Black Box OBL

[8bitagent]

Jack, I have to agree with your Tora Bora 2001-May 1st 2011 hypothesis. Ever since I looked deeper into the "airlift of evil"/"Get away" story by sy hersh and especially the Jawbreak Tora Bora stand down it's made sense. I never knew why they kept pushing the "OBL is in tribal regions" so long, unless it was meant to make the May Day OBL discovery and death rite all the more "shocking". Pakistan, HOW COULD YOU?

Are you suggesting that this could both be a visible schism as Pakistan continues to be the west's lackey, as well as some in the Pentagon wanting this to smooth over and calm down Pakistan? It's funny how this can be read so many ways. The shroedinger's cat analogy is absolutely perfect, almost more fitting at this point than the Goldstein comparison.

It is funny how the security state and media never ran with the ISI connected to 9/11 and Daniel Pearl death stuff...as if they want to paint Pakistan in a bothersome light, but not THAT bothersome.
ISI has seemed to long be the West's Igor.

Many will say this picture, like a POW holding up the day's headline paper, proves bin Laden didn't die in 2001 and has been alive til at least 2009.



It's a perfect image, especially in light of reading that Obama Sin Laden blog post in the other thread and the mimetic Obsama thread. If this is a real genuine image, it's funny seeing Osama staring in many ways his reverse tulpa twin Obama...all sorts of symbolism there I'm sure.

[JackRiddler]

.

Bit of memory lane, Chossudovsky reviewing the Rawalpindi and Dubai stories.

Bush Administration knew the Whereabouts of Osama
by Michel Chossudovsky

www.globalresearch.ca 16 November 2003 (revised 17 November 2003)
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO311A.html


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the CBS report by Dan Rather is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, 2001, courtesy of America's ally, he was in all likelihood still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the 11th of September, when the attacks occurred. In all probability, his whereabouts were known to US officials on the morning of September 12, when Secretary of State Colin Powell initiated negotiations with Pakistan, with a view to arresting and extraditing bin Laden.

A recent Reuters report (11/13/03; scroll down) quoting Labeviere's book "Corridors of Terror" points to alleged "negotiations" between Osama bin Laden and the CIA, which took place two months prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks at the American Hospital in Dubai, UAE, while bin Laden was recovering from a kidney dialysis treatment

Enemy Number One in hospital recovering from dialysis treatment "negotiating with CIA"?

The meeting with the CIA head of station at the American Hospital in Dubai, UAE was confirmed by a report in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, published in October 2001. (See Alexandra Richard, at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html ,

For a virtual tour of the hospital click http://www.ahdubai.com/site/tour_1.htm


The "negotiations" between the CIA and Osama (a CIA "intelligence asset") is sheer disinformation. Even though the CIA has refuted the claim, the report serves to highlight Osama as a bona fide "Enemy of America," rather than a creation of the CIA. In the words of former CIA agent Milt Bearden in an interview with Dan Rather on September 12, 2001, “If they didn’t have an Osama bin Laden, they would invent one.”

Intelligence negotiations never take place on a hospital bed. The CIA knew Osama was at the American Hospital in Dubai. Rather than negotiate, they could have arrested him. He was on the FBI most wanted list.

According to the Reuters report: "At the time, bin Laden had a multi-million dollar price on his head for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa". So why did the hospital staff, who knew that Osama was at the American Hospital in Dubai, not claim the reward?

The Figaro report points to complicity between the CIA and Osama rather than "negotiation". (see excerpt below). Consistent with several other reports, it also points to the antagonism between the FBI and the CIA.

If the CIA had wanted to arrest Osama bin Laden prior to September 11, they could have done it then in Dubai. But they would not have had a the war on terrorism pretext for waging a major military operation in the Middle East and Central Asia.

According to Le Figaro:

"Dubai... was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July <2001>. A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that "public enemy number one" stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July. While he was hospitalized, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden's hospital room. A few days later, the CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited bin Laden. Authorized sources say that on July 15th, the day after bin Laden returned to Quetta , the CIA agent was called back to headquarters. In the pursuit of its investigations, the FBI discovered "financing agreements" that the CIA had been developing with its "Arab friends" for years. The Dubai meeting is, so it would seem, within the logic of 'a certain American policy.'" (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html )

The Figaro report is confirmed by several other news reports including the London Times (1 Nov 2001 at http://www.unansweredquestions.org/time ... 1/london... ). During his 11-day stay in the American hospital, Osama received specialized medical treatment from a Canadian urologist Dr. Terry Calloway .(See http://www.ahdubai.com/site/ps18_2.htm )

Osama back in Hospital on September 10, 2001, one day before the 9/11 attacks

According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was back in Hospital, one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, this time, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan. Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army's headquarters:



DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.

This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.

Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.

"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.

AHMED RASHID, TALIBAN EXPERT: There were reports that Pakistani intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines. And the rumor was that these were wanted for Osama bin Laden.

PETERSEN (on camera): Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they refused our request to see any records. Government officials tonight denied that bin Laden had any medical treatment on that night.

(voice-over): But it was Pakistan`s President Musharraf who said in public what many suspected, that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death. His evidence, watching this most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don`t know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden`s health, I just am -- don`t have any knowledge.

PETERSEN: The United States has no way of knowing who in Pakistan`s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden maybe up to the night before 9/11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the United States may not know if those same people might help him again perhaps to freedom.

Barry Petersen, CBS News, Islamabad.

(END VIDEOTAPE) END

It should be noted, that the hospital is directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America's best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another "better purpose". Rumsfeld claimed at the time that he had no knowledge regarding Osama's health. (see CBS transcript above).

Needless to say, the CBS report is a crucial piece of information in the 9/11 jigsaw. It refutes the administration's claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden are unknown. It points to a Pakistan connection, it suggests a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Dan Rather and Barry Petersen fail to draw the implications of their January 2002 report. They fail to beg the question: where was Osama on 9/11? If they are to stand by their report, the conclusion is obvious: The administration is lying regarding the whereabouts of Osama.

