The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby Zombie Glenn Beck » Thu May 21, 2015 12:14 am

8bitagent » Wed May 20, 2015 4:10 pm wrote:
Surprised he didn't have a book on 9/11 and the Occult, or Aleister Crowley books


The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928)


THIS, is what really interests me. What the hell was Osama the supposed Wahhabi doing with a book on occultism?
barracuda wrote:The path from RI moderator to True Blood fangirl to Jehovah's Witness seems pretty straightforward to me. Perhaps even inevitable.
User avatar
Zombie Glenn Beck
 
Posts: 244
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2014 2:55 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby Project Willow » Thu May 21, 2015 12:58 am

RocketMan » 20 May 2015 07:43 wrote:"Bizarre twist" might be again too tame a word...

http://blackbag.gawker.com/was-osama-a- ... socialflow


:rofl:

I can't stop laughing. It's a psy op hit list, a wink, smile, wave and wank all in one.

My Borne project has been effectively neutralized for the time being, and I was recently physically accessed after years of remote attempts, but I'm just a little ole nobody here in Seatown who gave a poorly attended talk on mind control at City Hall.

They care, they really care.

Fuckers.

Not funny.

Oh, and fuck you perps.
User avatar
Project Willow
 
Posts: 4793
Joined: Sat May 07, 2005 9:37 pm
Location: Seattle
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby 8bitagent » Thu May 21, 2015 4:37 am

Zombie Glenn Beck » Wed May 20, 2015 11:14 pm wrote:
8bitagent » Wed May 20, 2015 4:10 pm wrote:
Surprised he didn't have a book on 9/11 and the Occult, or Aleister Crowley books


The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928)


THIS, is what really interests me. What the hell was Osama the supposed Wahhabi doing with a book on occultism?


Oh wow. Well doesn't surprise me if that was in the bin Laden 'bookshelf' then. Despite having a really crappy unceremonious end to his life, to me he truly was the go to mind on all things
19th and early 20th century occultism. Brilliant mind.
There kind of is, without any conspiracy speculative material, a weird parallel between Islamic extremism and esotericism. The origins of militant Salafism begin with the Grand Orient Lodge
in Egypt during the late 19th century.

I half jokingly talk about "ISIS" as a play on "Isis", the four 9/11 planes as analog to Crowley, etc. But you look at just the history of Afghanistan itself and it dovetails with a lot of this stuff.
But there has been some serious scholarly attempts at looking at the weird connections between Islam's more extremist elements and mystery schools
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
User avatar
8bitagent
 
Posts: 12243
Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby JackRiddler » Thu May 21, 2015 9:29 am

It landed in the right thread.

You think this has anything to do with a psy-op to flush the Hersh story out of the system and to associate Chomsky, Chossudovsky, Palast, anti-capitalism, leftists, 9/11 skeptics, Federal Reserve critique and all the rest with the terrorist America-hating mass murderer enemy of the world? They even threw in a JFK assassination book (Richard Sprague, hm - it's available online in full).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/world ... -west.html
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby norton ash » Thu May 21, 2015 10:13 am

i seen some people who have these books in there house and now i know they are terrists
Zen horse
User avatar
norton ash
 
Posts: 4067
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 5:46 pm
Location: Canada
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby brainpanhandler » Thu May 21, 2015 10:22 am

norton ash » Thu May 21, 2015 9:13 am wrote:i seen some people who have these books in there house and now i know they are terrists


Just reading books makes you a terrist in my book.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
User avatar
brainpanhandler
 
Posts: 5088
Joined: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:38 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby Rory » Thu May 21, 2015 12:49 pm

brainpanhandler » Thu May 21, 2015 2:22 pm wrote:
norton ash » Thu May 21, 2015 9:13 am wrote:i seen some people who have these books in there house and now i know they are terrists


Just reading books makes you a terrist in my book.


Just reading, makes you a terrist in my oral tradition
Rory
 
Posts: 1596
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:08 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jul 15, 2015 6:31 pm

But, but, bin Laden died in 2001, didn't he??!

15 July 2015

Image

Last month, I broke an exclusive in-depth investigation into the real story behind the bin Laden raid, based entirely on open sources available in the public record, including some pioneering journalistic investigations by others, official records, and declassified documents.

