Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is dead

[2 As and a B]

On the contrary, I am LESS certain of the truth than you would appear to be. I don't disbelieve any official statement, but I question official statements where (a) the facts don't appear to add up and (b) the government clearly has an interest in a particular slant on events being perpetuated.

What facts are you referring to in this case?

[Lord Beria3]

Regarding Osama's death, I have yet to be shown a ounce of evidence supporting Ludwigs claim. It is what it is, Bin Laden was assassinated by the US military.

Where it stinks is the fact that he was living so close to the heart of the Pakistani establishment... clearly elements of the ISI knew where he was and protected him. This is where the conspiracy lies.

And far more interesting than debating dodgy photographs circulating on the internet.

[caspian]

I've looked at the evidence and there is much that doesn't stack up about it. You call it conspiracy mongering if you like, for me it's an‭ opinion.

OK, let's see a list of things you think "don't stack up" and I bet I can find plausible explanations for them that don't require resorting to the easy conspiracy option.

Having said that, there's one aspect of this assassination that I'm not fully convinced about, and that's the claim that OBL hid behind his wife's skirts like a big girl. It's just too hokey, and smacks of an attempt to explain away the unfortunate killing of a bystander, with the added bonus that it makes OBL look like a coward. I wonder whether that's why Obama isn't so keen on releasing the video footage. John Brennan's dissembling on this question during the press conference might point to this being the case.

Do you never question what the government or the MSM say? Do you never stand back and think independently? I know who I think is the gullible one.

On the contrary, I'm sceptical about a lot of what governments say, because lying is second nature to them. On the other hand, disbelieving the official version of OBL's death (e.g. by positing the notion that he was dead long ago) poses more questions than it answers, and strains my belief systems beyond breaking point.

I'm just puzzled where you get your certainty that you are right. Or would you deny that it is certainty?

I'm puzzled as to why you think I'm certain? I never claimed to be in possession of the truth, just that the official version of events in this case seems perfectly plausible to me, and the alternative explanation quite implausible.

[caspian]

Where it stinks is the fact that he was living so close to the heart of the Pakistani establishment... clearly elements of the ISI knew where he was and protected him. This is where the conspiracy lies.

I've heard this claim made in various quarters and I just don't understand it. While I'm sure there are elements within the ISI who are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, it would be very dicey for OBL to let anyone outside the compound know about his whereabouts. I can't see what advantage it would give him. Given the very private nature of that compound, it would be pretty easy to keep OBL there for years without being detected by anyone outside.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... urity.html

American diplomats were told that one of the key reasons why they had failed to find bin Laden was that Pakistan’s security services tipped him off whenever US troops approached.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) also allegedly smuggled al-Qaeda terrorists through airport security to help them avoid capture and sent a unit into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.

The claims, made in leaked US government files obtained by Wikileaks, will add to questions over Pakistan’s capacity to fight al-Qaeda.

Caspian - the house stood out for miles. The garrison would have for security reasons want to ensure that the area was secure from terrorist attack (it is afterall the Sandhurst of Pakistan!) - it is only logical that they would have found out who lived in that huge high security mansion nearby.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may20 ... -m03.shtml

By the time of his death on Sunday, however, Osama bin Laden had become largely irrelevant, a sick old man who by all evidence lived under effective house arrest as a ward of Pakistan’s military intelligence. The strategic importance of his demise is generally acknowledged as nil.

He was, without question, a deeply reactionary figure, whose outlook was steeped in anticommunism and religious fanaticism. It was this ideology that made bin Laden a valuable asset of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the catastrophic war that Washington instigated against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan beginning in 1979.

Great article on the relationship between Bin Laden and the US intelligence apparatus since 1979. Worth reading.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may20 ... -m03.shtml

Some 24 hours have elapsed since the raid by US special forces and CIA operatives that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, but many of the circumstances and details of the attack remain murky, particularly the role of Pakistani security forces, both in protecting bin Laden and in aiding the eventual attack.

The most striking contradiction between the official US propaganda about the “war on terror” and the reality demonstrated in the raid is the location of bin Laden’s hiding place. Far from being holed up in a cave, isolated from the world, the Al Qaeda leader was in a palatial compound only half a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy, the equivalent of West Point, in a city which is home to many high-ranking retired military officers.

Out of all this fragmentary information and loose ends, at least one conclusion seems evident: the least plausible story is the official one, promoted both by Washington and Islamabad for their separate reasons, that US intelligence only learned of the compound last August and only confirmed bin Laden’s presence there in the last few months.

