Friday, May 20, 2011

Things That make You Go Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm............

Obama vs. Osama: A Very Convenient Death
By Victor Thorn

The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (75 miles north of Islamabad), where Osama bin Laden supposedly met his demise on May 1 at the hands of a highly sensitive U.S. ground operation was eight times larger than any other building in the area. Built in 2005, these headquarters, described as “a highly unusual structure,” were well guarded and extremely secure

Didn’t anyone in our military or intelligence community—for six long years—question the purpose of this fortress or the identity of its occupants? A $25 million reward lingered over bin Laden’s head, yet not a single person revealed the whereabouts of the world’s most famous terrorist?

With the NSA’s technological capabilities, not to mention the precision of Google Earth, was no one in our multibilliondollar spook industry capable of locating a Muslim who stands six feet four inches and drags around a dialysis machine?

Only moments after Barack Obama announced the death of this Orwellian perpetual enemy, former national security advisor Stephen Hadley proclaimed, “Osama bin Laden was hiding in clear view.”

Was Hadley’s statement accurate, or is it a bit inconvenient to mention that the Egyptian newspaper alWafd ran a funeral announcement for bin Laden on Dec. 26, 2001? Multiple other reports from a wide variety of sources—ranging back years—flatly stated, in one version or another, that bin Laden has long been dead.

AFP has diligently chronicled such reports that largely seem to have been missed or otherwise suppressed by the elite media in the United States.

Even more incredibly, White House officials described how (according to their version of events) the first intelligence threads pointing to bin Laden’s Pakistani locale arrived in August 2010. Still, he purportedly wasn’t killed for another eight months. How many people can go that long without paying parking tickets, let alone when you are the most wanted man in the world?

Bin Laden’s supposed homicide arrived at a time when Obama’s popularity had plummeted to a dangerously low point. Tycoon Donald Trump hammered him for a month straight with allegations concerning his birth certificate while also calling Obama “the worst president ever.”

Amid this onslaught, Obama teetered, appearing weak as gas prices skyrocketed, the economy sputtered and the war against Libya faced ruin.

NATO’s April 30 assassination attempt on Muammar Qadaffi had backfired, with the Libyan president’s son and three grandchildren killed as “collateral damage.” Global reaction was mounting to the point of outrage as it became clear that the U.S.—under the guise of NATO—violated international law by trying to murder a foreign leader. Obama, like his predecessors George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, was soon to be labeled a war criminal.


But then, just one day later, bin Laden was reported dead and Obama was hailed as a heroic “dragon slayer.” Is it of any symbolic significance that this announcement came on May 1, the communist International Workers Day?

At any rate, celebrations soon ensued outside the White House as the jubilant and gullible sang God Bless America and The Star Spangled Banner. While addressing the nation, Obama took credit for the operation, boasting, “I directed Leon Panetta, CIA director, to make the capture of Osama bin Laden our No. 1 priority. . . . I authorized the operation to get bin Laden . . . it came at my direction.”

Obama’s popularity numbers will rise, and GOP criticism of him will be more difficult for a while.

However, the question arises: Why didn’t Republican George W. Bush and his cronies pull off a similar ploy and stake their claim by killing bin Laden?

Those who believe that the world and American political affairs are actually far more stagemanaged than meets the eye—that much of the partisan conflict we see is actually political theater—provide this answer:

If Bush had made good on his threat of getting bin Laden “dead or alive,” he’d have emerged victorious in his war on terror and Obama’s selection as president would have been more difficult. The powersthatbe needed Bush’s tenure to end on a disastrous note so that the doors could be opened for Obama’s “hope and change.”

So, with Obama’s favorability ratings tanking and a power struggle in Washington threatening to reveal many scandalous aspects of his past, the president’s handlers countered by pulling the ultimate trump card—the head of bin Laden.

Of course, the neoconservatives who manage U.S. foreign policy couldn’t blow the whistle on this ruse because, after all, they were the first ones to use bin Laden as a patsy after their falseflag attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In all, the rewards for Obama are obvious. Often criticized as being unAmerican and tepid on foreign affairs, he now boasted about

“the greatness of our country” during his latenight address to the nation.

On a larger scale, even the military machine—mired in a disastrous Afghan war for nearly a decade—may emerge on a positive note.

Despite squandering over $400 billion battling Afghan tribes, Gen. David Petraeus is being hailed as a hero for commandeering the drone attacks on Pakistan. Moreover, the Department of Defense’s message will clearly be: Our efforts weren’t in vain, because we got bin Laden.

In the second line of Obama’s May 1 address, the president reiterated that al Qaeda and bin Laden were responsible for 911 and only through “the tireless and heroic work of our military” was the U.S. able to combat global terrorism.

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