Just like with the law as far as murder goes...no body no crime. Conspiracy to make Obadass's campaign have some punch...or death...or more war...or more Bradley mannings...just more lies. Ass,,,just ass. Just like 911 lies.
Believe what you want. It's all hoaxed to the max.

"Clearly BinLaden was killed to silence him, just like Oswald."

Right you are. Seems very few of us see the truth.

I might be ready to believe that the story of the killing of Bin Laden has mistakes and lies but I can't see why anyone would tell a lie about the main point---Bin Laden was killed. A lie asserting he was killed would be so easily proven false that it makes no sense.
Having lived through the WWII I perhaps have a different attitude than younger folks about the killing. There was a Japanese Admiral named Yamamoto. (sp?}
He planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. In about 1943, reading a broken code,
we learned that he was going to make a trip, which was in range of American P38 fighter planes. A decision was made to kill him and we did. I was 12 at the time but I remember I was glad at the time. I still feel the same as I did then.
Bin Laden planned 9/11. He declared war on us. We found out where he was hiding and we killed him. I feel the same as I felt about Yamamoto. As Sherman said, "War is hell." Don't be surprised when war looks like hell. "War ain't beanbag." Chicago alderman.

Thank you, Mr. Dinh, for demonstrating that astute reasoning skills still exist and didn't leave town with those 9-11 steel beams. The way the general populace has gobbled these outrageous lies has completely depressed the hell outta me!!

GVDEBS & PURRSUN: If you think lining up in rank file to go along with the official version is indicative of reasoning skills you're either more robot than you realize, or have not woken up to the fact that you're deeply inside the Matrix and sound just like another set of Mr. Smith clones.

We have an interesting parallel. We have video of Osama Bin Laden watching himself on the television. Then we have the picture of Obama and his staff etc. watching the raid on a television monitor. Many of us are watching both Osama and Obama watching Osama on television.

They are watching the same TV Show basically (probably called "Osama Bin Laden: This is Your Life!"). One channel shows earlier in the episode and the other one is close to its conclusion. Probably due to the time zone difference (East Coast Time vs. Afghanistan Daylight Savings Time).

At least there was no commercial interruption on either end. But it says something about how watching the world on display screens and television has sort of become the present reality, allowing both sides (Terrorists and Governments fighting them) to be yet farther removed from the horrific realities they wreak upon the world. Blowing up the World Trade Center or some terrorist's hideout doesn't seem to affect us as much if we've already seen such similar havoc in a Vin Diesel movie.

Jerry Mander was right in his spectacular book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television". Time to turn off the television (and computer screen), folks!

Many of the people who are saying this is a psyop do not think bin Laden is still alive, they know he died years ago.

I may be wrong, but I think this is the very first article, out of a dozen on the OBL thing, that actually casts doubt on the official story. I have read several on ICH. I was beginning to think that CD had bought into the whole official story. But I am glad that the doubters get to be heard finally.

Good article by Linh. Even if Obama's account is accurate (after revisions), the secrecy of Osama's body is another mistake by Obama. Why should we trust him or the government? The world has been subject to so much death and misery, including on US television, what is one more corpse? So Obama releases videos of Osama found at his site but Obama says the US public isn't allowed to hear the sound, as it is propaganda. Who is Obama to decide? Is he concerned we will give more credence to Osama than him?

Somehow, there is a bit of the Sgt. Pepper album cover here (to my eyes anyway). The girl in the back is what really made me think of that.

It is so obviously not a real scene being depicted here. If i knew nothing else, and saw this photo i would know it was phoney........The good news, if there is any is that anyone with eyes who isn't sleepwalking can always see through them.

I published something along these lines right after he was "killed". I 've been getting trashed about that post ever since. Why? Its a fact we have no proof that anyone was killed here but the word of a pack of known liars.

I guess this is Obama's Orwellian "Habeas Corpus" doctrine.

Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," refers to the right of every prisoner to challenge the terms of his or her incarceration in court before a judge.

So nobody can challenge NOTHIN' CAUSE WE AIN'T GOT A BODY!
Such amazingly illegal legal minds in our "government".

Based on many of the comments here I don't see how it would ever be possible for anybody to believe anything. I mean if there was a corpse and we could all see it, how do you know it's bin Laden? I mean how do you really know? If the government showed you a corpse and said "it's bin Laden," you'd say it can't be, the government is incapable of telling the truth, must be somebody else. If they showed the supposed pictures, you'd say the pictures were doctored, are inauthentic, it's not real. I've been a Common Dreams reader for like ten years but have only recently dipped into the comments section. I'm amazed at the minutiae people go into. I'm with Thoreau: simplify, simplify, simplify. At the end of the day, whether the official bin Laden story is true or false, whether the 9-11 narrative is true or false, the fact is we're a society committed to war, empire, environmental destruction, wealth inequality. We should be looking for unity and solutions and courses of action, not degrading people. I'd love to see some of you sit down with Chomsky or Amy Goodman or Laura Flanders and tell them how stupid you think they are for even entertaining the possibility that planes hit the WTC or Navy SEALS killed OBL.

This article, like others written by Linh Dinh, is refreshing in its clarity.
Thank you.

I had not seen this photograph promoting the latest "Reality Show."

I wonder how soon the "stars" of the show will be on "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report."

Whose idea was it to take the photo?
Cheney's?
Katrina's?

Whatever you do, just look serious, and, for Walls Street's sake, don't say "cheese."

Wow what a lot of Sturm und Drang over this issue. I may have missed much of the official details on the alleged OBL killing story, but want to make a few points. First, I agree with Stiv that for people to accept the version of inveterate liars in the White House and govt. and corporate media on this is simply ridiculous. We have no compelling proof OBL was just killed.

More to the point, we have no proof he was behind 9/11--the singular reason so much attention is given to him. Indeed, most people even don't know significant details about OBL, including his long and intimate connection with the CIA and the Bush Crime Family right up to the day of 9/11. So the OBL in the popular consciousness is a fictional character. The lack of evidence connecting him to 9/11, and his being a longstanding CIA asset, right up to the day of 9/11, are FAR more important truths than whether or not he died in 2001 or last Sunday.

As for analyzing the photo above, I think too much time is spent on it. I never heard an official claim that there was a camera mounted on anyone's helmet. Perhaps I missed it. Obama said tonight on 60 Minutes--in what amounted to a one-hour commercial for the "War on Terror--that he and his aides only could follow in real time stuff that happened up UNTIL the Seals got to the compound. I never heard anyone claim he or they were watching Osama get shot in real time. Perhaps that was reported elsewhere? So, the photo above does not seem problematic to me. I don't see it as faked, and I think it is a waste of time to over-analyze it.

So no skeptical thinker should take the word of known liars in the White House and mass media for this. But at the same time, we have no proof either that Osama was NOT just killed last Sunday. I simply remain agnostic about it, and don't think it matters. It won't make any difference to the ongoing 'war on terror.' It won't end the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. It won't bring us back the $2.3 TRILLION that Rumsfeld announced was "missing" from the Pentagon on September 10, 2001. It will certainly help Obama get re-elected, whether it went down as he said it did or whether it was fabricated. OBL was essentially a fictitious character, most if not all the videotapes from him were fakes, and this is like an intense debate about a Who-dunnit novel.

Thank You to Common Dreams for publishing this article!
Try publishing quotes from this article or anything close to that at Daily Kos, the so called liberal ''progressives'' over there will call you names and censor you into oblivion if you move an inch away from the official story.
Thank you again Common Dreams!

"vengeAnce"!

And actually, justmiming, many of us WERE listening to the Rev. JerEmiah.