Inpatient dialysis treatment tends to be longer than 24 hours in most American hospitals, which suggests that Osama would have been discharged from the Hospital on or "after" September 11.

If the CBS report is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, courtesy of America's ally, he was in all likelihood still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the 11th of September, when the attacks occurred. In all probability, his whereabouts were known to US officials on the morning of September 12, when Secretary of State Colin Powell initiated negotiations with Pakistan, with a view to arresting and extraditing bin Laden.

These negotiations, led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistan's military intelligence, on behalf of the government of President Pervez Musharraf, took place on the 12th and 13th of September in Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's office.

For further details, see: M. Chossudovsky, Cover-up or Complicity of the Bush Administration? The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) in the September 11 Attacks, 2 November 2001 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html , See also War and Globalization, the Truth behind September 11 , Global Outlook, Shanty Bay, 2003, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html )


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kindly help to circulate this important article to as many interested people as possible.

The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to post the above mentioned article in its entirety, or any portions thereof, so long as the URL and source are indicated, a copyright note is displayed, and, where excerpts are posted, the excerpt(s) is (are) indicated as such, and a link is provided to the full body of the text from which the excerpt(s) was taken. For publication of this article in print or other forms contact: editor@globalresearch.ca

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of War and Globalization, the Truth behind September 11 , Global Outlook, Shanty Bay, Ont., 2003

[JackRiddler]

2002 Congressional Research Service Brief on US-Pakistan Relations:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cac ... BqF3dk5pEA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/07/pentagon-osama-bin-laden-videos

Pentagon brings Osama bin Laden back to life with release of his 'home videos'

Peter Beaumont watches clips of the world's most wanted man – and finds him greatly diminished


Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 May 2011 21.50 BST

Myths make large, but reality diminishes. Last night, with the release of images of his dead body vetoed by the US president, the Pentagon, who ordered his death, showed something else: Osama bin Laden alive. Osama reduced to a more human scale than the bogeyman he had become.

The four video clips that were released show a man made mute by the removal of the audio that once accompanied these videos, excised by those now attempting to define and control how he will be remembered.

And Osama's "home videos" were hardly as rumoured. For they showed nothing of his life with his family. Instead they covered far more familiar territory, with one exception.

The longest showed a taped speech, allegedly recorded in 2010 delivering a message about the America that killed him in the end and who removed his voice as if to prove the point that he, Bin Laden, had gone. Osama had been silenced at last.

It was familiar not simply because we have seen this format before but because, in a strange way, we have grown used to him – his peculiar delicacy of movement. In a white cap and gold cloak, Bin Laden's body stays still as he reads from his script. He raises a finger. Points to one side. Sometimes his eyes fix on the camera. His beard is black and trimmed, his poise erect. Which makes one wonder about the next clip, the one intended to damage him.

The camera lingers for a long time on a menu of satellite channels shown on a television. There is a tight shot as the cameraman pulls out and this time it is another Bin Laden who is revealed to view. He seems old and hunched, a brown cloak around his shoulders, a black cap comforter pulled over his head. His beard is grey. Unkempt. He seems almost unrecognisable from the previous figure.

He flicks through the channels watching footage of himself. There is Osama speaking. Old footage of Osama with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's chief of operations. He makes a remark to the cameraman. Flicks through the channels.

You have a sense of how he had lived in those last years within his compound. There is a blackout curtain over a window. A computer and a cheap bolster and a carpet, but little else. Even in the act of contemplating himself, this hunched figure appears so diminished that you wonder how he inspired such fear.

The remaining two clips show Bin Laden rehearsing for one of his taped addresses. One is labelled "A Missed Cue". They flick off almost as soon as they have begun.

The question is: what are these clips supposed to tell us?

Ironically, the answer is that they say as much about those who finally caught up with the world's most wanted terrorist as about Bin Laden. What was the intention in revealing these mundane clips? To show that Bin Laden was vain? That he was obsessed with his image?

They manage that. But paradoxically, by silencing his voice so emphatically – making him mute – they force the viewer to contemplate what was behind the words. And that was a man. A man who ordered mass murder and who was killed, his body dumped at sea. But a human being all the same.

As all killers are.

[8bitagent]

Some interesting, funny and oddball sections of this new headline news about Osama's "bored, darkened life"

title: "Bin Laden’s secret life in diminished, dark world
Military, intelligence officials paint portrait of an isolated man, perhaps a little bored "

The world’s most-wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity.

heh

Bin Laden, who was the tall man C.I.A. officers watched pacing the courtyard from a surveillance post nearby, never went out.

Yet we the Americans are pissed at the ISI?

Bin Laden issued two audio statements urging help for victims of floods in Pakistan. “We are in need of a big change in the method of relief work because the number of victims is great due to climate changes in modern times,” he said.

In 2007, he complained that Democratic control of Congress had not ended the war in Iraq, a fact he attributed to the pernicious influence of “big corporations.” In other messages he commented on the writings of Noam Chomsky, the leftist professor at M.I.T., and praised former President Jimmy Carter’s book supporting Palestinian rights.

I thought bin Laden was a fundie zealot?

What's this about showing concern for villagers in need, climate change, attacking big corporations, and supporting Jewish intellectuals?

[thatsmystory]

I read an article which discussed the risk/reward of intelligence operations comparing the Khost incident with the Bin Laden mission success. The official line is that the CIA thought al-Balawi could help them find al-Zawahiri. What wasn't discussed in the article is the disconnect in regard to ISI (and likely CIA) awareness of Bin Laden's whereabouts. Is al-Zawahiri currently in a safe house protected by an intelligence agency?

[8bitagent]

I read an article which discussed the risk/reward of intelligence operations comparing the Khost incident with the Bin Laden mission success. The official line is that the CIA thought al-Balawi could help them find al-Zawahiri. What wasn't discussed in the article is the disconnect in regard to ISI (and likely CIA) awareness of Bin Laden's whereabouts. Is al-Zawahiri currently in a safe house protected by an intelligence agency?

Probably. I remember the "mysterious" CIA asset who gave Zawahiri a bunch of money, and that his brother allegedly runs the MPRI(Pentagon) financed NLA. Actually I should probably brush up on the HistoryCommons entry for Dr Ayman.

