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Today's Top News
What Has Bin Laden's Killing Wrought?
As America’s morbid celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden begin to fade, we are left with a new landscape of risks – and opportunities – created by his slaying at the hands of a U.S. Special Forces team at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The range of those future prospects could be found in Wednesday’s Washington Post. On the hopeful side, a front-page article reported that the Obama administration was following up bin Laden’s death with accelerated peace talks in Afghanistan. On a darker note, a Post editorial hailed bin Laden’s slaying as a model for “targeting” Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and his sons.
So, while there is the possibility that the United States might finally begin to wind down a near-decade-long war in Afghanistan, there is the countervailing prospect of the United States consolidating an official policy of assassination and violence as the way to impose Washington’s will on the Muslim world.
If the Post’s neoconservative editors get their way and the U.S. military is officially transformed into a roving assassination squad – a global “Murder, Inc.” – it may turn out that future historians will view this as bin Laden’s final victory.
Having already helped create the climate for George W. Bush’s administration to overturn longstanding American principles – regarding civil liberties, aggressive war and torture – bin Laden could go to his watery grave with the satisfaction of officially branding the United States as a nation of assassins.
If assassination becomes the preferred calling card of U.S. foreign policy, it also is a safe bet that the lines at al-Qaeda recruiting stations will grow longer, rather than shrink, and that more rounds of retaliatory violence will follow.
However, if Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s speculation in the Post’s news article is closer to the mark – that bin Laden’s death may clear the way for negotiations with the Taliban and a peace settlement in Afghanistan – then something truly positive might be salvaged from this grisly episode. Not only might the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan start coming home in significant numbers in July, but the United States might finally begin to repair its badly stained reputation as a “beacon” of liberty and the rule of law.
Targeted Killings
The circumstances surrounding the targeted killing of bin Laden remind us how far the United States has strayed from its principles.
Though clearly bin Laden represented an extreme case – as the leader of an international terrorist organization that has slaughtered thousands of innocent people – his killing was not unique. Over the past decade, U.S. Special Forces and sniper teams have been authorized to kill significant numbers of suspected militants on sight.
For instance, in 2007, a case surfaced regarding two U.S. Special Forces soldiers who took part in the execution of an Afghan man who was a suspected leader of an insurgent group. Special Forces Capt. Dave Staffel and Sgt. Troy Anderson were leading a team of Afghan soldiers when an informant told them where the suspected insurgent leader was hiding. The U.S.-led contingent found a man believed to be Nawab Buntangyar walking outside his compound near the village of Hasan Kheyl.
While the Americans kept their distance out of fear the suspect might be wearing a suicide vest, the man was questioned about his name and the Americans checked his description against a list from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan, known as “the kill-or-capture list.”
Concluding that the man was Nawab Buntangyar, Staffel gave the order to shoot, and Anderson – from a distance of about 100 yards away – fired a bullet through the man’s head, killing him instantly.
The soldiers viewed the killing as “a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement,” the New York Times reported. “The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”
Staffel’s civilian lawyer Mark Waple said the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that the shooting was “justifiable homicide,” but a two-star general in Afghanistan instigated a murder charge against the two men. That case, however, foundered over accusations that the charge was improperly filed. [NYT, Sept. 17, 2007]
According to evidence in a court martial at Fort Bragg, the earlier Army investigation cleared the two soldiers because they had been operating under rules of engagement that empowered them to kill individuals who have been designated “enemy combatants,” even if the targets were unarmed and presented no visible threat.
In September 2007, a U.S. military judge dismissed all charges against the two soldiers, ruling it was conceivable that the detained Afghan was wearing a suicide explosive belt, though there was no evidence that he was. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Turns US Soldiers into Murderers.”]
In other words, the killing of Osama bin Laden was within well-established “rules of engagement” started under President Bush and continued by President Barack Obama. Obama’s proud announcement on Sunday evening that “a small team of Americans” had killed bin Laden reflected not an anomalous action but a pattern of behavior, made distinctive only by the prominence of the target.
“At my direction,” Obama said, “a small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. … After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”
Revised Accounts
On Monday, John Brennan, Obama’s special assistant on terrorism, claimed that bin Laden either had a gun or was reaching for a gun when he was shot, but the White House on Tuesday amended that statement to say that bin Laden was unarmed when killed.