It is obvious that bin Laden was the guest, if not the prisoner, of the Pakistani security services. If the American media were really to probe the circumstances of bin Laden’s life in Pakistan, instead of merely parroting the talking points of the Pentagon and CIA, it would have to raise the question of what US intelligence agencies, not just the Pakistanis, knew about bin Laden’s whereabouts over the past nine years.

In perhaps the most remarkable passage in Obama’s Sunday night speech, he recounted giving the order to incoming CIA Director Leon Panetta, in January 2009, to make finding and disposing of bin Laden the agency’s number one priority. The obvious implication—almost ignored in the US media—is that under the Bush administration, targeting bin Laden was NOT a priority.

This only raises further questions about the longstanding connections between bin Laden and US intelligence agencies, since he got his early training in terrorist methods as a CIA contractor in the mujahideen war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. No serious analysis of the 9/11 attacks can avoid the conclusion that sections of the US intelligence apparatus protected the Al Qaeda operatives and looked the other way as the plot unfolded.

The elephant in the room is the role of the US intelligence agencies in the runup to 9/11. That is why he was killed not captured.

[caspian]

As I suspected, the hiding-behind-his-wife thing was just propaganda:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... hield.html

So, he was basically assassinated in cold blood.

[Ludwig]

I've looked at the evidence and there is much that doesn't stack up about it. You call it conspiracy mongering if you like, for me it's an‭ opinion.

OK, let's see a list of things you think "don't stack up" and I bet I can find plausible explanations for them that don't require resorting to the easy conspiracy option.

Having said that, there's one aspect of this assassination that I'm not fully convinced about, and that's the claim that OBL hid behind his wife's skirts like a big girl. It's just too hokey, and smacks of an attempt to explain away the unfortunate killing of a bystander, with the added bonus that it makes OBL look like a coward. I wonder whether that's why Obama isn't so keen on releasing the video footage. John Brennan's dissembling on this question during the press conference might point to this being the case.

Do you never question what the government or the MSM say? Do you never stand back and think independently? I know who I think is the gullible one.

On the contrary, I'm sceptical about a lot of what governments say, because lying is second nature to them. On the other hand, disbelieving the official version of OBL's death (e.g. by positing the notion that he was dead long ago) poses more questions than it answers, and strains my belief systems beyond breaking point.

I'm just puzzled where you get your certainty that you are right. Or would you deny that it is certainty?

I'm puzzled as to why you think I'm certain? I never claimed to be in possession of the truth, just that the official version of events in this case seems perfectly plausible to me, and the alternative explanation quite implausible.

I thought I'd replied to this post earlier, but either I accidentally didn't send it or the moderators removed it.

[Ludwig]

I doubt it, to be honest. There seems to be a fair bit of evidence that bin Laden died in 2001 or 2002, probably of kidney failure. This would IMO tie in with the lack of truly convincing video footage of him since then.

If he was long dead, why fly into Pakistan to an area near to military facilities, with a big risk of a major incident if they got shot down or captured? Surely they could have pretended to kill him in a remote cave, where there wouldn't be any major consequences if it went wrong.

The obvious answer is that Pakistan was cooperating. They are our (willing or reluctant) allies after all.

But quite honestly, I don't know.

My attitude is simply default scepticism relating to anything we're told by our governments and the MSM about OBL and Al Qaeda.

Whether bin Laden was killed yesterday or died 9 years ago is really an irrelevance. He was what the US wanted him to be, at the end of the day. In my opinion. I'm prepared to have my mind changed, but being showered with insults rather than arguments won't achieve that.

[2 As and a B]

On the contrary, I am LESS certain of the truth than you would appear to be. I don't disbelieve any official statement, but I question official statements where (a) the facts don't appear to add up and (b) the government clearly has an interest in a particular slant on events being perpetuated.

What facts are you referring to in this case?

[2 As and a B]

As I suspected, the hiding-behind-his-wife thing was just propaganda:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... hield.html

So, he was basically assassinated in cold blood.

Obama said...

After a firefight, they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body.

Obama used very precise words. After a firefight. So those who were listening knew all along that he meant that OBL was caught and executed there and then.

Full Obama speech

[Ludwig]

On the contrary, I am LESS certain of the truth than you would appear to be. I don't disbelieve any official statement, but I question official statements where (a) the facts don't appear to add up and (b) the government clearly has an interest in a particular slant on events being perpetuated.

What facts are you referring to in this case?

Hold your f***ing horses. Some of us have jobs to do.

[2 As and a B]

[2 As and a B]

You can now watch bin Laden live on the BBC website. Maybe there is something to those conspiracy theories after all.

[Lord Beria3]

Ludwig - I'm waiting with baited breath for your unofficial report into OBL death