justified huge amounts of cold war spending (and see this)

• According to former high-level intelligence officer Melvin Goodman, Cheney orchestrated phony intelligence for the Congress in order to get an endorsement for covert arms shipments to anti-government forces in Angola

Forget that governments from around the world admit that they carry out false flag terrorism to justify their political goal.

Finally, forget that the U.S. could easily have captured Bin Laden in 2001 or 2007, but chose not to do so.

Bin Had

Ignoring the above, it is still obvious that we’ve been had.

Specifically, only 5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”. He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

Indeed, And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time”, is the statement “Hard to get a good case.” In other words, top officials knew that there wasn’t a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.

Moreover, “Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda”.

And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.

And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.

Moreover, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph:

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Therefore, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks. See this.

Moreover, the torture program which Cheney created was specifically aimed at producing false confessions in an attempt to link Iraq and 9/11: er, the type of torture used since 9/11 was a special type of torture specifically aimed at creating false confessions:

• Senator: Government Used Communist Torture Techniques Aimed at Extracting FALSE Confessions

• Humanitarian Aid Worker: Torture Only Stopped When I Pretended I Was In Al Qaeda

• Under torture, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and WMD

• One of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was Tortured Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• 9/11 Mastermind: “During … My Interrogation I Gave A Lot Of False Information In Order To Satisfy What I Believed The Interrogators Wished To Hear”

• Self-Confessed 9/11 “Mastermind” Also Falsely Confessed to Crimes He Didn’t Commit

• Most of the 9/11 Commission Report was Based on 3rd Hand Reports of What People Said While Being Tortured

And see this.

It’s not just Iraq.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says that Dick Cheney’s vision of policy towards the Middle East after 9/11 was to re-draw the map.

American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst Gareth Porter writes in the Asia Times:

Feith’s book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing “new regimes” in a series of states [including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon ]

Porter wrote this week:

Cheney and Rumsfeld were determined not to allow a focus on bin Laden to interfere with their plan for a U.S. invasion of Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime.

There are some bad guys out there, but their importance has been greatly exaggerated to justify America’s imperial ambitions. No wonder former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”.

Bin Laden might have been a bad guy … but we’ve bin had.

The Growing Coverup: Osama and “The Big Lie”

The Obama administration and the corporate media are concocting an ever-more elaborate and spectacular theater around the “heroic” murder of the CIA intelligence myth/CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Not content to simply to exploit the 9/11 atrocity for political gain, the administration is heaping new layers of lie and cover-up to the original crime.

Larry Chin
Global Research
May 6, 2011

The Obama administration and the corporate media are concocting an ever-more elaborate and spectacular theater around the “heroic” murder of the CIA intelligence myth/CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Not content to simply to exploit the 9/11 atrocity for political gain, the administration is heaping new layers of lie and cover-up to the original crime.

The growing cover-up

The desperation is palpable. Just days since the “big announcement”, Obama administration officials have already been forced to backpedal, issuing multiple corrections, adding to the confusion over the location of the killing, whether bin Laden was armed or unarmed, whether there was a “fire fight”, if an alleged wife was involved, the burial at sea, whether to release “graphic photos”, etc. The mainstream corporate media—following approved CIA/White House narratives—is spewing and regurgitating a tidal wave of red herrings that add to the inconsistencies.

Seasoned observers will not be fooled, no matter how many Obama lies, doctored photos, fake footage, lurid new testimonials and CIA pronouncements are pushed forth. As put simply by Paul Craig Roberts:

“As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections, about yellowcake, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden’s death? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have for a good price.”

The “war on terrorism” is a fabrication, war propaganda that continues to serve as the eternal pretext for global resource war. That 9/11 was a false flag operation—that the official story is a lie and cover-up—has been definitively proven in numerous investigations, such as Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon, Michel Chossudovsky’s America’s “War on Terrorism”, the work of Paul Thompson, and others.

Osama bin Laden is a product and asset of the CIA. “Al-Qaeda” is a covert operation, a “database” of intelligence legends, exhaustively detailed in the work of Chaim Kupferberg (Part 1 and Part Two). Pakistan’s ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA, was central to 9/11 and a player in subsequent “terror” operations. It is not surprising that Pakistan and the ISI is at the heart of the “death of bin Laden” as well.

The “death of bin Laden” changes nothing about the factual record that indicts (among others) Bush/Cheney, Anglo-American military-intelligence, and elite war/oil interests.

Tragically, none of this matters. The minority of individuals with unscrambled brains is not the target of this imperial charade.

Euphoria, brainwashing, and “imperial mobilization”

To borrow from the lexicon of world planner Zbigniew Brzezinski, 9/11 was a successful attack “on the order of Pearl Harbor” that “united” the American people behind an “imperial mobilization”—the “war on terrorism” for oil. With 9/11, the masses fully supported nearly a decade of war, atrocities, subversion, and unprecedented government criminality.

The militant and unquestioning public embrace of “war on terrorism” lies underscores how that the 9/11 has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the Anglo-American war criminals who orchestrated it.

Now Barack Obama, who has spoken incessantly over the years about wanting to “unite” America again “just as it was after 9/11”, has been granted his moment to “unite” the masses again, but do an even better job of population control than Bush/Cheney (who, in their clumsiness and hubris, partially “squandered” their “political capital”). The swaggering Obama will “get it right”. He is a better actor, the more devious and mendacious corporatist who was selected for this specific purpose.

Obama has been itching to be the “Osama killer” since before he was elected.

The 9/11 “shock effect” remains fully potent, as evidenced by the frenzy, euphoria, and stomach-turning jubilation of crowds of Americans joining in celebration orgies over a fictional murder of the fictional Osama bin Laden, a fictional revenge. Even the “intellectuals” and “experts” are treating this charade as if it is real. Corporate media headlines have declared that “the world has changed”, and the masses love it.

The post-9/11 era has spawned an entire generation of vicious and ignorant drones, whose moral compass has been shaped by war, lies, violent entertainment, and brainwashing. The future American police state will be built upon this new culture of thuggery. This is “Obama’s Animal Farm”.