My piece concluded that both the official history of the bin Laden raid and events leading up to it, as well as the alternative story put out by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, were flawed. While I identified a great deal of important corroboration and confirmation for Hersh's account, I also uncovered a wide-range of credible evidence demonstrating that certain critical details of that account were also false.

On the one hand: Hersh's general story is backed up by at least three other credible independent accounts from different intelligence sources.

On the other hand: Bin Laden, I found, was not under "house arrest" in Abbottabad - but lived there of his own accord, with freedom of movement, under the protection of the Pakistani intelligence services (ISI), with the financial largess of the Saudi government. The CIA knew that bin Laden was being protected by Pakistan's ISI as early as 2004, and that he was in Abbottabad as early as 2005 - and continued to receive precise intelligence on his likely location at the Abbottabad compound through to 2008. Yet the CIA chose not to take action against bin Laden or his state benefactors for as long as 6 years.

Around the same time that bin Laden moved into his safehouse in Abbottabad, the Bush administration tapped Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then a senior Saudi government official, to accelerate financial support to extremist Sunni groups across the Middle East - including al-Qaeda affiliated groups - to undermine Bashar al-Assad in Syria and counter Iranian Shi'ite influence in the region. That strategy was continued under the Obama administration, and continues to this day in the context of the support for Syrian rebel groups, which are now dominated by Islamist and al-Qaeda factions.

The operation to assassinate bin Laden was not conducted by the US alone. In the months prior to the raid, bin Laden was meeting several militant groups and leaders across northwest Pakistan, and his movements were tracked by Saudi, Pakistani and Afghan intelligence agencies, who were sharing the intelligence with the US intelligence community and the CIA. The key official involved from the Saudi side in the plan was none other than Prince Bandar.

In the same period, according to al-Qaeda documents obtained from the Abbottabad compound after the raid, British intelligence sent a proposal to bin Laden through al-Qaeda intermediaries linked to Libya, offering to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in return for al-Qaeda's cooperation in refraining from targeting British interests. Bin Laden essentially rejected the offer. Days later, bin Laden was reportedly assassinated by Navy Seals.

Publicised details of the raid, however, were deeply contradictory, and the Pentagon took unprecedented steps to ensure that official records regarding the raid remain top secret, and inaccessible to Freedom of Information Act requests.

I've had a few people raise questions about my story - now the third major alternative account of the bin Laden raid - due to early reports suggesting that bin Laden had in fact died long before 2011.

My piece does address this issue indirectly, though it's buried some way deep in the piece and easy to miss given the length.

Here I'm going to make some brief comments about this issue, to clarify the relationship between my story, and the idea that bin Laden died much earlier due to ill health.
Indeed, judging by the numerous previous reports of bin Laden's death, it's fair to say that he died something like nine times, if not more.

Many of these reports of bin Laden's premature death are contradictory. There's the Pakistan Observer piece claiming the al-Qaeda terror chief died in Afghanistan in December 2001 due to a lung complication. Another report cited Taliban sources claiming he had died around the same time due to kidney failure.

In October 2002, Israeli intelligence reportedly concluded that bin Laden had died in Afghanistan.

In 2005, Senator Harry Reid was told bin Laden died in Pakistan in October, due to the earthquakes. Well he either died in Afghanistan in 2001, or he died years later due to earthquakes.

The next year a leaked confidential French intelligence report claimed he had just died in Pakistan in August of typhoid fever. The intelligence was based on information from Saudi intelligence officials who "are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead." Ironically, then French President Jacques Chirac denied that the info was "confirmed" but admitted the confidential foreign intelligence service report did exist, and complained about it being leaked to the press.

So bin Laden either died in 2001 of kidney failure in Afghanistan, or he died in earthquakes in Pakistan in October 2005, or he died in Pakistan in 2006 of typhoid fever.

Then in 2007, Benazir Bhutto claimed that actually bin Laden had died, but that he had been murdered by Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed. So by that account, bin Laden had not died of ill-health or earthquakes, but had been murdered by an al-Qaeda colleague (Bhutto did not in fact specify a date for when bin Laden was supposedly murdered). So either bin Laden died of ill-health three times, or he was murdered.