But yeah, I think it's funny how people on conspiracy forums were saying bin Laden was probably in an ISI safehouse, yet pundits kept saying he was in Warzaristan. Now this can only mean both Zawahiri and Adam "Gadan" Pearlman are in safehouses too. Probably, Anwar al-Awlaki, who missed yet another drone.

Why is the CIA trying to blow up their assets?

[crikkett]

Phoney multi-volume sets of fancy-bound gilt-edged display books meant to evoke the cultured evidence of a traditional classical educational setting in the background are SOP for Al-Qaeda photo-ops.

"Phoney"?

[8bitagent]

cross posted in the OBL dead thread, this is for Jack:


"US Gov Says No Evidence Pakistan Knew OBL Was Hiding"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42948377/ns/world_news/

Once again, Jack was right all along...things have been "smoothed over"

[JackRiddler]

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Thanks. Let's throw the whole thing in for the record.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42948377/ns/world_news/

US: No sign Pakistan knew of bin Laden presence

'We're pressing the Pakistanis,' national security adviser says

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has seen no evidence Pakistan's leadership knew Osama bin Laden was living in that country before his killing last week by U.S. forces, the U.S. national security adviser said on Sunday.

"I can tell you directly that -- I've not seen evidence that would tell us that the political, the military, or the intelligence leadership had foreknowledge -- of bin Laden," Tom Donilon told NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked if Pakistan was guilty of harbouring the al Qaeda leader.

But he added bin Laden's residence for several years inside a compound in Abbottabad, 35 miles (56 km) north of the capital, Islamabad, "needs to be investigated.

"The Pakistanis have said they're going to investigate," Donilon said. "This is a very big issue in Pakistan right now. How could this have happened in Pakistan? We need to investigate it. We need to work with the Pakistanis. And we're pressing the Pakistanis on this investigation."

Donilon, who appeared on a number of Sunday talk shows, told CNN's "State of the Union" that he expected cooperation from Pakistanis.

Donilon said Pakistani officials also needed to provide U.S. authorities with intelligence they had gathered from the compound where bin Laden was killed, including access to bin Laden's three wives who are in Pakistani custody.

A senior U.S. official told NBC News that threat information from the bin Laden compound files already have been turned over to countries who are allies of the U.S.

"We have absolutely turned over threat info to other countries as we have found it in the files ... and we have already found some," the official said. The official would not identify which countries or provide details on the threat information.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told "Fox News Sunday" that it was important for the United States to maintain good relations with Pakistan.

"I have questions, I'd like to know more about it," Cheney said about bin Laden's presence in Pakistan. "But I also think it's important for us to remember we have a broad range of issues that we work with Pakistan together."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said he also wanted to know how much Pakistan knew.

"It's extraordinarily hard to believe that he could have survived there for five years or more in a major population centre without some kind of support system and knowledge," Kerry told CBS's "Face the Nation."

Donilon said that despite difficulties in the relationship, Pakistan is an important partner for the United States.

"We have had our problems with Pakistan but we have also had a tremendous amount of partnership and cooperation with them in our effort in terrorism, including against al Qaeda," Donilon said on Fox.

Pakistan, heavily dependent on billions of dollars in U.S. aid, is under intense pressure to explain how bin Laden could have spent so many years undetected just a few hours' drive from its intelligence headquarters in the capital.

Senior Pakistani officials said on Saturday that bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for more than seven years before he was shot to death by U.S. Navy SEALs.

One of bin Laden's widows told Pakistani investigators that he stayed in a village for nearly 2 1/2 years before moving to the nearby garrison town of Abbottabad.

The wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, said bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad, where one of the most elaborate manhunts in history ended on Monday.

Suspicions have deepened that Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have had ties with bin Laden -- or that at least some of its agents did. The agency has been described as a state within a state.

Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions and says it has paid the highest price in human life and money supporting the U.S. war on militancy launched after bin Laden's followers staged the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Donilon said the killing of bin Laden was "a real blow" to the al Qaeda militant network, which he said was still dangerous but in its weakest shape since 2001.

With bin Laden dead, the United States will now turn its attention to his presumed successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born doctor and long time deputy of bin Laden.

"Al-Zawahiri will be ... the number one terrorist we're looking for in the world," Donilon told CNN.

Donilon declined to discuss if evidence uncovered at bin Laden's compound revealed evidence of specific al Qaeda plots against the United States, but said, "It's absolutely critical for us to remain vigilant as we continue to press this organisation."

Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.

© 2011 msnbc.com

[JackRiddler]

.

Gotta steal these Memory Lane items from the other thread:

Thanks Ben D!

'Bin Laden dead long before US raid'

Sun May 8, 2011 4:33PM

Iran's intelligence minister says the country has reliable information that former head of the al-Qaeda terrorist group Osama bin Laden died of disease some time ago.

“We have accurate information that bin Laden died of illness some time ago,” Heidar Moslehi told reporters on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

He questioned Washington's claim that bin Laden was killed by American troops in a hiding compound in Pakistan on May 1.

“If the US military and intelligence apparatus have really arrested or killed bin Laden, why don't they show him (his dead body) why have they thrown his corpse into the sea?” Moslehi asked.

“When we apprehended [former Jundallah ringleader Abdul Malik] Rigi, we showed him and also aired his interview,” ISNA quoted the intelligence chief as saying.

By releasing such false news, he said, the White House seeks to overshadow regional awakening.

Moslehi said US officials resort to such PR campaigns to divert attention from their domestic problems as well as their “fragile” economic situation.

US President Barack Obama claimed that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces on May 1 in a hiding compound in Pakistan.

A US official later announced that bin Laden's body was abruptly buried at sea, falsely boasting that his hasty burial was in accordance with the Islamic law, requiring burial within 24 hours of death.

However, burial at sea is not an Islamic practice and Islam does not have a timeframe for burial.

US officials also claimed their decision for a sea burial was made because no country would accept bin Laden's remains, without elaborating on which countries were actually contacted on the matter.