To Obama, this is “what makes America great”.

Rescripting reality

In Orwellian fashion, the legend of the death of Bin Laden changes nothing in reality, but turns the mass perception of this reality upside down.

Suddenly, an unpopular Obama and his failing presidency are recast, in true Bush/Cheney fashion, as a heroic—and now successful— “war president”. He is now Obama the 9/11 avenger, protector of the American people, and the great military master.

This burnished new image, which is preposterous as the one given to George W. Bush during his reign of terror, grants Obama his own new “political capital”. Two years of flummoxing and failure, wiped out. Attacks from all sides, stopped. Obama has a political weapon to fend off attacks from the right-wing. They can no longer attack Obama for being weak on foreign policy. At the same time, Obama’s corporate liberals (who care only about gaining political points on the Republicans) can return to deluding themselves about Obama’s populism, appeal and effectiveness, despite two years of absolute failure and purposely broken campaign promises. With one stroke, Obama is being handed the 2012 election.

Suddenly, Obama is not only just as “great” as Bush, but an even “cooler customer”, who singlehandedly ordered and carried out a covert operation that Bush/Cheney could not.

(This writer had expected the “I Killed Osama” prize to be granted to Bush/Cheney. Apparently, their handling of Iraq/Afghanistan did not earn them the permission.)

What real objectives will be met with this new propaganda? As noted by Paul Craig Roberts:

“My initial interpretation of the faked bin Laden death was that Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the USbudget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies.”

Just as the Nixon administration declared a false “victory” in aborting the disastrous war in Vietnam, Obama can declare a similar “mission accomplished” with his “Osama Kill”. This will allow the administration to redeploying forces from Afghanistan to elsewhere in the region. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other critical oil-related geography remain in US cross-hairs. The new image of Obama the “heroic anti-terrorist” will convince at least some international leaders to cooperate with the administration. The mass resistance to the US-backed regimes in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia will be at least partially neutered.

The CIA, soon to be under the command of Iraq/Afghanistan war criminal David Petraeus, is also given a new green light to continue their “war on terrorism” atrocities. This massive criminal mafia is viewed as a heroic protector of America.

A redeployment of forces back to the US is long overdue, for the continued buildup of “Obama’s Animal Farm” within US borders. The militarization of the US homeland will be ratcheted up, in order to stop domestic unrest, union protests, and popular responses to the continuing collapse of the US economy.

“Al-Qaeda”, under new leadership, will be continue to be unleashed. The next phase of the CIA deception is likely to involve the legend of jihadists avenging Osama bin Laden, including, if necessary, “new 9/11s”.The so-called Al-Qaeda number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who himself has “died” multiple times, will be the new boogeyman, along with other recently named “operational chiefs” such as Adnan Shukrijumah.

The final atrocity

To add a grotesque and sickening final insult, the swaggering Barack Obama will grandstand at New York’s Ground Zero, in a staged celebration of a fictional murder, on the hallowed ground where thousands of people actually died at the hands of the US government and its covert operatives.

Obama even invited George W. Bush to share his “victory lap”.

This act of exploitation will dispel all illusions about the criminal nature of this liar who has done Bush/Cheney one better by stooping even lower into the depths of depravity.

The original Big Lie gets its bookend Big Lie.

Osama down. Gaddafi next?

With the ousting of Bin Laden behind them, the ordeal over what to do with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is once against the focal point of the western world.

RT
May 6, 2011

With the ousting of Bin Laden behind them, the ordeal over what to do with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is once against the focal point of the western world. NATO is now looking at putting military troops on the ground to aid the rebels, but will that make things better or worse? Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar says that such a plan cannot end well, but in a new era where assassination is considered justice, international law is as good as dead, anyway. According to Escobar, NATO is hoping for a Hail Mary pass with a rather predictable target: another assassination.

As noted yesterday, the government is exploiting the Osama death fantasy as an excuse to expand the police state grid in the United States and acclimate the populace to the presence of militarized cops and unconstitutional random searches in mass transit hubs.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 6, 2011

As noted yesterday, the government is exploiting the Osama death fantasy as an excuse to expand the police state grid in the United States and acclimate the populace to the presence of militarized cops and unconstitutional random searches in mass transit hubs.

Now the feds warn al-Qaeda may strike the rail sector. “An advisory has been sent to law enforcement officials asking them to be vigilant about train security based on information uncovered at Osama bin Laden’s compound after his death,” reports NBC New York.

The feds have yet to definitively prove that Osama was killed in Pakistan. Despite this fact, the corporate media is reporting the government claim as fact.

“According to NBC News, U.S. officials say they have not found reference to specific plots. Instead, they say they’ve found what they call ‘aspirational’ items — events al-Qaida operatives were interested in trying to make happen,” NBC continues. “There was nothing specific to New York.”

Such claims are now common and invariably lead to the state dispatching cops with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs to airports and train stations. It is now normal for the TSA to conduct warrantless searches at bus stations in lieu of specific threats.

“We have no information of any imminent terrorist threat to the U.S. rail sector, but wanted to make our partners aware of the alleged plotting,” Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said in a statement.”We want to stress that this alleged al-Qaida plotting is based on initial reporting, which is often misleading or inaccurate and subject to change.”

Material supposedly gleaned from Osama’s house in Pakistan reveals “an operation against trains at an unspecified location in the United States on the 10th anniversary” of the 9/11 attacks. The advisory claims al-Qaeda planned “to tip a train by tampering with the rails so that the train would fall off the track at either a valley or on a bridge.”

According to the government, additional material mentions a desire to target major mass-transit hubs, an interest long familiar to law enforcement because trains were targeted in Spain, the U.K. and India. NBC reports that al-Qaeda was responsible for attacks in Madrid, London, and Mumbai, although evidence of al-Qaeda involvement is far less than conclusive.