Bhutto, herself a veritable fount of corruption who enriched her family at the expense of the Pakistani people, was married to President Asif Zardari aka "Mr Ten Percent" (so named in Pakistan due to his reputation for taking a cut of everything), who also claimed in 2009 that bin Laden was dead, and that the ISI had heard nothing about him.

In fact, one of those who began first putting out these inconsistent death stories was Zardari's corrupt predecessor Gen. Musharraf. As I document in my piece, a classified report to the 9/11 Commission identified Musharraf as harbouring bin Laden in Pakistan, and deliberately spreading disinformation about his death to deflect attention from the ISI's (and likely CIA's) complicity in doing so. That report, snippets of which were leaked to the press in 2004, also noted that Musharraf himself had personally approved bin Laden's kidney treatments out of a military hospital in Peshawar.

The ill-informed have jumped to rather silly conclusions based on these multiple death reports. James Corbett, for instance, who produces video reports for Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post, claimed shortly after the 2011 raid that these reports prove there was an "informed consensus" among people in the know that bin Laden had died long before 2011.

But this is clearly misleading. The multiple death reports, far from constituting an "informed consensus", offered no consensus at all, but rather a series of mutually inconsistent claims which could not all be true. It's not just that certain details were different - they were fundamentally different.

Corbett's supposed "informed consensus" basically is that bin Laden experienced multiple deaths, from 2001 onwards, every few years or so, of lung complications, typhoid fever, kidney failure, general ill-health, and murder.

You only die once. So looking at the multiple death reports, clearly only one (if any) can be true. Which means, obviously, that ALL the rest are disinformation. It is therefore incontrovertible that intelligence agencies were putting out disinformation on bin Laden's death before 2011. Which agencies? Seemingly, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both of whom were claiming that bin Laden had died - and spreading this narrative through Western intelligence leaks.

Taking all the evidence in the public record together, it seems far more plausible to me to infer that those claiming bin Laden had died shortly after 9/11 were lying to protect him. The number and inconsistencies in the reports of his death before 2011 provide a strong indicator of disinformation.

Whether bin Laden was indeed killed in Abbottobad or not, is impossible to prove one way or another. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous. In my INSURGEintelligence report, "The bin Laden death mythology", I've inferred that he was for the sake of argument, given all the evidence available including credible third party sources showed that bin Laden was active and sighted in Pakistan before May 2011 - but have made clear that the true story is being suppressed for reasons unknown, and currently unknowable.

I should note that the multiple sightings of bin Laden evident from the US military intelligence files known as the 'Afghan War Logs' released by Wikileaks, plus multiple news accounts citing militant and intel sources (all contradicting the White House version of events I should add), strengthen my case and show that claims that bin Laden definitely died in 2001 contradict much other evidence in the public record.

The idea that we can trust the public claims of Bhutto or Musharraf, or the Saudis or US officials, who all orchestrated the pretence of not knowing where bin Laden was and whether he was alive, is absurd. These are the very institutions complicit in protecting bin Laden. Suddenly we think their contradictory stories about his premature death must all be correct?

Equally, that does not mean that we should blithely assume that the Obama administration's narrative of the bin Laden raid in May 2011 is correct - which, judging by the dozens of times the White House story changed, is deeply problematic. But the purpose of my report was precisely to take a step back and look holistically at the totality of available evidence now in the public record, to determine as best as possible what actually happened.

And the totality of the evidence builds up a compelling and consistent picture that bin Laden was, indeed, being protected by US allies long after 9/11, that the US intelligence community knew this but did nothing about it, that they not only 'did nothing' but actually mobilised al-Qaeda for geopolitical purposes using the Saudi-Pakistan nexus, and that throughout this period under US-Saudi-Pakistani protection, bin Laden continued to orchestrate al-Qaeda terror operations with significant freedom of movement in Pakistan, under the noses of multiple intelligence agencies.