Analysts, however, have raised serious questions as to why US officials did not allow for the application of a DNA test to officially confirm the identity of the corpse before its hasty burial.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178898.html

An oldie from 2009....Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?

I want to see the long form Death Certificate.

From WRH's Osama Dead page (not going to link):

Translation of Funeral Article in Egyptian Paper:
al-Wafd, Wednesday, December 26, 2001 Vol 15 No 4633



"News of Bin Laden's Death and Funeral 10 days ago"

Islamabad -
A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa'da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.

Grab it before it falls down the memory hole: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

"The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease 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.

About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some "Taliban friends," attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the "great leader."

The Taliban source who claims to have seen bin Laden's face before burial said "he looked pale ... but calm, relaxed and confident."

Asked whether bin Laden had any feelings of remorse before death, the source vehemently said "no." Instead, he said, bin Laden was proud that he succeeded in his mission of igniting awareness amongst Muslims about hegemonistic designs and conspiracies of "pagans" against Islam. Bin Laden, he said, held the view that the sacrifice of a few hundred people in Afghanistan was nothing, as those who laid their lives in creating an atmosphere of resistance will be adequately rewarded by Almighty Allah.

When asked where bin Laden was buried, the source said, "I am sure that like other places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished."

and the NY Times too: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/opinion/11TAHE.html?ex=1089432000&en=373a282aeff2716a&ei=5070&todaysheadlines

The Death of bin Ladenism

By Amir Taheri
Published: July 11, 2002

Osama bin Laden is 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. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama's gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama's ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.

With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?

Even if he is still in the world, bin Ladenism has left for good. Mr. bin Laden was the public face of a brand of politics that committed suicide in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people in the process.

What were the key elements of that politics?

The first was a cynical misinterpretation of Islam that began decades ago with such anti-Western ideologues as Maulana Maudoodi of Pakistan and Sayyid Qutb of Egypt. Although Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb were not serious thinkers, they could at least offer a coherent ideology based on a narrow reading of Islamic texts. Their ideas about Western barbarism and Muslim revival, distilled down to bin Ladenism, became mere slogans designed to incite zealots to murder.

People like Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb could catch the ball and run largely because most Muslim intellectuals of their generation (and later) had no interest in continuing the work of Muslim philosophers. Our intellectuals were too busy learning Western ideologies of one kind or another -- and they left the newly urbanized Muslim masses to the half-baked ideas of men like Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb and eventually Mr. bin Laden.

Now, however, many Muslim intellectuals are returning home, so to speak. They are rediscovering the philosophical heritage of Islam and the challenges of Muslim political thought. And Maudoodi-Qutbism is now being seen as a pseudo-Islamic version of Western fascism.

The second element that made Mr. bin Laden possible was easy money, largely from wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf area who believed that they were buying a place in the hereafter while protecting themselves against political opposition in this world. Some paid because they believed they were helping poor and oppressed Muslims. Others paid so militants would go and spend their energies far away from home.

That easy money is no longer available, at least not in large quantities. Many donors have realized they were financing terrorists. Some have been forced to choose between the West, where they have the bulk of their wealth, and the troglodyte mujahedeen of the Hindu Kush.

The third element that made bin Ladenist terror possible was the encouraging, or at least complacent, attitude of several governments. The Taliban in Afghanistan began by hosting Mr. bin Laden and ended up becoming his life-and-death buddies. The Pakistanis were also supportive because they wanted to dominate Afghanistan and make life hard for the Indians by sending holy warriors to Kashmir. The Sudanese government was sympathetic, if not actually supportive, and offered at least a safe haven. This was also the case in Yemen, where in November 2000 I accidentally ran into a crowd of Qaeda militants who had flown in from Pakistan for a gathering.

We now know that Qaeda cells operated, often quite openly, in Muslim countries from Indonesia and Malaysia to Morocco and Tunisia, without being bothered by anyone. The fall of the Taliban means the gang no longer has a secure base. All the other countries are also closed, and in some cases even hostile.

The fourth element was the mistaken practice of many Western powers that sheltered the terrorists in the name of freedom of expression and dissent. We now know that London was a critical haven for Al Qaeda. The murder of the Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud was planned in London. Qaeda militants operated in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy without significant restraint.

The fifth element that made bin Ladenism possible was the West's, especially America's, perceived weakness if not actual cowardice. A joke going around militant Islamist circles until last year was that the only thing the Americans would do if attacked was to sue. That perception no longer exists. The Americans, supported by one of the largest coalitions in history, have shown they will use force against their enemies even if that means a long and difficult war.

The sixth element of bin Ladenism was the illusion in most Western nations that they could somehow remain unaffected by the violence unleashed by fanatical terrorists against so many Muslim nations from Indonesia to Algeria.

Mr. bin Laden could survive and prosper only in a world in which these elements existed. That world is gone. Mr. bin Laden's ghost may linger on -- perhaps because Washington and Islamabad will find it useful. President Bush's party has a crucial election to win and Pervez Musharraf is keen to keep Pakistan in the limelight as long as possible.

But the truth is that Osama bin Laden is dead.

[JackRiddler]

.

Wonkette? Yes...

TRICK QUESTIONS
What Is ‘America,’ Anyway?

by Riley Waggaman
10:50 pm May 5, 2011
253 Comments 8642 Views


Why did America’s young people “take it to the streets” on May 1st? Were they angry about all the illegal wars? Were they frustrated because undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than our largest corporations? Perhaps all the young, patriotic Americans protested in the streets because we have “less than five percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners”? Or because “the richest one percent of Americans now take home almost twenty-four percent of income,” just like in a Banana Republic? Don’t be silly! America’s young people emerged from their condos to celebrate Death. Too bad Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t there with her Flip Cam. Speaking of Nazis, do you know who else died on May First? Hitler! Unfortunately we weren’t able to shoot Adolf Hitler in the head and then dump him in the ocean, for Justice — but most of the high-ranking Nazi monsters were still tried and convicted in a court of law. We probably would have killed every member of the Nazi High Command immediately without a proper trial, if they had committed the unconscionable act of murdering 3,000 people.