Rep. Steve King of New York, who has made a cottage industry out of holding hearings warning of the domestic threat of radical Muslims and al-Qaeda, said “there was information found in the last several days — I don’t know where it’s come from — but that al-Qaeda was considering having an attack on mass transit or trains before the 10th anniversary of September 11th.”

Michael S. Rozeff
LewRockwell.com
May 6, 2011

“When I said no negotiations I meant no negotiations,” Mr Bush said. “We know he’s guilty. Turn him over. There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt.” That appears here in an old article about Bush’s rejection of one of several Taliban offers to turn OBL over to a court. (See also here.) OBL was wanted on suspicion for several terrorist events but not 9/11. Flash forward. Now we have Obama saying in so many words the same thing as Bush. He’s guilty of “the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children…Justice has been done.” Like Bush, there is no evidence. Like Bush there’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt in a court or anywhere else. There is an intimate shared connection between Bush’s “we know he’s guilty” and Obama’s execution of OBL followed by his conclusion ”Justice has been done.” Obama’s complete speech is here. I find it sickening.

The recent fanfare on May 1st 2011 from the screenwriters in the mainstream media over the US government’s announcement of the US Navy SEALs’ killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us once again how mainstream journalism requires Orwell’s memory hole in order to function. After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve been told bin Laden is dead.

Orwell Was Right
Friday, May 6, 2011

The recent fanfare on May 1st 2011 from the screenwriters in the mainstream media over the US government’s announcement of the US Navy SEALs’ killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us once again how mainstream journalism requires Orwell’s memory hole in order to function. After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve been told bin Laden is dead. Like a bad action movie franchise bereft of new ideas and forced to regurgitate the same tired concepts with each sequel, rumours of bin Laden’s death have surfaced so many times since this uber-boogeyman allegedly carried out 9/11 that one can’t help but wonder if this “criminal mastermind” is actually a cat…

Like the infamous James Bond supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Osama bin Laden has demonstrated an incredible knack for teetering around the edge or coming back from the grave when you least expect it (usually when the President is running low in the opinion polls). After his swift identification in the corporate press as the mastermind of 9/11 – without any evidence to support this – he denied all involvement in the attacks, stating shortly after in an interview with Karachi-based newspaper Ummat, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do 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 even in the course of a battle.”

Nevertheless, despite this denial and the inability of the US government to provide the proof requested supporting their allegations, the media immediately got behind the military-industrial-complex and began beating the drums for war against Afghanistan. Conveniently ignoring further requests for proof from the Taliban, who offered to hand him over if presented with evidence of his guilt, they happily suspended the standard principle of innocent until proven guilty in favour of a bloodthirsty, jingoistic call for large-scale bombing campaigns, saturated with appeals to the most base form of patriotism coupled with “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” emotional blackmail.

Once the war was on, however, the US government seemed to forget about bin Laden. President Bush expressed how disinterested they really were in capturing him just six months after 9/11:



“Deep in my heart I know the man’s on the run if he’s alive at all.” Bush later corrected himself, in his trademark blundering manner:

But what had actually happened to bin Laden? Admittedly, few in the media were about to challenge the Bush administration’s lack of enthusiasm for tracking the supervillain down, but nevertheless rumours of his death soon began to circulate. In January, 2002, Pakistan President Musharraf believed him to be dead on account of his kidney disease, saying, “”I don’t know if he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now. And the photographs that have been shown of him on television show him extremely weak. … I would give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan.” In July of the same year, The New York Times reported that bin Laden was dead: “The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan.” In the same month, FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson echoed these beliefs, saying, “”Is (bin Laden) alive or is he dead? I am not really sure of the answer … I personally think he is probably not with us anymore…” And again, in October 2002, Afghanistan’s puppet leader also claimed that bin Laden was “probably dead”. He explained on CNN, “The more we don’t hear of him, and the more time passes, there is the likelihood that he probably is either dead or seriously wounded somewhere.”

Further hints at bin Laden’s possible death came from various intelligence agencies, with sources inside Mossad claiming that any new messages from bin Laden were “probably fabrications” and sources from Pakistani intelligence, who claimed he was already dead and “attributed the reasons behind Washington’s hiding news on the death of Osama bin Laden to the desire of the hawks of the American administration to use the issue of al-Qaida and international terrorism to invade Iraq.” Perhaps a prophetic statement, for following on from this steady flow of rumours of his demise in 2002, bin Laden somehow managed to emerge from hiding – or beyond the grave – to help boost Bush’s approval ratings, once again becoming the poster boy for al Qaeda and dominating news coverage in the build up to the invasion of Iraq. This was the era of the bin Laden tapes dismissed by many experts as being fakes, much like the alleged “confession” video released in December 2001, not credible enough for even the FBI to consider hard evidence (when asked why bin Laden was not wanted for 9/11 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI, Rex Tomb, said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”). He showed up once again in another video of dubious veracity just before the 2004 Presidential elections – his appearance effectively handed Bush his second term in office.

In 2007, news of bin Laden’s death came once again, this time from Benazir Bhutto, who claimed he was murdered back in 2005:

Iin 2008, former CIA case officer Robert Baer also suggested in an interview on National Public Radio that bin Laden was no longer alive. Questioned further he replied, “Of course he’s dead.” As he points out in his article for Time magazine, When Will Obama Give Up the Bin Laden Ghost Hunt?, the last reliable sighting of him was as far back as late 2001 – a fair statement, given the obvious lack of countervailing evidence.

The latest bin Laden propaganda extravaganza will no doubt go down in history as one of the most flawed, contradictory and downright absurd Pentagon psychological operations in recent history. Already the story has been changed repeatedly: first bin Laden was armed and used his wife as a human shield, then he was unarmed; amongst the first pieces of “proof” to come out was a photograph so obviously fake that someone with little to no experience with Photoshop could knock up a superior composite in half an hour. When this was proved to be a fake the media displayed its usual lack of credibility by ignoring the implications of faked evidence and moving on swiftly to the next lie. Such is the extent of the flip-flopping from the US government and the corporate press that one can’t help but wonder if they’ve suspended all pretence of common sense and have reached the point where they simply don’t care whether or not the public believe a word they say. Like true propagandists, when caught out on their lies they simply replace them with fresh lies and label anyone who holds them to account for their deceptions “conspiracy theorists”.