Where you close with: "It was a decade of vengence, not justice[,]" saxmanj1 follows with the observation that this massive Nationalist psy-op has been going on at least since JFK. ("Clearly benLaden was killed to silence him, just like Oswald.")

A bullet upward into the gut from a small caliber hand gun can do the job. You can bet that Oswald died in great pain. OTOH, if Navy seals put a bullet through or near one of OBL's eyes, death was probably instant. When the brain is exploded not much consciousness remains. You know, like the bullet into the brain, from the back in the case of JFK. (They shot Wallace in the gut...)

Cowards! Have they no decency? Have they no virtue? "Why bother?"

Keep writing Linh Dinh, you are an inspiration to an old man's memory!

-30-

Great description of the photo by Linh Dinh. Anyone noticed that Obama, the C-in-C is actually sitting by the wall on what looks like a smaller chair, while the guy next to him is sitting on a bigger chair?

Linh Dinh asks us to believe that the President of the United States, with the cooperation of dozens of people, planned a press conference last week in order to announce an event that he not only knew had not happened, but that he had actively conspired to fabricate.

Not content with that, Mr. Dinh implies that the President conspired to disseminate photos, many of them fabricated or distorted, in order to provide false evidence of the event he had conspired to invent. The conspiracy included not only the President, but the Secretary of State, his former political rival; and high White House officials, all of the above sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic". All these people -- every one of them -- is implies by Dinh to have been so thoroughly corrupted by power that they readily risked their honour and reputation (not to mention legal risks) to aid the President in his hoax.

As implied by Linh Dinh, this conspiracy was carried out in brazen fashion, counting on the gullibility of the entire world media -- none of whom, aside from opinion pieces like Dinh's -- have contested the basic truth of the President's statements. Not content with calling a press conference to make statements he knew to be false, the President then traveled to Fort Campbell to congratulate the Navy SEALS who he and they knew deserved no such congratulations, after which the President addressed a large number of American soldiers, again making his false claim. He then traveled to New York City to take part in a ceremony honouring the people who died on 9/11, and spent some time with survivors of some of the victims of that event, conveying, with a brazen contempt for truth, his condolences and support to them, all as part of an effort to confound and mislead the whole world as to an event he knew had not taken place.Such is the behaviour of President Obama, as implied (though never directly alleged) by Dinh.
The entire world has talked of almost nothing else in the week since the supposed non-event, providing ample incentive for someone in the world media -- including the BBC, Le Monde, Die Zeit, and many, many media opposed to the President, or simply anxious to get a scoop, to discover the "smoking gun" which would reveal him to be the boldest liar in history.. Not even the Pakistani Government or the Pakistani Armed Forces or the ISI, all of them humiliated by the killing of Bin Laden on Pakistani soil, have denied the fact of his killing. They decry the illegality of the raid, the breach of Pakistani sovereignty it entailed, but none of them contest the basic fact the President of the US announced on May 1.

Yet, in the US, within moments of the President's announcement, a chorus of voices has been raised to deny the truth of his statments, and to engage in increasingly complicated and improbable explanations of how it was that the President conspired with other high officials to mislead the public, fabricate evidence, and orchestrate a series of events in which he participated in person, to lend his prestige and reputation to what is denounced as essentially a brazen hoax.

I pity a nation where so many of its people are so easily drawn to ludicrous and pointless fantasies of evil conspirators, demonic leaders prepared to risk the consequences of uttering and repeating gross lies and to connive at the orchestration of hoaxes on a scale that dwarfs the worst lies of people like Stalin, Hitler, and other such mass killers.

This is the same nation that required of its duly elected President that he display his birth certificate in order to silence fantasists who imagined, due to his race, that he must not be a real American. A nation where political opposition to the Bush Administration has, in too many cases, slid over into the vilest accusations, wildest "theories", and darkest imaginings it is possible to conceive. A nation where a major part of the progressive Left devotes its energy, not to organizing a movement strong enough to contest power with the corporations that have corrupted the Republic, but to imagining dark plots, evil conspiracies, and secret crimes, whose departure from rationality is viewed as proof of the sturdy radicalism of the people who dream them up.