Actually, a lot of Nazi war criminals were recruited by our nation’s intelligence agencies, to help us build space rockets and torture communists. But that’s a different story, for a different time.

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Let’s talk about those Dead Osama Photographs, and how Barack Obama doesn’t want to “spike the football,” because he’s very humble about sending war helicopters into a sovereign nation, shooting an unarmed human in the face and then dumping the dead body into the ocean.

Some Americans are opposed to releasing these photographs, since making these photos publicly available is what Sarah Palin wants, on Twitter, or something.

There’s actually only one good reason to release a photograph of Osama’s mutilated corpse, but it’s reason enough.

The people of Afghanistan need to see this photo. They need to see this photograph more than anyone — more than the families of 9/11 victims.

Every mother in Afghanistan should be able to sit down with her children, and point at that photo.

“Do you see this photograph, children? This is the mangled corpse of Osama bin Laden. The Americans invaded our country ten years ago because they said we were protecting him, that he was hiding here. They found Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. They shot him in the head. He was unarmed. The Americans are still unsatisfied, though. They want more. And that is why they are still occupying our country.”

Every mother in Afghanistan should be able to point at that gruesome photograph, and say to her child, “The Americans still want more.”

But we guess that is what’s commonly referred to as “inciting jihad” or “putting the troops in harm’s way.” Strange times we’re livin’ in.

Reminds us of something Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, about America’s insatiable appetite for revenge. He wrote, “The ‘Get Tough America’ policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, has earned us a name for obscene brutality.” That’s a quotation from a short piece called “Wailing Shall Be In The Streets.” It’s an essay about the Dresden firebombing, which turned 100,000 German civilians into charcoal. And that was during World War II — the good war, the war where it was clear that we were Good and they were Evil.

Is anyone prepared to argue that it’s still so clear today? Is anyone prepared to argue that The War On Terror is more noble than fighting a fascist regime that conquered entire continents, slaughtered 6,000,000 human beings and had tentative plans for world domination? If so, we would love to hear from you: riley@wonkette.com. Subject: “America #1.”

(Here’s just One Example: The United States is currently harboring Luis Posada Carriles, a terrorist and former CIA asset who blew up a Cuban airliner. What would happen if Cuba sent a few helicopters into U.S. airspace and “brought Carriles to justice”? We would probably carpet-bomb Cuba into the Stone Age. Then we would reoccupy Cuba. And then we would rebuild all the crooked casinos in Havana, for Freedom.)

And are we supposed to believe that 3,000 American lives are more important than the hundreds of thousands of innocents who have been killed or maimed as a result of our ongoing military adventures? And are we certain that 3,000 American lives are more valuable than the lives of the countless millions who now live in violent war zones, just so we could have the satisfaction of shooting an unarmed Muslim in the face? Because if that’s what the American people really believe, well, there’s a name for that sort of belief system.

And if you’re still butthurt by the idea of releasing these photos, fine. Here’s the alternative:

End the wars. All of them. Every American in Afghanistan needs to be shipped home. Today. Ditto in Iraq. Every American solider and sketchy mercenary must leave. Now. The robot-bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya must also end. Every CIA rape prison must be dismantled. Gitmo must be closed forever. Same with Bagram. We also need to stop murdering Gaddafi’s infant grandchildren, if there’s any left unmurdered.

If you disagree, what you’re essentially saying is that 3,000 American lives are still “unavenged,” even after we invaded two countries, continue to bomb a half-dozen more, and shot the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks in the face. That’s excluding (of course) all of the Extraordinary Rendition and torture that our government condones, every single day. Oh noes — did we just criticize Barack Obama? We must be a Birther/Deather/Racist KKK James O’Keefe Breitbart YouTube Dance Remix!

If we don’t stop with all of the mind-boggling bullshit — if Endless War continues — photographs of Osama bin Laden’s gaping head wound should be released immediately, so that the world can fully appreciate just how bloodthirsty we’ve become.

It’s probably too late to save our crumbling fake Democracy, but maybe not. What’s to be done?

Communist hippie John Lennon said it best, of course: “There’s many ways of promoting peace. Do everything for peace. Piss for peace. Or smile for peace. Or go to school for peace. Or don’t go to school for peace. Whatever you do, just do it for peace.”

What is America, anyway?

With regard to World War II, one of the comments corrects: +25,000,000 Slavs.

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[vanlose kid]

this belongs here...

Osama bin Elvis

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the March 2009 issue

All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden. But tell that to the CIA and all the other misconceptualizers of the War on Terror.

Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals.

Dead or Alive?

Negative evidence alone compels the conclusion that Osama is long since dead. Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera's Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries. The audio and video tapes alleged to be Osama's never convinced impartial observers. The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between colors and styles of beard are small stuff.

Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

Also in 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, who heads Duke University's religious studies program, argued in a book on Osama's messages that their increasingly secular language is inconsistent with Osama's Wahhabism. Lawrence noted as well that the Osama figure in the December 2001 video, which many have taken as his assumption of responsibility for 9/11, wears golden rings—decidedly un-Wahhabi. He also writes with the wrong hand. Lawrence concluded that the messages are fakes, and not very good ones. The CIA has judged them all good.

Above all, whereas Elvis impersonators at least sing the King's signature song, "You ain't nutin' but a hound dawg," the words on the Osama tapes differ substantively from what the real Osama used to say—especially about the most important matter. On September 16, 2001, on Al Jazeera, Osama said of 9/11: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." Again, in the October interview with Tayseer Alouni, he limited his connection with 9/11 to ideology: "If they mean, or if you mean, that there is a link as a result of our incitement, then it is true. We incite…" But in the so-called "confession video" that the CIA found in December, the Osama figure acts like the chief conspirator. The fact that the video had been made for no self-evident purpose except perhaps to be found by the Americans should have raised suspicion. Its substance, the celebratory affirmation of a responsibility for 9/11 that Osama had denied, should also have weighed against the video's authenticity. Why would he wait to indict himself until after U.S. forces and allies had secured Afghanistan? But the CIA acted as if it had caught Osama red-handed.