Those debating whether or not he was armed, or if the action was “lawful”, or, ultimately, even if he’s actually dead or not are missing the point. By engaging with these issues they are ostensibly lending credence to the propaganda. It’s a classic example of the media creating “controversy” within the spectrum defined by the official narrative and allowing lively debate to proceed within those confines. Likewise, those who are naively expecting the death of bin Laden to bring the troops back home from Afghanistan will no doubt find themselves sorely disappointed; it has been made clear repeatedly since the alleged killing that al Qaeda are now more than ever likely to attack. Like all half-baked serial films, Osama bin Laden: The Movie has been left with a cliffhanger, one which was made clear in the recent WikiLeaks “revelations” that there would be “nuclear reprisals” if bin Laden were killed or captured – a perfect excuse for greater expansion of police powers and quite possibly setting the stage for another false flag attack. Little wonder the timing of these events leads one to believe they’re scripted…

Pentagon Dinner Guest al-Awlaki Slated to Replace Osama - Kurt Nimmo | The forever war against manufactured terror gets a new face.

The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event - Paul Craig Roberts | Governments have known from the beginning of time that they can always deceive citizens and subjects by playing the patriot card.

Staged: White House “Situation Room” Photos Part Of Bin Laden Fable - Paul Joseph Watson | Dramatic images media claimed represented Obama and Clinton watching live assassination of Bin Laden revealed to be a PR stunt.

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.

Police State Expands On Bin Laden Death Hype - The Department of Homeland Security and police departments around the country are taking full advantage of the unverified assassination of the late CIA asset, Osama bin Laden.

Bigger than Bin Laden – America’s New Public Enemy No.1 - From the fans at Citi Field in Flushing to the mobs at the White House gates, “USA, USA,” was the chant heard across the nation. Jubilant Americans celebrated the breaking news that Public Enemy No.1, terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was dead.

Bin Laden: When the Lie Becomes the Truth - The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered.

Hillary Clinton Claims ‘Allergy Not Anguish’ Reason For Photo As Evidence Points to PR Stunt - An allergy and not anguish may explain why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had her hand to her mouth while watching the commando operation to kill Osama bin Laden, she said on Thursday.

Senseless Obama Statements on OBL Photo

Michael S. Rozeff | We are asked to take the government’s word for it. That’s not good enough.

Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound
Telegraph | 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

Oops! Sen. Brown duped by fake bin Laden photo

Alex Jones on RT’s Adam vs. the Man: Bin Laden Dead
RT | Alex comments on the unverified death of bin Laden as well as footage of the celebration at the White House.

The NDP war room went into panic response mode Wednesday after party deputy leader Thomas Mulcair said on a CBC news program that he doubted the U.S. military had pictures of Osama bin Laden’s body.

Vancouver Sun
May 5, 2011

The NDP war room went into panic response mode Wednesday after party deputy leader Thomas Mulcair said on a CBC news program that he doubted the U.S. military had pictures of Osama bin Laden’s body.

During an appearance on CBC’s Power and Politics, Mulcair said he doesn’t believe U.S. authorities have photographs of bin Laden’s dead body after he was shot in the head by American forces in Pakistan this weekend.

“I don’t think, from what I’ve heard, that those pictures exist. And if they do, I’ll leave that up to the American military,” Mulcair told the CBC.

When asked again to confirm whether he believed the photos existed, Mulcair said: “No, I don’t think they do.”

His contentious comments sparked anger from other parties who voiced their concerns, quickly making the popular Montreal MP a trending topic in the Twitterverse.

Former astronaut and Liberal MP Marc Garneau tweeted that he "almost fell out of my chair when Mulcair said he doubted the existence of Osama bin Laden photos."

"Osama bin Laden is dead and photos were taken. To suggest otherwise is a serious lack of judgment," he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

"The White House made it clear that pictures exist. Absolutely no reason to doubt that," Dimitri Soudas, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman, also tweeted.

Paul Dewar, the New Democrats' foreign affairs critic, said the party was not questioning the existence of any bin Laden photos.

Full article here

The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. What agenda or agendas is the “death of bin Laden” designed to further?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury.

Dr. Steve Pieczenik: The Psychological Resurrection of Osama Bin Laden 1/2



Dr. Steve Pieczenik: The Psychological Resurrection of Osama Bin Laden 2/2



Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: Bin Laden was also on Mossad, British Payroll - 1/3



Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: Bin Laden was also on Mossad, British Payroll - 2/3



Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: Bin Laden was also on Mossad, British Payroll - 3/3



Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: Obama is Totally Inept! 1/2



Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: Obama is Totally Inept! 2/2



Dr. Steve Pieczenik: Bin Laden, The Oswald Like Patsy Died 10 Years Ago! 1/7



EP 2 - 7 on yourtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj0pM5FoYbs&feature=player_embedded

Paul Joseph Watson | Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Obama’s Announcement Only Fuels the Mythology of Bin Laden
Patrick Henningsen | Latest staged media event has created far more questions than it has answers.

Patrick Henningsen
Infowars
May 4, 2011

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
- Mark Twain (1897)

The mythology surrounding America’s public enemy number one took yet another bizarre turn this week as Washington announced that after ten years of searching they have finally located and killed their illusive adversary, Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately for US authorities however, this latest staged media event has created far more questions than it has answers.

Indeed, The Washington Post did report Monday that bin Laden, the long-hunted al-Qaeda leader and alleged chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, was in fact killed on Sunday in what officials described as a Navy Seal-run surgical raid on his alleged luxury hideout in Pakistan.

In a rare Sunday night address from the East Room of the White House, President Obama announced that small team of U.S. personnel attacked a compound in Pakistan’s Abbottabad Valley, where bin Laden is said to have been hiding. During a firefight, the U.S. team allegedly killed bin Laden, 54, and then took custody of his body. President Obama described the event as “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda”, and seen as a “significant turning point for global security and the War on Terror.”