It is as if the American people have reached the point where they are alarmed by any surprise, suspicious of each other to the point almost of open hatred, and ready to beleve that "No Drama Obama", so often criticized for his timidity and determined centrism, is actually a man who engineers elaborate hoaxes and then boldly springs them on his fellow citizens in person, rather than preserve deniability by leaving that dirty work to some dispensable flunkey.

This kind of "radicalism" is no more rational or helpful than Hitler's elaborate and false ideas abou the role of "world Jewry"; or Stalin's murderous campaign against "rich peasants" who were hardly rich, or the demented lies of Gaddhafi as he seeks excuses to slaughter his people.

Thank You Mr Dinh, I AM NOT CRAZY!!! The Tsunami of bull!@#$ disgorged by supposed leftists in the mainstream media since the "raid" is making me physically ill. Its comforting to see that I am not the only person who notices the stench that surrounds the entire story.

Thank you Mr. Dinh. You are absolutely correct. No body = no proof. No independent verification = the White House and Pentagon are saying "Just trust us."

Remember when Colin Powell stared before the entire world that Saddam Hussein had mobile weapons labs? He showed pictures of them, too.

Turned out they were tanker trucks of helium gas for inflating artillery balloons.

No, I don't trust them, and I thank every one who speaks out on this issue along these lines.

Thank you, again, for writing so well and so accurately. I would guess that the perpetraitors of the 9-11 events would like an endless discussion of bin Laden. One way to achieve that is to surround his death with lies, complications and conspiracies. In the meantime, Americans forget about many things, including finding the persons who put the demolitions into the 3 WTC buildings that completely collapsed into their basements in seconds. There is an old American saying, "If it looks like demolition, and quacks like demolition, then it is probably demolition."

"Well, you know, he's our President, you know, and I think that, like, we should just all trust him, because he's our leader, you know."
---Britney Spears, 2002

We now have Obama stating on 60 Minutes that it was "A moment of great pride" when he made the decision to send in the SEALS to go in and murder the person that they clam to be OBL. I did not see this interview but one has to wonder if the reporter for 60 Minutes ever challenged Obama about any aspects of this flimsy mission that was dutifully carried out by the Navy SEALS such as asking the obvious question which Linh Dinh has raised and that would again be: Where is the proof?

Hi all,

I just want to quickly add that I've written more about Bin Laden, including his alleged connection to 9/11. On 5/4, this was published at CounterPunch:

http://www.counterpunch.org/dinh05042011.html

One argument not made by Linh Dinh may be the most persuasive of all. Can anyone poke holes in this?

"I am a molecular biologist and I've built a lucrative career in human genetics. I have run one of the world's largest and most productive DNA genotyping facilities and now I am helping to build the global market for clinical whole human genome sequencing for the world's largest human genome sequencing facility. I have worked with the absolute best genome scientists from the military, academia, medicine, and industry from around the world. I know DNA. And, one thing I know about DNA is that you cannot, repeat CANNOT: take a tissue sample from a shot-in-the-noggin-dead-guy in a north central Pakistan special forces op, extract the DNA, prepare the DNA for assay, test the DNA, curate the raw DNA sequence data, assemble the reads or QC the genotype, compare the tested DNA to a reference, and make a positive identity determination…. all in 12 hours- let alone transport the tissue samples all the places they'd need to have gone in order to get this done.

Some might try to argue that ruggedized, field ready kits could test a DNA sample- which is true if one is attempting to determine the CLASS of a bacteria. It is not true if one is trying to determine the specific identity of an individual. Any way you slice it, the real work would require days, and I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that an aircraft carrier would have a laboratory outfitted for this kind of work… it is not the Starship Enterprise out there."