My assessment, therefore, is that it's much more likely that the reports of bin Laden's premature deaths by murder, kidney failure, lung problems, etc. etc. were little more than disinformation, which to this day deflect from and confuse public understanding of how the US continued to work with Saudi and Pakistani intelligence to protect bin Laden and mobilise al-Qaeda for dubious geopolitical purposes.
I might be wrong, of course. But my story is, I think, the most comprehensive, careful and properly documented account to date. And close analysis of claims that bin Laden died in 2001 onwards tends to vindicate my reporting, rather than not.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
User avatar
stillrobertpaulsen
 
Posts: 2414
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:43 pm
Location: California
Blog: View Blog (37)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby elfismiles » Sat Aug 01, 2015 10:06 am

Aug 1, 7:38 AM EDT

SAUDI OFFICIAL SAYS BIN LADENS KILLED IN ENGLAND PLANE CRASH
BY JON GAMBRELL AND JILL LAWLESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (AP) -- Family members of the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were among four people killed in a private jet crash in southern England, a Saudi ambassador said, but did not further identify the dead.

Prince Mohammed Bin Nawaf Bin Abdel-Aziz, the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom, offered his condolences to the wealthy bin Laden family, which owns a major construction company in Saudi Arabia.

"The embassy will follow up on the incident and its circumstances with the concerned British authorities and work on speeding up the handover of the bodies of the victims to the kingdom for prayer and burial," the ambassador said in a statement tweeted by the embassy late Friday.

Police say a pilot and three passengers died when an executive jet crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames while trying to land at Blackbushe Airport in southern England Friday afternoon. The plane had been flying from Malpensa Airport in Milan.

No one on the ground was hurt. Police and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch launched a joint investigation.

Blackbushe Airport said the Embraer Phenom 300 jet crashed near the end of the runway while trying to land at the airfield about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of London, which is used by private planes and flying clubs.

Andrew Thomas, who was at a car auction sales center based at the airport, told the BBC that "the plane nosedived into the cars and exploded on impact." He said he saw the plane and several cars in flames.

The official Saudi Press Agency earlier identified the plane as Saudi-owned without mentioning the bin Ladens. It said a Saudi official would work with British authorities in investigating the crash.

The bin Laden family disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. The al-Qaida leader was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

The family is a large and wealthy one. Osama bin Laden's billionaire father Mohammed had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a sprawling construction conglomerate awarded many major building contracts in the Sunni kingdom.

Mohammed bin Laden died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967. One of his sons, Salem, was killed when his ultralight aircraft flew into power lines in San Antonio, Texas, in 1988.

---

Gambrell reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/ ... LANE_CRASH
User avatar
elfismiles
 
Posts: 8511
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (4)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Wed Nov 01, 2017 4:30 pm

There's another thread somewhere, but I got tired looking for it.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/pr ... -raid.html

LANGLEY, VA – The CIA today released to the public nearly 470,000 additional files recovered in the May 2011 raid on Usama Bin Ladin’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. CIA Director Mike Pompeo authorized the release in the interest of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qa‘ida and its former leader. The files released today are available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/

Today's release builds on prior releases of materials from the Abbottabad collection by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In keeping with the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required ODNI to conduct a review of the documents for release, ODNI previously released documents from the collection on May 20, 2015, March 1, 2016, and January 19, 2017 after an interagency review spearheaded by CIA. These previously-released materials are available at https://www.dni.gov/index.php/features/ ... -bookshelf.

"Today’s release of recovered al-Qa‘ida letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization," said CIA Director Pompeo. "CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security."

The material contains audio, document, image, video and software operating system files. The material is posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited. Among other things, this release includes:

Usama Bin Ladin’s personal journal and more than 18,000 document files.
Approximately 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence, and imagery gathered or generated by al-Qa‘ida for a variety of purposes.
More than 10,000 video files, which include a video of Hamza Bin Ladin as a young adult, al-Qa‘ida "home videos," draft videos or statements by Usama Bin Ladin, and jihadist propaganda.
These materials, like those in previous releases, provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between al-Qa‘ida and ISIS; as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al-Qa‘ida and its allies; and hardships that al-Qa‘ida faced at the time of Bin Ladin’s death. Other themes in the materials include:

Al-Qa‘ida’s preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the group’s attempts to promulgate its message through Western media.
Al-Qa‘ida’s efforts to exploit the Arab Awakening for its benefit and that of the global jihad.
Bin Ladin’s efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates, despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine.
Al-Qa‘ida’s efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals.
With today’s release, the information remaining in the Abbottabad collection that has not been released publicly includes materials that are sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; materials protected by copyright; pornography; malware; and blank, corrupted and duplicate files. For example, some of the material being withheld from public release are the following copyrighted videos:

Antz
Batman Gotham Knight
BBC Great Wildlife Moments
Biography – Osama bin Laden
Cars
Chicken Little
CNN Presents: World’s Most Wanted
Final Fantasy VII
Heroes of Tomorrow
Home on the Range
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
In the Footsteps of bin Laden – CNN
National Geographic: Kung Fu Killers
National Geographic: Inside the Green Berets
National Geographic: Predators at War
National Geographic: World’s Worst Venom
Peru Civilization
Resident Evil
Storm Rider – Clash of the Evils
The Kremlin from Inside
The Story of India
The Three Musketeers
Where in the World is Osama bin Laden

The entire Abbottabad collection has been available to the U.S. Intelligence Community and to the Department of Defense for years.
Don't believe anything they say.
And at the same time,
Don't believe that they say anything without a reason.
---Immanuel Kant
User avatar
Pele'sDaughter
 
Posts: 1917
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:45 am
Location: Texas
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby barracuda » Wed Nov 01, 2017 7:03 pm

Abbottabad movies.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
barracuda
 
Posts: 12890
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2007 5:58 pm
Location: Niles, California
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:03 pm

Ned Price‏Verified account
@nedprice

<THREAD> @CIA released what it claims are the final public files from Bin Laden’s lair. I’m all for transparency, but this isn’t about that.


In Jan, DNI, which led the declassification effort, released what it said was the final tranche of Bin Laden files. https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/1 ... telligence
Image

The DNI-led review was overseen by career intel officials, who concluded that, w the Jan files, all those of public interest were released.

But a funny thing happened when CIA Director Pompeo came into office. I’m told he re-launched a review of the files.

In doing so, he took officers away from important missions to pore—and re-pore—over the millions of documents.

How can we be sure this was a CIA effort? Unlike previous releases, today’s files are hosted on http://CIA.gov , not the DNI site.
Image

Why would he do that? It seems he’s convinced the unreleased files would tie al-Qa’ida to Iran.

He said as much at the gathering of a conservative group, @FDD, opposed to the Iran deal in September. http://www.weeklystandard.com/pompeo-pr ... le/2009630

Image

As luck would have it, CIA provided an advance copy of today’s files to @LongWarJournal, this group’s publication. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives ... -files.php

Image

The ploy is transparent despite the fact that the newly-released documents don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

What’s not as transparent are the motives of Pompeo, the administration’s leading and most influential Iran hawk.

But these moves suggest he’s reverting to the Bush administration's playbook: Emphasize terrorist ties as a rationale for regime change.

Remember Cheney on @MeetthePress, pointing to Atta’s supposed Prague meeting w Iraqi officials? It was a key element of the march to war.

Image
History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. Need to remain vigilant to ensure Pompeo isn’t able to write it.https://twitter.com/nedprice/status/925792112880300035


Ankit Panda‏Verified account @nktpnd

I haven't read the document referenced here, but here's what it allegedly revealed about Iran's ties with AQ before Bin Laden's death.
Image

6 minutes ago
More
FYI: During his recent FDD speech, Pompeo was asked about "Iranian-Al Qaeda" links and announced the Abbottabad release would occur.
Image

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:48 am

How Trump's CIA Used Bin Laden Files and a Neocon Think Tank to Escalate Tensions With Iran


The Central Intelligence Agency appears to have collaborated with the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies to try to link Iran to the Salafi-jihadist group al-Qaeda.

Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and spokesman, has suggested that the move may be part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration’s new CIA director to establish “a rationale for regime change” in Tehran.

In the lead-up to the illegal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the effort to link Baghdad to al-Qaeda was “a key element of the march to war,” Price explained, implying that the Trump administration might be doing something similar with Iran.