According to US sources, this latest operation was made possible thanks to “a trail of evidence that originated from Al-Qaeda detainees”, which had led to the careful monitoring of a compound suspected to be Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hiding place. This is an interesting statement planted by Washington into this story, as it will no doubt be used by authorities to justify the existence of Guantanamo Bay and similar gulag-like cites around the world- all of whose credibility in the area of gathering real terror intel has been rather poor to date.

Public confusion over body ID

Bin Laden’s body was then allegedly recovered by the U.S. military and kept in its possession until it was dumped at sea hours later. From here, the story begins to get very dicey. Both ABC News and the Associated Press have reported that the body has been identified by DNA testing using tissue and blood samples taken from his sister who died of brain cancer previously. However, Reuters reports that DNA test results will not actually be available for days still, and that his body was identified using facial recognition techniques.

[ youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q98-d51 -Lbs] Patrick Henningsen on Russia Today: helping to deconstruct the myth of bin Laden.

Adding to the confusion surrounding evidence of bin Laden’s death, US military officials are said to have immediately disposed of the body in the Arabian Sea, supposedly adhering to “Muslim burial customs”. Washington insists that they have photos and video of the body, but have yet to release them to the public.

This means that, in theory, there can only be a limited number of actual witnesses and that there is no body to verify that it genuinely was bin Laden, leaving the public with only the government’s official version of events to believe. Confusion, not conclusion, will be the order of the day. It is likely that this tactic was an intentional one on the part of Washington, providing pundits and conspiracy theorists with an endless knot that will take decades to unravel.

Numerous past reports of bin Laden’s death

Since 2001, numerous reports and statements have been made confirming the death of bin Laden. Infowars chronicled a list of these incidents recently, reporting the following:

• Osama bin Laden died of kidney failure soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
• In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counter-terrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us any more.”
• A Taliban leader told the Pakistan Observer on December 21, 2002, that Bin Laden was suffering from a serious lung complication and died in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief, according to Fox News.
• Alex Jones was told live on the radio in 2002 by high-level Council on Foreign Relations members that Osama Bin Laden had died of kidney failure in early 2002.“I have it from high level [sources] from inside the Bush administration…that bin Laden died of natural causes and that his family has given the body to the CIA, that they’re gonna roll him out right before the election, that he’s on ice right now. They will claim they killed him right before the election,” Alex said at the time. During the 2004 election, CNN reported that Democratic insiders had been told that George W. Bush was going to use the Bin Laden body as an ace-in-the-hole if he thought he was in danger of losing the 2004 election. This confirmed the evidence that Jones had been given by the CFR and others.

• In 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.
• Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack at the end of 2007, stated that Osama bin Laden had been killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a man convicted of kidnapping and killing journalist Daniel Pearl.

[ youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b348VJJNOjo ] Grainy videos like this one are all that is available to substantiate this latest Bin Laden story.

Predictable Results

With little to celebrate in the US where the US dollar is plummeting, unemployment numbers have reached record highs and government deficits are bleeding the public resources, Bin Laden’s reported death has provided something for American to celebrate with spontaneous celebrations erupting in places like New York City and Washington DC.

With a system of which has grown into an institution since 2001, the security state’s reaction to the announcement of Bin Laden’s demise is as routine as it is predictable. For a public who has been trained to live in a perpetual state of fear, the alleged death of Bin Laden translates into a brief respite and opportunity to celebrate followed by yet another increase in the security apparatus.

The result of this latest chapter in the Bin Laden saga has been an elevation in “Terror Threat Levels”. In near robotic fashion, all major news outlets are running identical talking points centred on authorities in Western countries who are advising “vigilance against possible Al Qaeda strikes in retaliation to the death of Osama Bin Laden”.

Authorities are also advising that people “avoid travel to areas where anti-western protests may erupt” and also to “avoid public gathering that might attract a revenge attack”.



RT: Questions are raised about the media’s reporting of latest bin Laden death. It wasn’t long ago that Wikileaks files were cited where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed. The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks is said to have warned that al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb “somewhere in Europe” which will unleash a “nuclear hell storm” if Osama bin Laden was ever captured. Obama: A timely announcement Broadcasters and pollsters will tell you that Sunday evening is the very best time to plant a story because most Americans are home, preparing to face another work week, and the largest percentage of Americans watch TV on Sunday evening. When President Obama finally made his statement about how he had located bin Laden and killed him in a firefight, the President proceeded to take no reporter questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-N3dJvhgPg&feature=player_embedded

Obama’s bin Laden moment: the President bolsters his wartime resume this week.

The timing of this announcement certainly carries a high political value for a US administration soon entering a new Presidential election cycle in 2012. It could help to reposition a domestically unpopular President Obama as a competent military operator overseas.

Obama outlined this epic chain of events during his Sunday address stating, “Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.” The President then certified his War on Terror and military credentials explaining how he gave the order to kill, “And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.”

In the world of modern US politics, the “patriot card” is the ace which can be produced during any speech or Presidential debate. Obama has clearly positioned himself as the man who will “take credit” for the killing of Osama bin Laden. The ten year anniversary for Sept 11, 2001 will take place this fall and it is certain that Obama will rehash this week’s glorious assassination from a podium at Ground Zero. Obama’s wartime resume will also be bolstered by this week’s event, a tool he will likely employ in the Democrat effort to effectively stave off any challengers from the Republican Party’s right wing next year.

Another state-sponsored assassination

In the wake of the infamous Iraqi WMD debacle and with tax payer confidence in the abilities of US Intelligence community at an all-time low, this latest announcement will be used by Washington to demonstrate that their agencies are indeed competent and can actually produce valid and actionable intel. In effect, Washington will use its latest campaign to wipe the old slate clean and build on this apparent victory, possibly with some future intel concerning prospective adversaries like Iran.