Further U.S. revisions of the official story followed on Wednesday, as U.S. officials acknowledged that the “firefight” in Abbottabad was extremely one-sided. They told the New York Times that only one of bin Laden’s “couriers,” Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, fired at the U.S. team from a nearby guesthouse before he and a woman with him were slain.
After the U.S. troops entered the main building housing bin Laden, they assumed people they encountered might be armed, the U.S. officials said. According to this account, a second “courier” was killed inside the house as he was believed to be preparing to fire. One of bin Laden’s sons who reportedly lunged toward the attackers was killed, too.
Upon reaching the third-floor room where bin Laden was, the U.S. team spotted him within reach of an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol, the U.S. officials said. The commandos then shot and killed him and wounded a woman, apparently one of his wives.
It is, of course, difficult to second-guess the split-second decisions of commandos on a dangerous nighttime mission as to whether there was a reasonable prospect of taking bin Laden alive or whether he did constitute a lethal threat.
But their rules of engagement clearly were to shoot first and ask questions later. As CIA Director Leon Panetta explained in TV interviews, the commandos were authorized to kill bin Laden on sight, although they were prepared to accept his surrender if there was no sign of resistance.
Put differently, the orders were to “kill or capture” rather than “capture or kill.” And the “kill” option appeared to be the favored choice.
Obama himself suggested that priority in his Sunday address, disclosing that at the start of his presidency, he ordered Panetta “to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al-Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.”
Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, has come a long way in accepting the frame of reference created by his predecessor who smirked at the niceties of international law and whose White House counsel Alberto Gonzales mocked the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete.”
Dangers Ahead
As details of the bin Laden raid – and then the corrected details – spill out over the next several days, it is hard to predict the reaction in the Muslim world, and particularly in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the targeted killing took place. Extremists of all stripes may be given extra incentive to upend governments that acquiesce to American violations of their sovereignty. There are also heightened dangers of anti-U.S. terrorist attacks.
In Pakistan, where U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, have been a major bone of contention, the bin Laden assault has already increased the turbulence in U.S.-Pakistani relations.
According to both governments, Obama chose not to inform President Asif Ali Zardari until the nighttime raid was finished, apparently fearing that Pakistani authorities might tip off the bin Laden compound. Only after the fact did Obama reach Zardari by telephone to let him know what had just gone down.
The Pakistani government responded with a stern official statement of the obvious, that the “unilateral” attack had violated Pakistan’s “sovereignty.” But there was embarrassment, too, that the world’s most hunted terrorist had been found living in a million-dollar compound just down the road from Pakistan’s top military academia and a military base.
That fact set – and the history of Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency, the ISI, playing double games regarding Islamic extremism – were factors in Obama’s decision to go it alone, Panetta suggested in an interview with Time magazine.
“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission,” the CIA director said. “They might alert the targets.”
Still, the impression of the U.S. running roughshod over the Pakistani government will make it more difficult for senior Pakistani military and government officials to cooperate – or even pretend to cooperate – with the U.S. war across the border in Afghanistan. Zardari is already in a peck of trouble. His very position as president is in jeopardy.
That means Zardari will be under still more pressure to demonstrate his independence of Washington at a time when Pakistanis perceive they have been subjected to a string of indignities, even preceding the high-profile controversy over the bin Laden raid.
Whether or not the Pakistani military decides to allow President Zardari to remain in office, many Pakistanis are likely to react strongly against the U.S. at a time when bilateral relations are already at their nadir. Since Sunday, many U.S. officials have harshly criticized Pakistan for harboring bin Laden, with some suggesting major cuts in U.S. aid, which has totaled about $20 billion over the past decade.
For its part, Pakistan can retaliate by blocking the resupply of U.S. and NATO forces along roads to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. This extremely long logistics line may well prove the Achilles heel of the entire U.S. war effort. No one knows this better than the Pakistanis who have already shown themselves ready to use the leverage afforded by NATO’s dependence on the difficult supply line.
Ignoring Other Options
In favoring killing over capture, it also appears that the United States passed up the prospects of questioning bin Laden about al-Qaeda in favor of killing him, all the better to avoid the messy legal complications of how to proceed against him.