President Donald Trump has, since the beginning of his term, made aggressive opposition to Iran a key feature of his foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with anti-Iran hawks in the White House, and pledged to unilaterally “tear up” the nuclear deal agreed to by major world powers.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. proxy in the Middle East, has in recent weeks escalated its campaign against Iran. The Saudi monarchy pressured Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and has been accused of holding him hostage. The kingdom then effectively declared war on Lebanon, in the name of countering Iran and its ally Hezbollah.

President Trump has praised Saudi Arabia’s belligerent intervention and foreign meddling, even while accusing Tehran of doing exactly what Riyadh is doing. The U.S. government is working very closely with the Saudi monarchy and Israel to, in Trump's words, “counter the regime’s destabilizing activity.”

Supposed Al Qaeda links

To justify these aggressive actions, the Trump administration has tried to link Iran to al-Qaeda.

The neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies published an article November 1 that aimed to highlight the alleged connections between the two. In order to do so, the staunch right-wing organization cited previously unreleased CIA documents that had allegedly been collected in the May 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) indicated in the post, “The CIA provided FDD’s Long War Journal with an advance copy of many of the files.”

The right-wing think tank’s Long War Journal project subsequently stressed that the documents purportedly “show Iran facilitated AQ at times.” The Long War Journal also claimed that several al-Qaeda leaders lived in Iran, where they were allegedly detained at the time.

Next, Long War Journal editors Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio conducted a lengthy interview with conservative radio host John Batchelor, in which they hammered on bin Laden’s supposed connections to Iran.

FDD has for years advocated for aggressive U.S. action, including military options, against Iran. It is one of the leading anti-Iran voices in the Beltway’s constellation of neoconservative think tanks. Funded in the past by the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a confidant of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, FDD has been on the front lines of the campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, which the far-right U.S. president has promised to “tear up.”

Suspicious bin Laden leaks

Former CIA analyst Ned Price has spoken out about the agency's apparent collaboration with FDD, highlighting the anxiety that is consuming a wing of the foreign policy establishment over Trump’s hostile moves against Iran.

Price served as a special assistant to former president Barack Obama and spokesperson for his administration’s National Security Council. He was also spokesman for former CIA Director John Brennan for a time. A harsh critic of President Trump, Price resigned in protest in February, after a decade in the CIA.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, Price outlined what he believed were the real reasons behind the CIA’s document dump.

“I’m all for transparency, but this isn’t about that,” he wrote. Something more nefarious appears to be happening.

Price pointed out that the top of the U.S. intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, reported back in January that it had published the “final Abbottabad documents.” The U.S. intelligence community was “closing the book on bin Laden,” the DNI declared.

Intelligence officials had concluded at the time that all of the bin Laden documents “of public interest were released,” Price said. “But a funny thing happened when CIA Director Pompeo came into office. I’m told he re-launched a review of the files.”

Price emphasized that Mike Pompeo, who enjoys a close relationship with President Trump, is “the administration’s leading and most influential Iran hawk.”

In an op-ed in Fox News in 2016, Pompeo, then a congressman, lashed out at the Iranian nuclear deal and insisted “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.”

The release of further bin Laden documents is clearly a CIA effort, Price pointed out, because the new records are hosted on the CIA’s website, not on the DNI’s.

Why would Pompeo put so much effort into doing this? “It seems he’s convinced the unreleased files would tie al-Qa’ida to Iran,” Price explained.

In a Fox News interview this September, Pompeo confirmed his intentions when he announced the impending release of the bin Laden documents. “Iran has always made a devil’s bargain with al-Qaeda to protect them in many ways,” the CIA director declared.

Echoes of the Iraq War

Ned Price warned that Mike Pompeo’s “moves suggest he’s reverting to the Bush administration's playbook: Emphasize terrorist ties as a rationale for regime change.”

Price also implied that Trump’s CIA may be exaggerating Iran’s ties to al-Qaeda in order to justify U.S. military action, recalling how former vice president Dick Cheney had tried to link the government of Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.

Much of the Bush administration’s argument rested on the claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had supposedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“It was a key element of the march to war,” Price emphasized.

Months into the Iraq War, the Washington Post noted that this “story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation,” even though this supposed Prague meeting “was the single thread the administration has pointed to that might tie Iraq to the [9/11] attacks.”