This latest state-sponsored assassination also re-enforces the precedent of targeting foreign leaders outside of the boundaries of legal justice. Currently the US and NATO are carrying out a series of targeted extrajudicial killings in Libya, an effort that has already claimed the lives of Gaddafi’s immediate family and one which hopes to eventually eliminate Gaddafi himself.

Both unusual and illegal as this may appear on its surface, the Western public has now become accustomed to seeing its governments carry out these high level state mafia-style hits, a rather bizarre trend for evolved Western civilisation. It goes without saying that in almost all of these cases, each of these high-profile victims could not be successfully brought in front of any real court of justice due to an acute lack of evidence against them. They amount to purely political targets who unfortunately will be denied the luxury of any proper investigation into the West’s charges against them.

A shift in focus towards new enemies

Amongst all the hype and revelry, it still seems rather implausible that Osama bin Laden has “been on the run” for nearly a decade. Authorities would like us to believe that it took the entire US military industrial complex 10 years to both locate and kill Osama Bin Laden, their sworn public enemy number one. What is more plausible is that this particular moment in time has in fact been chosen and the event has been staged and later choreographed for mass media consumption.

Once the feel-good factor, public traction and the brief heightened state of alert has been spent, Washington and its NATO allies will be turning their sights further down field.

Most significant, is that this new announcement could very well be signalling a shift in US and NATO war plans, gradually moving focus away from the War on Terror and repositioning US public angst towards a cadre of new nation-state enemy players. With both occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan still on the burner, US imperial aspirations overseas are already at near breaking point. Polls and historical trends also show that American voters will not likely want to switch their leadership during a hot military conflict, so we can expect that an expansion of ground troops could occur in Libya, or that a brand new operation could be launched as early as next spring 2012. On top of US and NATO agendas for prospective conflicts are clearly Libya (currently in progress), Iran and possibly Syria. Any one of these potential conflicts will require solid backing from the US public in order to ensure their launch and longevity.

Mark Twain could not have scripted a better ending for this, the season finale of Osama On the Run. As events unfold in the coming months, educated members of the public will be able to better piece together the real behind significance of Sunday’s announcement and read the long-range foreign policy game plan of the US, Israel and their NATO allies. Watch this space.

Alleged Death of Pseudo-Bin Laden Sets Pakistan Up for US Attack - Webster Tarpley | Collapse of U.S. empire brings a heightened danger of general war.

US troops were yards from Osama bin Laden house in 2008 – WikiLeaks files - US forces were stationed just a few hundred yards from Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in October 2008, according to reports within the WikiLeaks embassy cables.

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, can we fire the TSA and bring back freedom in America? - Bin Laden is dead, we’ve been told. What a relief! According to the official White House explanation of events, it was Bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 airplane hijackings and commanded his minions to fly them into the World Trade Center buildings.

Alleged Death of Pseudo-Bin Laden Sets Pakistan Up for US Attack - In an interview with RT, author and researcher Webster Tarpley says the CIA has announced the next false flag terror op will be blamed on Pakistan’s ISI, China backs Islamabad in looming confrontation, and the collapse of the U.S. empire brings a heightened danger of general war.

Infowars.com
May 4, 2011

The Department of Homeland Security and police departments around the country are taking full advantage of the unverified assassination of the late CIA asset, Osama bin Laden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNbxOBpfn0g&feature=player_embedded

In New York, the police “super-sized” security by dispatching a bevy of cops in elite, military style gear, according to the Examiner. Militarized cops were spotted with machine guns and large trained German Shepherds throughout major hubs like Grand Central Station, the Port Authority, Herald Square, and even in New York landmarks.

Dodger Stadium and Staples Center in LA received a fresh influx of cops. “The city remains in contact with the FBI and Homeland Security on a daily basis,” reports ABC 7. “But officials say security is a shared responsibility. They are calling on everyone to report anything unusual, and they’re reminding residents that if they see something, say something.”

Public rail systems in Florida added uniformed and plain-clothes security officers on platforms and on trains, authorities told the Sun-Sentinel. At Miami International Airport, “we’ve ratcheted things up a notch,” with increased police and K-9 patrols as well as random vehicle checks, said security director Lauren Stover. Florida’s major commercial airports, like those around the nation, plan to remain on high alert indefinitely with stepped up but mostly unseen security measures, according to the newspaper.

In Portland, Oregon, the Osama fiasco was exploited to put more cops and inspectors on mass transit in that city. “What we have done is, working with the TSA, increased our presence and visibility on the system,” said Bekki Witt, spokeswoman for TriMet, the public transportation system for the metropolitan area. The added security is typical after a U.S. military action or an elevated national threat level, notes The Oregonian.

Department of Homeland Security officers were performing warrantless searches at the Palm Springs International Airport on Monday. Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez told KPSP Local 2 that officers from the Department of Homeland Security had been scheduled prior to Osama’s alleged assassination to perform searches at the airport in conjunction with TSA. Melendez said Viper teams will be working out of the airport this week.

So-called counter terrorism experts warn that followers of Osama bin Laden will strike in retaliation for the reported assassination of the former CIA operative who died in late 2001. “Terrorists are expected to aim for more vulnerable soft targets like shopping malls or museums,” CBS New York reports.

Security consultant David Boehm told CBS the future may include security check points entering all soft targets — like the local department store. “The reason they’re called ‘soft’ is because it’s so easily accessible to anyone. There has to be security checks for the safety of all people,” Broehm said.

The increased presence of militarized cops working with the Department of Homeland Security dovetails with action on Capitol Hill. The House Homeland Security Committee examined possible terrorist threats posed to mass transit systems around the country today.

“Especially now in the wake of bin Laden’s death, we have to assume that al-Qaida or its affiliates, al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula, any of the others, any of the radicalized terrorists here at home, self-starters, if you will, loan wolves or organized terrorist operations in this country will launch a domestic attack,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, who recently held hearings on the supposed threat posed by radical Muslims.

Najibullah Zazi, the Oregon peroxide bleach would-be bomber, served as a centerpiece for King’s hearing today.