The CIA should also have taken seriously the accounts of Osama's death. On December 26, 2001, Fox News interviewed a Taliban source who claimed that he had attended Osama's funeral, along with some 30 associates. The cause of death, he said, had been pulmonary infection. The New York Times on July 11, 2002, reported the consensus of a story widespread in Pakistan that Osama had succumbed the previous year to his long-standing nephritis. Then, Benazir Bhutto—as well connected as anyone with sources of information on the Afghan-Pakistani border—mentioned casually in a BBC interview that Osama had been murdered by his associates. Murder is as likely as natural death. Osama's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is said to have murdered his own predecessor, Abdullah Azzam, Osama's original mentor. Also, because Osama's capture by the Americans would have endangered everyone with whom he had ever associated, any and all intelligence services who had ever worked with him had an interest in his death.

New Osama, Real Osama

We do not know what happened to Osama. But whatever happened, the original one, the guy who looked and sounded like a spoiled Saudi kid turned ideologue, is no more. The one who exists in the tapes is different: he is the world's terror master, endowed with inexplicable influence. In short, whoever is making the post-November 2001 Osama tapes is pretending to far greater power than Osama ever claimed, much less exercised.

The real Osama bin Laden, like the real al Qaeda over which he presided, was never as important as reports from Arab (especially Saudi) intelligence services led the CIA to believe. Osama's (late) role in Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance was to bring in a little money. Arab fighters in general, and particularly the few Osama brought, fought rarely and badly. In war, one Afghan is worth many Arabs. In 1990 Osama told Saudi regent Abdullah that his mujahideen could stop Saddam's invasion of the kingdom. When Abdullah waved him away in favor of a half-million U.S. troops, Osama turned dissident, enough to have to move to Sudan, where he stayed until 1996 hatching sterile anti-Saudi plots until forced to move his forlorn band to Afghanistan.

There is a good reason why neither Osama nor al Qaeda appeared on U.S. intelligence screens until 1998. They had done nothing noteworthy. Since the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, however, and especially after director of Central Intelligence George Tenet imputed responsibility for 9/11 to Osama "game, set, and match," the CIA described him as terrorism's prime mover. It refused to countenance the possibility that Osama's associates might have been using him and his organization as a flag of convenience. As U.S. forces were taking over Afghanistan in 2001, the CIA was telling Time and Newsweek that it expected to find the high-tech headquarters from which Osama controlled terrorist activities in 50 countries. None existed. In November 2008, without factual basis and contrary to reason, the CIA continued to describe him and his organization as "the most clear and present danger to the United States." It did not try to explain how this could be while, it said, Osama is "largely isolated from the day to day operations of the organization he nominally heads." What organization?

Axiom and Opposite

Why such a focus on an organization that was never large, most of whose known associates have long since been killed or captured, and whose assets the CIA does not even try to catalogue? The CIA's official explanation, that al Qaeda has "metastasized" by spreading its expertise, is an empty metaphor. But pursuant to it, the U.S. government accepted the self-designation as "al Qaeda" of persons fighting for Sunni-Baathist interests in Iraq, and has pinned the label gratuitously on sundry high-profile terrorists while acknowledging that their connection to Osama and Co. may be emotional at most. But why such gymnastics in the face of Osama's incontrovertible irrelevance? Because focusing on Osama and al Qaeda affirms a CIA axiom dating from the Cold War, an axiom challenged during the Reagan years but that has been U.S. policy since 1993, namely: terrorism is the work of "rogue individuals and groups" that operate despite state authority. According to this axiom, the likes of Osama run rings around the intelligence services of Arab states—just like the Cold War terrorists who came through Eastern Europe to bomb in Germany and Italy and to shoot Pope John Paul II supposedly acted despite Bulgarian intelligence, despite East Germany's Stasi, despite the KGB. This axiom is dear to many in the U.S. government because it leads logically to working with the countries whence terrorists come rather than to treating them as enemies.

But what if terrorism were (as Thomas Friedman put it) "what states want to happen or let happen"? What if, in the real world, infiltrators from intelligence services—the professionals—use the amateur terrorists rather than the other way around? What is the logical consequence of noting the fact that the terrorist groups that make a difference on planet Earth—such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the PLO, Colombia's FARC—are extensions of, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Venezuela? It is the negation of the U.S. government's favorite axiom. It means that when George W. Bush spoke, and when Barack Obama speaks, of America being "at war" against "extremism" or "extremists" they are either being stupid or acting stupid to avoid dealing with the nasty fact that many governments wage indirect warfare.

In short, insisting on Osama's supposed mastery of al Qaeda, and on equating terrorism with al Qaeda, is official U.S. policy because it forecloses questions about the role of states, and makes it possible to indict as warmongers whoever raises such questions. Osama's de facto irrelevance for seven years, however, has undermined that policy's intellectual legitimacy. How much longer can presidents or directors of the CIA wave the spectra of Osama and al Qaeda before people laugh at them?

An Intellectual House of Cards

Questioning osama's relevance to today's terrorism leads naturally to asking how relevant he ever was, and who might be more relevant. That in turn quickly shows how flimsy are the factual foundations on which rest the U.S. government's axioms about the "war on terror." Consider: We know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) planned and carried out 9/11. But there is no independent support for KSM's claim that he acted at Osama's direction and under his supervision. On the contrary, we know for sure that the expertise and the financing for 9/11 came from KSM's own group (the U.S. government has accepted but to my knowledge not verified that the group's core is a biological family of Baluchs). This group carried out the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and every other act for which al Qaeda became known. The KSM group included the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings Abdul Rahman Yasin, who came from, returned to, and vanished in Iraq, as well as Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that bombing, who came to the U.S. from Iraq on an Iraqi passport and was known to his New York collaborators as "Rashid the Iraqi." This group had planned the bombing of U.S. airliners over the Pacific in 1995. The core members are non-Arabs. They had no history of religiosity (and the religiosity they now display is unconvincing). They were not creatures of Osama. Only in 1996 did the group come to Osama's no-account band, and make it count.