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” Price wrote. He concluded with a warning: “Need to remain vigilant to ensure Pompeo isn’t able to write it.”

AlterNet reached out to the CIA with a request for comment. The agency did not reply as of the time of publication.

Trita Parsi, an analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council, told AlterNet that, under Trump, “There’s a clear political intent to ratchet up tensions with Iran and prepare the grounds to sell the American public war with Iran or at a minimum, a much more confrontational line.”

“As the nuclear issue has been resolved and cannot be used as a casus belli since the Iranians are abiding by the agreement, there is a search for another pretext to drive the situation towards a confrontation,” said Parsi, the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy, a detailed insider's account of the Iran deal negotiations.

“The selective focus on Iran’s alleged support to Al Qaeda seems to fit this bill,” Parsi added. “If the U.S. was serious about defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS, it would clamp down on Saudi Arabia's financial, ideological and logistical support for the terror networks. Instead, Trump is unreservedly hugging the Saudis and focusing on Iran — a longstanding enemy of Al Qaeda.”

CIA Director Pompeo’s ties to the neoconservative FDD

The CIA’s links to the FDD go beyond the agency’s providing it with unreleased documents. And Mike Pompeo’s personal ties to the think tank go even further.

The CIA director spoke at FDD’s National Security Summit, on October 19. He was interviewed for more than an hour there by Juan Zarate, a former top Bush administration official who now serves as chairman and senior counselor of FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.

Iran was the primary subject of discussion. The terms “Iran,” “Iranian” or “Iranians” were mentioned 43 times in the interview.

FDD’s Zarate insisted Pompeo “is doing great work at the CIA,” and disclosed his close ties to the CIA director, revealing that he had in fact worked on Pompeo’s transition.

Under George W. Bush, Zarate was deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism and an assistant to the president. Before that, he was assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. According to his White House bio, Juan Zarate “led the U.S. government’s global efforts to hunt Saddam Hussein’s assets, resulting in the return of over $3 billion of Iraqi assets from the U.S. and around the world.”

Zarate began his FDD National Security Summit interview fawning over Pompeo. “There's no secret here: I’m not an unbiased journalist. I’m a fan of this director. I worked on his transition. Frankly, I love the man,” Zarate said. “I believe in the Weberian concept of putting your biases out front before beginning the questions.”

Zarate made the primary goal of the interview clear right off the bat: His first question was about Iran. Pompeo replied by immediately warning of “the threat the Islamic Republic of Iran represents to the United States.”

“The president has come to view the threat from Iran as at the center of so much of the turmoil that bogs us down in lots of places in the Middle East,” the CIA director said. “And from an intelligence perspective, we shared that with the president.”

The Iran nuclear deal was not “satisfactory to” Trump, Pompeo explained. “So he asked us all to go evaluate how we might present a more comprehensive effort to push back against the Quds Force, the IRGC more broadly, and the Iranian regime itself.”

“How do we push back?” Zarate asked. Pompeo called for using “all the tools available of U.S. power,” working with “the Saudis, the Emirates, the Israelis,” and taking action against the Iranian economy.

Pompeo asserting Iran-Al Qaeda links

In his interview with Pompeo, Zarate zeroed in on the supposed Iran-Al Qaeda connection.

“I thought that was interesting, in part because we've known, all along, that there have been links between the two,” Zarate said. The FDD think-tanker even attempted to link Iran to the 9/11 attacks.

“I think it's an open secret, and not classified information, that there have been relationships, there are connections. There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al Qaeda,” Pompeo responded, again without providing evidence.

“We actually, the CIA is going to release, here, in the next handful of days, a series of documents related to the Abbottabad raids that may prove interesting to those who are looking to take at this issue—take a look at this issue a little bit further,” Pompeo added — foreshadowing the publication of the FDD’s report two weeks later.

Pompeo went on to ludicrously suggest that Iran, ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria’s extremist rebel-held Idlib province might “work together for a common threat against the United States.” In reality, it was U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey that supported ISIS, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups in Syria. Iran has allied with the Syrian government against these Salafi-jihadist militias.