Yet, there are commonly accepted legal ways to capture and bring such people to a court of law — yes, even violent “bad guys” like Osama bin Laden. It is difficult – especially given the complexities with Pakistani authorities and the risks involved in grabbing a dangerous target – but it can be done.
That bin Laden might have had extremely valuable information to impart to interrogators is a no-brainer. But some of that information also might have been embarrassing to important elements of the U.S. government, especially considering his longstanding relationship with the CIA going back to the 1980s and the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Much as some prominent U.S. officials breathed a sigh of relief when Iraq’s deposed dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged in 2006 – avoiding a thorough investigation that might have exposed unwelcome secrets dating back to the 1980s – some operatives from the same period probably are glad that bin Laden’s secrets are now buried at sea.
Yet, despite the future risks for the United States and the Muslim world – and the fact that the U.S. assault was a fairly clear violation of international law – the killing of bin Laden paradoxically does offer a possible route back from the institutionalization of American lawlessness.
Since bin Laden and his actions on 9/11 created the shock that allowed the Bush administration to lead the United States into the “dark side” of “enhanced interrogations,” “preemptive wars” and a wholesale assault on civil liberties, it could follow that the death of bin Laden will permit a retracing of those steps.
The first step in that journey would be a serious attempt to negotiate a political settlement in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of American and NATO troops. If enough public pressure is brought to bear, there could even be a full-scale reassessment of U.S. priorities focusing on what economists call “opportunity costs.”
Only with strong grass roots pressure, including nonviolent civil disobedience when appropriate, will there be any real hope that the demon of “terrorism” periodically resurrected by the politicians can be exorcised. That, in turn, could bring an early end to the squandering of $2 billion a week into the stalemate in Afghanistan; the allocation of those resources to job creation and educational opportunity for tens of millions of Americans; and stanching the alarming erosion of the liberties the Constitution was carefully crafted to guarantee and the President solemnly sworn to enforce.
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39 Comments so far
Show AllI continue to wait for one shred of evidence that bin Laden was behind 9/11. I have actually been looking since that day, and have yet to see one particle of fact that would hold up in a junior high science class, let alone a court of law, that tied this "International Bogeyman" to a crime in a way that millions of Americans take for granted.
So we have now unequivocally tossed out our fundamental principle of jurisprudence that a person is innocent until proven guilty. No wonder they allegedly dumped him into the ocean.
Mission accomplished--by Osama, not Obama.
I agree 100%. Ours is a nation gone completely rouge and completely out of control. Its in meltdown: financially, politically and morally.
" That in turn, would bring an early end to the squandering of $2 billion a week into the stalemate in Afghanistan ". The problem is which side of the fence one is on. If you are a war profiteer, the $2 billion a week is not "squandering" but profits. There is no business like the war business.
Targeted assassination and violence as foreign policy?!
Quelle surprise.
What would Mr. McGovern think would follow after the violent and targeted assassination of 3,000 innocent people during the false flag attacks on 9/11?
THIS is why so many here on CD and elsewhere are strident and chronic in our comments concerning that day as it pertains to the present actions of our government.
If one already has seen the worst embodiment of treason and murder against one's own citizens, what else need be said?
If one has already known for almost a decade what the fascists in our government and elsewhere are clearly capable of, isn't all the "analysis" and "discussion" about our country's past and future completely pathetic and superfluous?
Ah, but if no one in our beloved media - not even the sacred lions of the left - can bring themselves to discuss the great "UNMENTIONABLE", then the propaganda cycle spins on and on, never to be disrupted or disturbed by the hard truths.
Now that Osama is "dead", the proclivity will be even stronger for our "journalists" and "scribes" to push the events of 9/11 completely into the dustbins of history and erase more completely our national memory.
This is why people should begin to scream even louder for the truth.
I must once again mention that the FBI's wanted poster for bin Laden did not include the 9-11 disaster on the list of crimes for which he was being sought. When asked why that was so, they replied that there was no evidence which connected him to the plot. Also, I am waiting for anyone to please explain to me how Al Quaeda managed to set up for demolition the largest FBI office outside of DC, the largest CIA office outside of Virginia, the Mayor's disaster bunker and many other very secure and closely watched occupancies in World Trade Center #7.