In life, as in math, you must judge the function |of a factor in any equation by factoring it out and seeing if the equation still works. Factor out Osama. Chances are, 9/11 still happens. Factor out al Qaeda too. Maybe 9/11 still happens. The other bombing plots sure happened without it. But if you factor out the KSM group, surely there is no 9/11, and without the KSM group, there is no way al Qaeda would have become a household word.

Who, precisely, are KSM and his reputed nephews? That is an interesting question to which we do not know the answer, and are not about to find out. Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after a trial that focused on his guilt and that abstracted from his associations. Were our military tribunal to accede to KSM's plea of guilty, he would avoid any trial at all. Moreover, the sort of trial that would take place before the tribunal would focus on proving guilt rather than on getting at the whole truth. It would not feature the cross-examination of witnesses, the substantive proving and impeachment of evidence, and the exploration of alternative explanations of events. But real trials try all sides. Do we need such things given that KSM confessed? Yes. There is no excuse for confusing confessions with truth, especially confessions in which the prisoners confirm our agencies' prejudices.

The excuse for limiting the public scrutiny of evidence is the alleged need to protect intelligence sources. But my experience, as well as that of others who have been in a position to probe such claims, is that almost invariably they protect our intelligence agencies' incompetence and bureaucratic interests. Anyhow, the public's interest in understanding what it's up against should override all others.

Understanding the Past, Dealing With the Future

Focusing on Osama bin Elvis is dangerous to America's security precisely because it continues to substitute in our collective mind the soft myth that terrorism is the work of romantic rogues for the hard reality that it can happen only because certain states want it to happen or let it happen. KSM and company may not have started their careers as agents of Iraqi intelligence, or they may have quit the Iraqis and worked for others, or maybe they just worked for themselves. But surely they were a body unto themselves. As such they fit Osama's description of those responsible for 9/11 as "individuals with their own motivation" far better than they fit the CIA's description of them as Osama's tools.

More important, focusing on Osama and al Qaeda distorts our understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan. The latter-day Taliban are fielding forces better paid and armed than any in the region except America's. Does anyone suggest seriously that Osama or al-Zawahiri are providing the equipment, the money, or the moral incentives? Such amounts of money can come only from the super wealthy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The equipment can come only through dealers who work at the sufferance of states, and can reach the front only through Pakistan by leave of Pakistani authorities. Moreover, the moral incentives for large-scale fighting in Pushtunistan can come only as part of the politics of Pushtun identity. Hence sending troops to Afghanistan to fight Pushtuns financed by Saudis, supported by Pakistanis, and disposing of equipment purchased throughout the world, with the objective of "building an Afghan nation" capable of preventing Osama and al Qaeda from messing up the world from their mountain caves, is an errand built on intellectual self-indulgence.

Intellectual Authority

The CIA had as much basis for deeming Osama the world's terror master "game, set, and match" in 2001 as it had in 2003 for verifying as a "slam dunk" the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and as it had in 2007 for determining that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Mutatis mutandis, it was on such bases that the CIA determined in 1962 that the Soviets would not put missiles in Cuba; that the CIA was certain from 1963 to 1978 that the USSR would not build the first strike missile force that it was building before its very eyes; that the CIA convinced Bush 41 that the Soviet Union was not falling apart and that he should help hold it together; that the CIA assured the U.S. government in 1990 that Iraq would not invade Kuwait, and in 1996 that neither India nor Pakistan would test nuclear weapons. In these and countless other instances, the CIA has provided the US government and the media with authoritative bases for denying realities over which America was tripping.

The force of the CIA's judgments, its authority, has always come from the congruence between its prejudices and those of America's ruling class. When you tell people what they want to hear, you don't have to be too careful about premises, facts, and conclusions. Our problem, in short, is not the CIA's mentality so much as the unwillingness of persons in government and the "attentive public" to exercise intellectual due diligence about international affairs. Osama bin Laden's role may be as good a place as any to start.

Angelo M. Codevilla is professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/1 ... -bin-elvis

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[JackRiddler]

Thanks vk!

Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

The Dalle Molle Institute study is a hell of a thing for OBL mythologists to rationalize, which is why it's ignored. Also, rather exponentially more impressive than the latest claim from S.I.T.E.

Then, Benazir Bhutto—as well connected as anyone with sources of information on the Afghan-Pakistani border—mentioned casually in a BBC interview that Osama had been murdered by his associates.

This article would have been so much improved by not entertaining the highly dubious idea that Bhutto meant to say that, rather than that Omar Sheikh murdered Daniel Pearl.

As I've argued here, OBL didn't have to be dead before May 1st. If, from the time of the Tora Bora "escape," he's in the custody of an ISI compartment working with a counterpart at the CIA, dead or alive, and assuming their knowledge of his whereabouts and state is exclusive, then they have the power to generate the myth and to stage the circumstances of the public death at a time of their choosing, and the incentive not to betray their collaboration even as they play out a kabuki theater of accusations in the aftermath.

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[JackRiddler]

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... istan-deal

Osama bin Laden mission agreed in secret 10 years ago by US and Pakistan


US forces were given permission to conduct unilateral raid inside Pakistan if they knew where Bin Laden was hiding, officials say

Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 May 2011 19.06 BST



The deal was struck between Pervez Musharraf and George Bush in 2001 and renewed during the 'transition to democracy' – a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was still president but a civilian government had been elected. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The US and Pakistan struck a secret deal almost a decade ago permitting a US operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil similar to last week's raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, the Guardian has learned.

The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.

Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.

"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us."

The deal puts a new complexion on the political storm triggered by Bin Laden's death in Abbottabad, 35 miles north of Islamabad, where a team of US navy Seals assaulted his safe house in the early hours of 2 May.

Pakistani officials have insisted they knew nothing of the raid, with military and civilian leaders issuing a strong rebuke to the US. If the US conducts another such assault, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani warned parliament on Monday, "Pakistan reserves the right to retaliate with full force."

Days earlier, Musharraf, now running an opposition party from exile in London, emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the raid, terming it a "violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan".