In Syria, Pompeo noted, President Trump’s goal is “to push back not only against Iran, but the Syrian regime.” The CIA director did not mention that the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, has in fact been leading the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda, most recently liberating the city of Deir Ezzor from a three year-long siege by ISIS.

The emerging reality on the ground in Syria explodes the conspiracy theories advanced by neoconservatives that Iran and the Syrian government have supported the very same Salafi-jihadist groups they have been fighting. But that hasn’t stopped these elements from doubling down in order to drum up war with Iran and its allies.

H.R. McMaster at FDD summit

Pompeo was not the only high-level Trump administration official who demonized Iran at the FDD National Security Summit. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster also sat down for hour-long interview with FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz.

McMaster’s FDD interview was even more heavily focused on Iran than Pompeo’s. In all, the words “Iran,” “Iranian” or “Iranians” were said a staggering 94 times.

Like Pompeo, McMaster immediately began his remarks by discussing the Trump administration’s “comprehensive strategy for the problem set associated with Iran.” He added, “our strategy integrates all elements of national power, and is oriented on neutralizing the government of Iran's destabilizing influence, and constraining its aggression.”

McMaster condemned Iran for “sustain[ing] the murderous Assad regime in Syria.”

As the CIA director had done in his interview, the White House national security advisor lavished praise on the neoconservative think tank and its CEO, who has been intimately involved in drumming up support for sanctions in Iran: “I love Mark Dubowitz, and I love FDD.”

“I'm a huge admirer of Juan [Zarate] as well,” McMaster declared, noting that the former Bush official has “been a friend, mentor, example for me for, as he’s mentioned, across my entire professional life.”

“I want to thank FDD for the work it’s done over the years on so many critical issues, including the early work on the threat posed by radical Islamist ideology,” McMaster gushed.

The U.S. national security advisor made it clear that the neoconservative organization had informed the Trump administration’s policy: “We have drawn heavily on the scholarship and analysis of FDD, and other think tanks and academic institutions as well as we developed integrated strategies over the past months.”

McMaster even asked for help from the notorious right-wing think tank: “We need FDD’s help and we need the help of all of you here. We need organizations like FDD to continue their scholarship on the threats that we face. And we need our media, our press, investigative reporters to look hard at countries like Iran and North Korea, and help inform the world about how these road regimes skirt sanctions, flout international norms, brutalize their own people and manage their neighbors.”

He added, “With the knowledge that you and others help bring to light about these threats, America can act with confidence.”

Ben Norton is a reporter for AlterNet's Grayzone Project. You can follow him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.

https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-proje ... sions-iran
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden

Postby BenDhyan » Thu Oct 15, 2020 5:29 pm

Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden slams Trump for retweeting QAnon conspiracy theory

October 15, 2020

President Trump retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theory that the killing of Osama bin Laden was staged — sparking outrage including from the ex-Navy SEAL who shot the al Qaeda founder himself.

Trump retweeted the post on Tuesday from a since-suspended account that claimed former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden tried to have the SEAL team killed in a plot to stage bin Laden’s death.

“Hiden Biden and Obama may have had Seal Team 6 killed! EXPLOSIVE: CIA Whistleblower Exposes Biden’s Alleged Role with the Deaths of Seal Team-Claims to have Documented Proof. RETWEET!!!” the original post from the account Oscar the Midnight Rider 1111 said.

It linked to a story about the QAnon-pushed conspiracy theory, which claims a body double — who was also “killed” — was used in the raid.

Trump’s retweet drew the ire of Robert O’Neill, the SEAL member who fired three fatal shots into bin Laden’s head during a raid on the terrorist’s Pakistan lair in 2011.

“By doing this stuff on the internet and making such light of something like this, you’re really trampling on the grave of some of the best heroes I have ever personally worked with,” O’Neill said on CNN. “It’s really a shame we’ve gotten there because of politics.”

“He can go over to the CIA anytime where there’s a file cabinet with a picture of bin Laden’s head and my hands are in the picture,” the veteran continued.

O’Neill, 44, also addressed Trump on his own Twitter.

“S–t. I just found out that I killed Osama bin Johnson. Drinks are on me, I guess…,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/navy-seal-who-killed-bin-laden-slams-trump-for-retweeting-qanon-conspiracy-theory/

Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Previous

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 52 guests