Tony Vodvarka
The two WTC buildings: I suspect they knew something was up and decided to take the route of letting it happen, deal with it later/take advantage military. Placing NYC in a panic and economic frenzy wasn't going to happen. So they took a chance it was a hoax--which it wasn't.
It simply cannot be denied that what happened to building #7 made no sense and is indeed very, very troubling.
We are held captive to an evil government by our press.
Dear Moonpie, The obvious demolition of WTC #7 is not just troubling, it is a smoking gun, something for which there is no benign explanation. Arab guerillas could not have set up such a massive building that had the highest security for such a precise demolition and that leaves whom? This one obvious fact makes a total nonsense of the government's conspiracy theory.
I agree, guess I understated the obvious. Its glaringly obvious it didn't come down on its own.
Let me add, in the summer of 1998, I was outside on the public observation deck using a miniDV camera (rather new at the time) to shoot some video stills at a midsize U.S. airport for a website. Soon, a large SUV drove up and two men got out and came up the stairs. While one stayed on the other side of the area, the other came over and asked what I was doing & what I was using. I candidly showed him, he looked it over, then went over & got his pal, and they left. I really thought nothing of it really. Only a few years after 9-11 did I run across the stills again (of a couple of United jets & and small Cessna taking off) and wonder if these guys we're already on the lookout for something back then. Then again, maybe I just looked suspicious! :)
A couple nights ago Rachael Maddow made some very compelling points about this. She pointed out that only 2 months after 9-11 bin Laden was bragging about how much MONEY the US had already lost in the attacks. He was obsessed with money over any other factors in the whole affair. He was apparently well versed in finance, being a multi-millionaire and the chief financier of al-Qaeda operations, and his primary concern in attacking the US was in slowly bankrupting the country by causing such panic on Wall St. and in the economy that we would spend ourselves broke trying to protect against terrorism.
She went on to say that a recent WaPo investigative report has shown how many terrorist-related agencies have been created since 9-11, and the number is staggering, well beyond Homeland Security. There are a few hundred of them now, and they have drained the federal budget dry.
Now, has Osama achieved his objective, or not? He got EXACTLY what he was aiming for. Bush's tactic of keeping Americans at a fever pitch of panic and fear of imminent terrorist attacks was precisely what he wanted to happen. Set up budget busting agencies, the more redundant the better, and the US will gradually spend itself into oblivion. And of course, Obama has more than validated the Bush doctrine, in dozens of ways. All Osama really cared about was crushing the US economy. He wasn't interested in killing Americans necessarily, he just wanted us to go broke as we ran around like scared chickens desperately seeking ways to avoid Big Bad Al-Qaeda. Looking around, does it seem bin Laden outsmarted all our vaunted "intelligence" agencies, or not? Just asking.
In the paper today Maurien Dowd refers to "Don Obama" and I thought the caption very appropriate. On page 6 is an article "Pakistani Leaders hope Nation will think it isn't aiding US." Sounds like a mob hit and an ensuing mob war is brewing because the US Don is butting in on the Pakistani mob's territory. Not that most of the US citizens think that our country should behave any better. This mob hit is nothing more than crude vengeance but our public seems to be happy to see its government act like the mafia. Wait till it comes for you Mr. average citizen, because you wouldn't want to make our Don mad would you, because if might not go so well for you if you did--capish.
The USG has devolved into a criminal gangster organization and the Pentagon protection racket scheme of; fund US, the Pentagon, for protection or else...! Or else what, 911! The purpose of the Pentagon is to protect and secure the worldwide assets of the WEALTHY PREDATORY CAPITALIST WELFARE KINGS many of which pay no USG taxes and are protected. Al Capone would not protect those which didn't pay for protection. This places the moral integrity of Al Capone above that of the USG which forces contributions, withholding taxes, to fund the Pentagon protection racket scheme, protecting those which don't pay for protection, the WELFARE KINGS.
While McGovern correctly notes that "In favoring killing over capture, it also appears that the United States passed up the prospects of questioning bin Laden about al Qaeda in favor of killing him..." he inexplicably fails to mention that the death of bin Laden also means that the world will never know if that alleged mastermind of 9/11/01 was or was not involved in those terrorist attacks that mysteriously occurred on September 11, 2001.
McGovern, disappointingly, is far too credulous and sanguine in buying into official government reports, characterizations, and cover stories here.