But under the terms of the secret deal, while Pakistanis may not have been informed of the assault, they had agreed to it in principle.

A senior Pakistani official said it had been struck under Musharraf and renewed by the army during the "transition to democracy" – a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was still president but a civilian government had been elected.

Referring to the assault on Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, the official added: "As far as our American friends are concerned, they have just implemented the agreement."

The former US official said the Pakistani protests of the past week were the "public face" of the deal. "We knew they would deny this stuff."

The agreement is consistent with Pakistan's unspoken policy towards CIA drone strikes in the tribal belt, which was revealed by the WikiLeaks US embassy cables last November. In August 2008, Gilani reportedly told a US official: "I don't care if they do it, as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."

As drone strikes have escalated in the tribal belt over the past year, senior civilian and military officials issued pro forma denunciations even as it became clear the Pakistani military was co-operating with the covert programme.

The former US official said that impetus for the co-operation, much like the Bin Laden deal, was driven by the US. "It didn't come from Musharraf's desire. On the Predators, we made it very clear to them that if they weren't going to prosecute these targets, we were, and there was nothing they could do to stop us taking unilateral action.

"We told them, over and again: 'We'll stop the Predators if you take these targets out yourselves.'"

Despite several attempts to contact his London office, the Guardian has been unable to obtain comment from Musharraf.

Since Bin Laden's death, Pakistan has come under intense US scrutiny, including accusations that elements within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence helped hide the al-Qaida leader.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama said Bin Laden must have had "some sort of support network" inside Pakistan.

"We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, outside of government, and that's something we have to investigate," Obama said.

Gilani has stood firmly by the ISI, describing it as a "national asset", and said claims that Pakistan was "in cahoots" with al-Qaida were "disingenuous".

"Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd," he said. "We didn't invite Osama bin Laden to Pakistan."

Gilani said the army had launched an investigation into how Bin Laden managed to hide inside Pakistan. Senior generals will give a briefing on the furore to parliament next Friday.

Gilani paid lip-service to the alliance with America and welcomed a forthcoming visit from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, but pointedly paid tribute to help from China, whom he described as "a source of inspiration for the people of Pakistan".
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

All this deal requires is a secret codicil NOT TO KNOW.

Comment on DU thread where I found this:

Look how carefully phrased that one sentence is:
"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations.

Could have been a Post-it note on Condoleeza Rice's desk. Because if we stopped looking for Osama bin Laden, as it appears we did, then we wouldn't be able to go get him, now would we?

In the meantime they could keep a nice friendly eye on the fellow, down the street from the Pakistani version of West Point, and Osama bin Laden could come out and campaign for the Republican Party every couple of years.

Nice arrangement, no?

[8bitagent]

In the meantime they could keep a nice friendly eye on the fellow, down the street from the Pakistani version of West Point, and Osama bin Laden could come out and campaign for the Republican Party every couple of years.

Nice arrangement, no?

My money is on that theory, as it's been for some time now. That "They/The Globalists/PTB" had an agreement with elements of Pakistan to safely bring bin Laden out of tora bora after the jawbreaker stand down, and then take bin Laden out when they chose to exercise that politically convenient gameplan. It makes sense they would do this not only under Obama(we'll show those racist right wingers, Obama can be a tough cowboy too!) but even MORE importantly: near the 10 year anniversary of 9/11....but not TOO close as to arouse suspicion as to the timing.

I've discussed this at length with people online of the historycommons.org style of 'trutherdom', and some have come to the conclusion with what I have: that it is important in this meta play to make sure that most of the CIA be convinced of the "threat of al Qaeda"; and that the jihadists be convinced that they are "doing the good work against the imperialists for Allah". This notion that everyone in the CIA and government "knows 9/11 was an 'inside job'" and that "Islamists are innocent and framed" doesn't really explain a lot of things. If you have a hidden hand able to convince jihadists they really did do 9/11, and convince intel agencies and your average government employee that "the threat of al Qaeda is real", then you can keep the ruse and the game going indefinitely. It's the perfect fail safe..."how dare you accuse anyone other than al qaeda of being behind 9/11, they even boast of it!"

Why did America’s young people “take it to the streets” on May 1st? Were they angry about all the illegal wars? Were they frustrated because undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than our largest corporations? Perhaps all the young, patriotic Americans protested in the streets because we have “less than five percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners”? Or because “the richest one percent of Americans now take home almost twenty-four percent of income,” just like in a Banana Republic? Don’t be silly! America’s young people emerged from their condos to celebrate Death. Too bad Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t there with her Flip Cam. Speaking of Nazis, do you know who else died on May First? Hitler! Unfortunately we weren’t able to shoot Adolf Hitler in the head and then dump him in the ocean, for Justice — but most of the high-ranking Nazi monsters were still tried and convicted in a court of law. We probably would have killed every member of the Nazi High Command immediately without a proper trial, if they had committed the unconscionable act of murdering 3,000 people.

....

End the wars. All of them. Every American in Afghanistan needs to be shipped home. Today. Ditto in Iraq. Every American solider and sketchy mercenary must leave. Now. The robot-bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya must also end. Every CIA rape prison must be dismantled. Gitmo must be closed forever. Same with Bagram. We also need to stop murdering Gaddafi’s infant grandchildren, if there’s any left unmurdered.

If you disagree, what you’re essentially saying is that 3,000 American lives are still “unavenged,” even after we invaded two countries, continue to bomb a half-dozen more, and shot the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks in the face. That’s excluding (of course) all of the Extraordinary Rendition and torture that our government condones, every single day. Oh noes — did we just criticize Barack Obama? We must be a Birther/Deather/Racist KKK James O’Keefe Breitbart YouTube Dance Remix!

If we don’t stop with all of the mind-boggling bullshit — if Endless War continues — photographs of Osama bin Laden’s gaping head wound should be released immediately, so that the world can fully appreciate just how bloodthirsty we’ve become.

This and the Chomsky article made my day. Why this wasn't the sentiment by and large by leftist or liberal sites is quite troubling. The above quoted portion sounds exactly like what I would write:)