Zazi, a U.S. resident from Afghanistan, entered a guilty plea on conspiracy charges in early 2010. The government accused him of plotting to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. It was said Zazi bought hydrogen peroxide at a beauty supply store and learned explosives techniques at a Pakistani al-Qaeda training camp.

During Zazi’s trial, the Department of Justice admitted that no operational bomb existed and veteran counterterrorism investigators said that important facts remained unknown, including whether Zazi selected a specific target, date, and recruited others to help.

Purported “Bin Laden Raid Kill Photos Released”
Kurt Nimmo | Gruesome photos bait the hook for propaganda to come.

Question for Time: Are Assertions of Top Spymaster “Black Helicopter Fantasies”?
Paul Joseph Watson | When will Time Magazine and the rest of the establishment peanut gallery dwellers address assertions of former U.S. Navy Captain Pieczenik?

Was Bin Laden Assault A Jessica Lynch-Style Fable?
Paul Joseph Watson | Myriad of inconsistencies in alleged raid begin to resemble war propaganda fairytales told about Private Lynch and Pat Tillman

WeAreChange journalist Luke Rudkowski hits the streets right after Obama’s announcement in front of the White House on the front lines of the Infowar. The hysteria and planned propaganda have been masterfully executed by the Obama administration but watch Luke try to educate the erratic public about the truth behind Bin Laden. Luke also pleads with Geraldo Rivera to talk about WTC Building 7 (as he has in the past) in conjunction with reports about Bin Laden’s death.

WARNING: Explicit language used by members of public

Obama Ready to Release Photo of Dead Osama Today
Infowars.com | Officials are also talking about releasing helmet cam videos of the raid by Navy SEALS.

The Dead Bin Laden Photo Does Nothing To Address These Facts
Paul Joseph Watson | Establishment will claim that images “put conspiracy theories to bed,” when ‘conspiracy theorists’ have in fact been saying Osama has been dead for years.

Obama Terror Advisor: Pakistan Linked to Osama
Kurt Nimmo | And so is the United States, but you won’t hear the government tell you about it.

Obama Shamefully Exploits Bin Laden Fairytale In Transparent PR Stunt
Paul Joseph Watson | President invokes “9/11 style unity” in desperate attempt to rescue his plummeting approval ratings.

Chinese Media Reports Pakistani Forces Killed Bin Laden, Then Retracts

Pakistani Urdu TV channel Geo News quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden was killed in a search operation launched by the Pakistani forces.

Police State Kicks Into Overdrive On Dubious News of Osama Takedown
Kurt Nimmo | Increased police presence in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, and elsewhere around the country.

Gallup: Obama Approval Rating to Rally After Bin Laden “Assassination”

President Obama’s surprise announcement Sunday night of the death of Osama bin Laden raises the possibility of a rally effect in his job approval ratings.

Mainstream Media Blames Fake OBL Photo Used By Mainstream Media On “Conspiracy Theorists” Steve Watson | Government says it has real images and video, still deciding whether to release them.

Kurt Nimmo and Alex Jones
Infowars.com
May 1, 2011

CNN and the corporate media report this evening that purported CIA asset Osama bin Laden has been killed by the U.S. military in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad along with other family members.

In an address to the nation, Obama said he ordered the strike that allegedly killed Osama. The remainder of his speech followed the standard war on terror propaganda script.

A small team of Americans killed bin Laden in a firefight at a compound in Pakistan, the president said in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House, the Associated Press reported following Obama’s address.

Obama said the military took custody of his remains. It remains to be seen if the government will attempt to provide evidence that the remains are indeed those of Osama bin Laden.

“The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done,” said former president Bush. In 2006, Bush admitted that capturing Osama was not a top priority.

In February, 2004, Iranian state radio claimed Osama bin Laden had been captured in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan “a long time ago.” Pentagon and Pakistani officials denied the report. “Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,” the radio report said.

Osama bin Laden died of kidney failure soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us anymore.”

A Taliban leader told the Pakistan Observer on December 21, 2002, that Bin Laden was suffering from a serious lung complication and died in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief, according to Fox News.

Alex Jones was told live on the radio in 2002 by high-level Council on Foreign Relations members that Osama Bin Laden had died of kidney failure in early 2002.

“I have it from high level [sources] from inside the Bush administration…that bin Laden died of natural causes and that his family has given the body to the CIA, that they’re gonna roll him out right before the election, that he’s on ice right now. They will claim they killed him right before the election,” Alex said at the time.

“Jones gave a caution that the intelligence could be disinformation but claimed that his base in Austin was extremely close to the Bush administration and similar information received in the past had been credible,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote in August of 2002.

During the 2004 election, CNN reported that Democratic insiders had been told that George W. Bush was going to use the Bin Laden body as an ace-in-the-hole if he thought he was in danger of losing the 2004 election. This confirmed the evidence that Jones had been given by the CFR and others.

In 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.



Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack at the end of 2007, stated that Osama bin Laden had been killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a man convicted of kidnapping and killing journalist Daniel Pearl.

Obama’s announcement follows the release of a highly suspicious birth certificate last week. Both events represent psychological operations that possibly portend more significant events in the days ahead as the U.S. dollar continues to lose its reserve status, the economy fails to recover as promised, and wars expand in Libya, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Obama’s propaganda stunt arrives as the Democrats kick off their leader’s presidential reelection bid against a number of Republicans contenders who have been highly critical of not only his perceived handling of the economy, but also his management of the manufactured war on terror.
read more ...

Osama Raid Plan Was Cancelled Last Month - Sources tell ABC News that in March President Obama authorized the development of a plan for the U.S. to bomb Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound with two B2 stealth bombers dropping a few dozen 2,000-pound JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) on the compound.

Jake Tapper
ABC News
May 2, 2011

Sources tell ABC News that in March President Obama authorized the development of a plan for the U.S. to bomb Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound with two B2 stealth bombers dropping a few dozen 2,000-pound JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) on the compound.

But when the president heard the compound would be reduced to rubble he chose not to pursue that option.