He seems to be proceeding from a determination to find a way to turn the putrescent pig's ear of the actual or simulated "bin Laden" assassination into a half-full silk purse.
Perhaps his long career with the CIA has habituated him to the institutional, Establishment mind-set so deeply that he remains disposed to underestimate and understate the extent and duration of the evils already incorporated into government and military SOP.
For instance: "If the Post’s neoconservative editors get their way and the U.S. military is officially transformed into a roving assassination squad – a global 'Murder, Inc.' – it may turn out that future historians will view this as bin Laden’s final victory."
Hello? Regardless of whether it may become the case "officially", does McGovern doubt or deny that the U.S. military and its conjoined mercenary siblings have openly and proudly operated as a global "Murder, Inc." outfit for decades, and especially since the watershed 2001 formal declaration of the Amerikan Imperium's Permanent Global War on an Abstract Noun?
That train has long since left the station; the bin Laden caper is only a matter of attaching another locomotive and stoking up the boilers.
I'm also bothered by McGovern's placid, uncritical repetition of the alleged circumstances of the raid and its ostensible appropriate compliance with existing "terms of engagement".
He sounds very much like those military experts who declare "much ado about nothing" when analyzing events like the infamous 2007 Apache "Collateral Murder" attack helicopter mission publicized by WikiLeaks.
Although McGovern himself is hardly an advocate or proponent of detached, cynical, amoral professionalism, his mild, straightforward recounting of the dark and dubious killings-- both "bin Laden's" and family and Nawab Buntangyar' assassination-- has a disturbing quality of the professional soldier or spy's anasthetic superciliousness.
He may only be saying that these actions are "kosher" or "by the book" or "according to Hoyle" with respect to the civilian and military authorities, not that he's OK with all of it. But he seems to be far too placid, even naïve, in arguing that the U.S. authorities may have pushed the line just a little too far in response to the provocations of super-terrorists like bin Laden, but that it would be a mistake to set a precedent, or make a habit of it.
Again, I find McGovern just a little too creepily sanguine when he blandly echoes official on-site accounts that keep changing, but are full of the usual exculpatory excuses-- i.e., variations on the mantra of Amerikan street cops: "The perp appeared to be reaching for his waistband!"
I don't know about the rest of the country, but in the Philadelphia PA area, cops don't even have to throw down planted guns any more when they summarily execute unarmed suspects. And they don't even have to claim that the dead guy WAS reaching for his waistband-- just that he "appeared" to be doing so. That's enough to give them a pass from a permanently fearful and insecure public, and their winking supervisors and allies in the DA's office.
The perp lunged! He made a "false move"! Bang! Case closed!
So too here: "bin Laden" and associates join the string of unlucky targets and victims of the Amerikan Crusade like Aafia Siddiqui, convicted of allegedly "grabbing a gun" carelessly left unattended during her interrogation and shooting up her captors.
As with the bin Laden crime scene, modern forensic procedures were utterly ignored "in the heat of the moment", and the "truth" of the matter sufficient to convict her was furnished by sketchy circumstantial evidence and the testimony of her captors.
But here, McGovern seems to take such things in stride, doggedly avoiding seeing the forest for the trees.
He rhetorically gives the authorities a generous benefit of the doubt to support the fatuous claim that "Since bin Laden and his actions on 9/11 created the shock that allowed the Bush administration to lead the United States into the 'dark side' of 'enhanced interrogations,' 'preemptive wars' and a wholesale assault on civil liberties, it could follow that the death of bin Laden will permit a retracing of those steps."
I don't see that it "follows" at all-- but then again, I can't swallow or regurgitate the familiar "pernicious factoids" about bin Laden and 9/11, as McGovern does here without apparent strain.
Sorry, Ray. I respect and admire you and your work, but the Amerikan Imperium's political and military leaders, and ruling overclass, are well past retreating from the Heart of Darkness after an unfortunate but justifiable excursion into its fringes.
It has set up shop in its dead center, and is already streamlining and refining its state-of-the-art operations for Exterminating the Brutes.
Good post. I would question, keep asking questions about the whole farce. Again: Whose body was thrown into the ocean and why should we believe the US gov't? Why did they not capture OBL? Where are the dental records? DNA... are you going to believe some vague statement about that? What? The daughter was where? The wife did what? The neighbors don't know a thing about this and OBL and his FAMILY have been living there since August 2011? What was that about the "Iive feed" not really happening? So that means that photo op was staged? And what was that business about the 'burial at sea' being some sort of Muslim custom starting on 5/5/2011? Say what?
Retrace those steps? If history has taught us anything it's that governments never give up power they have acquired. Now that Obama thinks he has the power to order extrajudicial executions, who might be next on his hit list?
Here's the "ROT", Ray, an excuse for further expanding the war plans of "The Pentagon's New Map" --- and starting that expansion by attacking Pakistan:
Boy oh boy, it didn't take long to answer the question the media has been asking since OBL was killed in Pakistan, namely; Why now and in Pakistan??
The seminal question of not the how, but the WHY of the successful USA assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan --- embarrassingly close to their West Point equivalent --- was a big part of the US corporatist media's attention, focus, and speculative excitement about the killing of OBL.
But the bigger WHY question is why the media is focusing (and shaping) the attention of average Americans on this WHY of WHY now, and more pivotally --- WHY Pakistan.
Well, it didn't take long to parse and understand this seminal question!
The WHY NOW part of the question is tied directly to Thomas Barnett's 2004 Naval War College book (and plan), "The Pentagon's New Map", which book clearly lays out the strategy for the disguised global Empire, which has taken over and is now posing as our former country, to also TAKE-OVER the "Gap" countries along a 5000 mile swath from Mauritania to the very boarders of India and China --- and for that disguised global Empire to have the cover-story of needing to use its "Leviathan" military force (with "whatever means necessary") to guilefully con the American people into accepting (and even cheering for) the next supposedly essential military intervention beyond Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria --- ie. to go into PAKISTAN with both feet.
The supporting question of WHY THERE (in Pakistan) is that OBL was found and killed in PAKISTAN while being supposedly 'protected' by PAKISTAN's military and ISI forces is, of course, to engender in the ever gullible and PR-deluded USA prole-citizens, the hate and FEAR of Pakistan, and specifically its supposedly untrustworthy and DANGEROUSLY NUCLEAR ARMED military and ISI ("country within a country") forces that might at any instant attack the US "Homeland" with known nuclear capability ---- leaving the only warning as a "NUKULAR" SMOKING GUN MUSHROOM CLOUD.
In other words, our dear leader, Obama, is using Osama's death in Pakistan as the 'triggering mechanism' for precisely the level of nationalism fear and terror that Bush, Cheney, Powell and others in the cast had to work much harder to falsely produce with the non-"nukular" Iraq --- but this time with the issue of the US population already fully aware that Pakistan is a nuclear power --- and now with the easy PR jump to the conclusion that Pakistan must be eliminated as a threat.
Boy oh boy, has the science of PR trickery and false-flagging to start wars evolved a long way from the days when all Hitler had to do was have a few of his soldiers dress-up in Polish Army uniforms and make a phony attack on a German radio outpost to start WWII.
http://www.truthandliberty.com/False-Flag_Attacks.html
So, as Mae West humorously cautioned her next would-be boyfriend, "hold onto your hat, this may be a bumpy ride".
Yes, folks, we now should all understand why the killing of Osama happened HERE (Pakistan) and NOW (Mayday 2011) --- the Revolution by this disguised global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE which controls our former country by hiding behind the facade of its bought and owned TWO-Party modernized Nazi "Vichy" sham of faux-democratic government and Goebbelesque media is about to "lower the boom" --- and you can be sure that this time the "lowering of that boom" will fall not only on the heads of Pakistanis, but also on our's.
As Hannah Arendt presciently warned from her painful experiences with the last Empire that tried to take over the world and eliminate a portion of its own citizens:
"Empire abroad entails tyranny at home".
Hang-on fellows, this is going to be a bumpy ride indeed.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012
PS. Keep an eye on the number of TV specials and "two-minute hates" the focus of which is now going to be Pakistan, and the number of supposed foreign policy experts from places like the supposed 'think-tanks' like the "Center for a New American Security" (being featured this afternoon, for god's sake, on C-Span, of all places) that will be running the "two minute hate" sessions on Pakistan.
http://www.cnas.org/
And be sure to remember that "war is peace", "freedom is slavery", and most importantly that "ignorance is strength" (at least for the Empire).