That would mean there would be no evidence bin Laden was dead to present to the world – no DNA evidence, as the administration anticipates it will have.

Plus all 22 people in the compound including women and children, plus likely many neighbors would be killed.

The president wanted proof. And he wanted to minimize collateral damage.

Full article here

The Joker is Wild: Imperial Party Masks Murder Abroad

It was one of those horrific juxtapositions that an imperial state breeds in abundance: the emperor joking at a luxurious banquet with fawning courtiers, while his agents are killing innocent children on a distant frontier.

Following the contrived Bin Laden is dead now story, the corporate media and the government have been especially quick to warn that we’re all in grave danger of “reprisal” attacks. One favourite way of doing this is to repeat the debunked claims of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a man who has been waterboarded so many times, he’d admit to being Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy if the CIA told him to. So to kick off his deadness their has to be  Final Fake Bin Laden Tape “In The Pipeline”

The Obama administration may have announced the demise of Osama Bin Laden last night, years after every other intelligence analyst worth their salt voiced the open secret that Osama has been dead for the best part of a decade, but there’s still time for one more hoaky terror tape that will allow the boogeyman to frighten Americans into giving up more of their rights one last time. 

Boogeyman to frighten Americans into giving up rights one last time

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 2, 2011

The Obama administration may have announced the demise of Osama Bin Laden last night, years after every other intelligence analyst worth their salt voiced the open secret that Osama has been dead for the best part of a decade, but there’s still time for one more hokey terror tape that will allow the boogeyman to frighten Americans into giving up more of their rights one last time.

“It is unclear whether the tape is audio or video, but a U.S. official says that intelligence indicates it is already working its way through al-Qaida’s media pipeline. The official said the timing was coincidental and there is no indication he knew U.S. forces were bearing down on him,” reports the Associated Press.

Then again, it would be difficult for a frozen corpse to display much anticipation for anything given the fact that Osama has been a stiff since December 2001.

But that hasn’t stopped dubious Pentagon-linked intelligence fronts from releasing fake audio and video tapes as political grist for the last decade. Presumably, the likes of the IntelCenter and SITE greeted Sunday’s news of Bin Laden’s “assassination” with a tinge of sadness – because the CIA will no longer be requiring their video editing services.

The reason this U.S. intelligence official knows that the video is “working its way through al-Qaida’s media pipeline,” is because Al-Qaeda is a U.S. intelligence front. But don’t just take our word for it – last year the CIA admitted to creating a fake video in which intelligence officers dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and his cronies in an effort to defame the terrorist leader throughout the middle east. The Washington Post reported the story in May 2010.

In a related development, the White House has released a photo of Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton receiving, “An update on the mission against Osama bin Laden” yesterday.

The mission to what? Thaw out his frozen corpse? That must have made for dull viewing.

Washington’s Blog
May 2, 2011

President Obama announced tonight that U.S. special forces killed Osama Bin Laden.
That’s great … but we could have killed him years ago.

As I noted in 2009:

According to the U.S. Senate – Bin Laden was “within the grasp” of the U.S. military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.

This is not news: it was disclosed in 2005 by the CIA field commander for the area in Afghanistan where Bin Laden was holed up.

In addition, French soldiers allegedly say that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the American commanders stopped them.

***

A retired Colonel and Fox News military analyst said that the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden in 2007, but didn’t:

We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it ….Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.

Indeed, a United States Congressman claims that the Bush administration intentionally let Bin Laden escape in order to justify the Iraq war.

Similarly, Cenk Uygur pointed out:

The New York Times reported … that we sent in 36 U.S. Special Forces troops to get Osama bin Laden when we knew he was in Tora Bora. By contrast, we sent nearly 150,000 soldiers to get Saddam Hussein. In case you’re keeping count at home, we got Saddam and we didn’t get Osama. What does that tell you about this administration’s priorities? This goes beyond incompetence. If you send only 36 soldiers to get somebody in the middle of Afghanistan, it means you don’t want to get him…

Osama had about 1,500-2,000 well-armed, well-trained men in the region. 36 guys to get 2,000? Why would we let ourselves be outgunned like that?…

There is an inescapable fact – if you put this little effort into capturing someone, it means you don’t want to capture him.

***

If people inside the administration actually held back from capturing Osama bin Laden when we had him cornered, it borders on treason.

Postscript: Of course, some people claim that Bin Laden was actually killed years ago. But as I pointed out in 2009, whether or not he was alive or dead was less important than the fact that the American government pretended that he was a supremely powerful boogeyman who justified an endless and all-consuming war on terror:

Many people claim that Bin Laden died a long time ago. According to Israeli intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, and other sources, Bin Laden is dead.

According to video experts and and top Bin Laden experts, recent Bin Laden videos are fake.

So if Bin Laden is alive, American leaders have to explain why they have repeatedly chosen not to pull the trigger.

And if he is dead, they have to explain why they are claiming that he’s alive and authenticating his videos.

Government Says Osama Buried at Sea - Infowars.com | Anonymous government source says Osama burial followed Islamic practice and tradition.
 
May 2, 2011

According to the Associated Press, Osama bin Laden’s body was buried at sea after the raid in Pakistan:

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

This means there will be no independent verification that Osama was actually killed.

The only evidence at this stage is an obviously doctored photo.

If true, there will be no DNA check to verify if the body was indeed that of Osama bin Laden. Once again, we will be forced to either accept the government’s version of events or be denounced as conspiracy theorists.

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Bin Laden was asked to surrender before being shot; ABC Video Captures Inside Of Compound - Osama Bin Laden was asked to surrender by US troops before he was shot dead, Fox News is quoting intelligence sources as saying.

Times Of Malta
May 2, 2011

Osama Bin Laden was asked to surrender by US troops before he was shot dead, Fox News is quoting intelligence sources as saying.

The terrorist leader had always said he would not be captured alive.

Bin Laden was shot dead during a raid by US ground troops on a compound in Pakistan. His body was captured by the Americans.

Full article here

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