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
War is Hell. A pattern has been set. It begins earlier with the execution of Pirates. Politically, the net result is to demonstrate the resolve of the President to make the "hard choices". Yes, Mr. Quadafhy take serious note. The clock is ticking. Is this Just? Will there be consequences? Who will pay?
This is a man with two lovely daughters and a good lookin' wife, leading a dangerous world. There is more to be said, the dawn of a new age is just appearing, Life is no longer the supreme value, relegated now to expedience, perhaps it has always been that way. Once " I saw through the glass darkly, now I see face to face". Peace, in this world is a distant dream, we live by the sword.
Ready to march on DC yet?
The death of OBL reminds us both in the cyber and mainstream media realms about the way we treat people, dead or alive. George Orwell's famous line in the novel "Animal Farm" can be applied here. It's an eff-ing shame that we the American sheeple have come to resign ourselves to the dangerous notion that all people are created equal but that some people are more equal than others. I mean look at this. We went through all this trouble targetting OBL at the cost of killing millions of innocent bystanders and never apologizing or honoring their lives. Here we are still mulling over OBL this and OBL that while thousands more innocent bystanders get killed and crude oil prices keep rising. People, we have no business in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or any country that we're occupying. It's time to stop mulling over OBL as if he's "more equal" than others and get the eff back to treating more people as equals.
Max we miss you over at AlterNet. mmckinl brought you up on a thread about bin Laden other mentioned missing your comments. What's up brother? Come on back: http://www.alternet.org/news/150842/did_osama_bin_laden_win_the_%22war_on_terror%22/comments/#disqus_thread
tailcap, thanks again. I've already discussed this with kogwonton so I'll give you the link and you can see the entire discussion.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/05/02-5
I already backed up my entire disqus profile just in case every message I posted gets removed. I don't even want to know what happened to my account right now and looking at tus and q still lynching after me after I'm out of their crosshairs, I'm at a total loss. I've never felt crippled to return like this before. Maybe I'll return and maybe I won't. If I get my account back in working order, I might return slowly. If not, I dunno but it's just not the same having to start over. I would never create more than one account in all my 6 years on Alternet. Those verbal wounds on Alternet have slowly hurt and crippled my self-esteem. I understand if many on Alternet miss me and I miss them too. I feel that there's something I lost that I must get back or rediscover. I still thank and honor the tech guys at Alternet and DISQUS for doing what they can to help but I tried to post but everything vanishes and the like buttons don't work. I dunno but I think my account there has bad luck or some foul play could be going on as Ranjit and Peter said was possible. That and other issues as I discussed already in that link I gave. I think I need some more time before something can be worked out there but thanks for your support. Whatever happens, I still have my memories backed up and ready to pass all of my comments from disqus alternet free for the picking. It's easy to post on free webspace and improve the google search even if some rogue hacker is trying to erase me ! Let mmckinl know that I give her my strong blessings to keep up the good fight on Alternet. I have studied the history of partisan party takeover attempts of this site but that failed. Alternet doesn't have that strength unfortunately and I'm sorry that some of us are unable to be there to stop the plague. Thanks again and anytime you're curious, just ask and I'll keep you informed until I can make it back or someone takes my place. I'm still loving this site. Maybe that'll eventually give me some more to fight back those pesky partisan idiots on their stupid talks.
Alternet - another fake left Zionist site.
Lest we forget.
Not to mention that in early 2002, it was the ADMINISTRATION that had the highest percentage of people in the United States (only), thinking that it was Saddam Hussein who had perpetrated 911. Then the Bushies tried and convicted out of public sight, and managed to bungle the execution of a leader of another sovereign land.
If I was from some other planet, and I saw what I saw….what do you think I would think of the United States of America?
Wesley Clark himself said it loud that the Bush scums wanted any excuse to invade Iraq. But the more I've come to learn, the better I can now see that there were multiple reasons for framing Saddam Hussein as the perpetrator of 9/11.
1. Wars for oil and Bush Jr trying to play it out for his father. Obvious one.
2. 9/11 being discovered early on as more of an insider's job, you know that the neocons couldn't afford to let the public catch on and burn them in return. Keeping their somber and angry moods directed towards Saddam as much as possible would buy them more time to hold off on 9/11 investigations.
This only brings up a strong possibility that the timing of OBL's death is suspect at best. In 4 months, the 9/11 "Patriot Day" will come and that's plenty of time to figure out some PR strategies to keep the public from looking at the possibility of 9/11 being more of an insider's job and right now, the media jubilation is being worked out. That and keeping the public from remembering our ongoing illegal occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the rest of the Middle East.
Sir, if you were from another planet, all I would say is take your outside view of the US and connect it to the full account of US history and you'll know the lost soul that the US is.
And no mention of Israel? That's one of the devils we lost our soul to - as it corroded our civil and political society from within.
This is just a softening up of the populace in support of summary executions of US citizens.
Probably, Green
But the global Empire posing as our former country can probably only get away with 'offing' citizens that they can claim were 'trouble makers'.
So at least we got that going for us, eh?
Of course, anyone posting on CD, will be fingered as a known 'trouble maker'.
So at least we'll go down together.
Best,
Alan
"Of course, anyone posting on CD, will be fingered as a known 'trouble maker'."
Not necessarily unless we successfully use this to organize against the status quo and then we'll see what our fate is. We're no threat to the MIC as of now and we'd be the last to get clobbered by the fascist elites.
You forgot the part about creating a traffic jam to bring DC to a full stop. Of course that suggestion goes with your latest cast-off moniker.
"The commandos then shot and killed him and wounded a woman, apparently one of his wives."
So a woman was wounded. What happened to her -- did she later die? Is it even possible that these goons would have left an eye witness alive? We still don't know how many people were killed and if any of them were children. I wouldn't be surprised if children were killed -- like I said before, eye witnesses would have been completely forbidden.
I suppose it's possible that they killed bin Laden, rather than capture him, because it would have increased risks to take him alive. Who knows. But it certainly is convenient that he won't be able to inform on his dealings with the U.S. government, not only before 9/11 but possibly afterwards too. He probably knew too much to be taken alive. god I hate all this shit.
Whose body was thrown into the ocean and why should we believe the US gov't? Why did they not capture OBL? Where are the dental records? DNA... are you going to believe some vague statement about that? What? The daughter was where? The wife did what? The neighbors don't know a thing about this and OBL and his FAMILY have been living there since August 2011? What was that about the "Iive feed" not really happening? So that means that photo op was staged? And what was that business about the 'burial at sea' being some sort of Muslim custom starting on 5/5/2011? And what happened to the bounty? Say what?
For those who may be having trouble with this killing of a man, who has been dead for 10 years, see:
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/inside-sources-bin-ladens-corpse-has-been-on-ice-for-nearly-a-decade/ .
This article is must reading. The OBL-'killing' was pure theater! Ray McGovern should know better than to repeat the poppycock.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/04/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-2001-911-a-false-flag/
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
---
“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.
“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.
“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.
-more-
So after Bin Laden is killed, apparently hundreds or a few thousand gathered in front of the White House to celebrate the kiling of Bin Laden. No arrests.
On the other hand, Ray McGovern and Veterans for Peace protest war in front of the White House and they got arrested.
Dear Ray, Mr. McGovern:
With all due respect…and I respect you immensely, please….always, always present your credentials at the end of your informative articles. That is so the chuckleheads here know to whom they are “dissing".
Osama’s Death - When?
Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.
Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.
The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.
Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.
Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.
“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.
“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.
“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.
“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.
“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.
...
Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.
Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.
During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.
“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.
“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.
“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.
Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”
Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.
I went fishing today AND can you believe it? Yes sir, we catch a couple of tuna and even got Osama's body. But OBL body, well we just tag and release it: seems better to take a few photos and a DNA sample so people won't think its just another fish story. Har matey, best bull shit in the world comes from the CIA, hard to compete.
The "myth of bin Laden's killing" is generating most of the air time blather on radio.. and all of it is pure fabrication. The government, or the Council of Foreign Relations... bankstes, starts the lie, then leave it to the media chatter to make all the elaborations that go on ad infinitum about nothing. NPR is the chief bottle-washer for the CFR, pushing anything they direct non stop Don't fund NPR, it works for the CFR as their pusher of Prolefeed*. (see Orwell's 1984)