453 Osama's wives hold the key to 9/11 - and they need protection

Osama's wives hold the key to 9/11 - and they need protection from the conspirators who did it. They should be allowed to remain in Pakistan.

This material is at http://mailstar.net/osama-wives.html

(1) Osama's wives hold the key - even more than Assange - and they need protection
(2) Osama was hale and hearty, says youngest wife Amal; he recovered from kidney surgery
(3) US says it wants access to Osama's wives
(4) Osama wives were left behind, because one helicopter crashed. Daughter says he was captured alive
(5) Helicopter that crashed was going to bring Osama wives & children for questioning
(6) US demands to interrogate youngest wife Amal, but Pakistan refuses, won't even let them see her
(7) Pakistan government refuses CIA demand for access to Osama wives
(8) Yemen tries to gag Osama wives, tells them not to talk to media about him
(9) Pakistan president, jilted in Washington, visits Moscow instead
(10) David Ray Griffin never said categorically that Osama was dead
(11) Robert Baer, former CIA field officer & TIME's intelligence columnist, says Osama videos could have been faked (2008)
(12) Ugly America celebrates extra-judicial killing of of Osama, targets Athletes who dissent
(13) Assassination of Osama - Fidel Castro
(14) "This was a kill operation"; Osama would only have been saved "if he had waved a white flag of surrender"
(15) US admits Osama was unarmed; he was assassinated in the best Soviet style
(16) U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Bin Laden killing was US self-defence - because he did 9/11
(17) FBI website does not list Bin Laden as Wanted for 9/11 (even after his murder)
(18) Bin Laden not indicted for 9/11, not Wanted by FBI over 9/11 - Washington Post (2006)
(19) Holder told a House panel in 2010 that bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom"
(20) Bali bomber, arrested in Abbottabad in January, may have spilled beans on Osama
(21) White Suzuki in Peshawar led CIA to Osama
(22) Killing Bin Laden allows the US to withdraw without loss of face - Paul Craig Roberts

(1) Osama's wives hold the key - even more than Assange - and they need protection

Peter Myers, May 9, 2011

The presence of Osama's wives and children prove that those who said he died in 2001 were wrong. Unlike some 9/11 dissidents, David Ray Griffin, who wrote a book on Osama, never went that far (see item 10).

The media celebration of Osama's assassination would, on the face of it, seem a setback for those who say that 9/11 was an Inside Job - done by Mossad and rogue elements of the CIA, in order to build the Third Temple (as Moshe Dayan might have put it) or launch a new Crusade (as Samuel Huntington might have put it).

Whilst some dissidents write out any role for Osama in 9/11, my own view, all along, has been that Muslim activists did plan to hijack planes on that day, but that their groups had been infiltrated by Mossad, and their own plot hijacked, the planes flown into the towers by remote control. This has been my view because I studied the writings of Victor Ostrovsky and Ari Ben-Menashe on previous Mossad engagements where they fooled the CIA and got Palestinians, unknowingly, to do their dirty work for them. It's an elegant and sophisticted style, which must be mentally very satisfying.

I give an overview of the case for an Inside Job, featuring Controlled Demolition of three WTC towers, with links to the best dissident websites, at http://mailstar.net/wtc.html.

9/11 is akin to the fire in the Reichstag building, and Pearl Harbor, as inside jobs mobilizing public anger.

Paul Craig Roberts wonders why the CIA shot Osama, its greatest intelligence asset (item 22). But, if the Inside Job scenario is right, Osama was more of a threat than an asset. If paraded before the World Court like Milosevic, he would be in a position to deny bringing down the towers, claiming he'd been framed and that the "Confession" videos attributed to him had been faked.

Osama's wives, especially Amal, are still in a position to make such statements - if, as I believe, they are true. Therefore, they are in grave danger from the Conspirators behind 9/11, who would do all possible to silence them.

The Seals who shot Obama would have believed him guilty of 9/11; any agent who harmed the wives would similarly be a dupe. The real conspirators are not going to reveal themselves or do their own dirty work in the public gaze, any more that Stalin himself buried the hatchet in Trotsky's skull.

Fortunately for the wives, the CIA has upset the ISI (in whose hands they are), and the US has insulted the Pakistan government. Thus the wives are safe for the present, CIA demands for access having been refused (see items 3 to 7).

The Pakistan government says it will return Amal to Yemen. Yemen, in turn, is pressuring her to remain silent (item 8).

Amal would be in grave danger in Yemen - from the true conspirators behind 9/11. Pakistan is disorderly, but Yemen is chaotic and on the bring of revolution, during which anything could happen to her.

Fidel Castro asks of Obama, "How could he now prevent the women and children ... from explaining what happened?" (item 13)

The Pakistan Government should allow Osama's wives and children to remain in Pakistan if they wish, and offer ISI protection to them. And Amal should be encouraged to write a book about all she knows - without any constraints, whatever she wants to say. It would be a best-seller, beating the West's own best-sellers on "the Manhunt", currently being concocted. The proceeds from Amal's book could be used to reimburse the Pakistan Government for the family's expenses.

I say these things even though I myself have no sympathy for Jihad. On the contrary, I am an admirer of Benazir Bhutto, and not unaware that, in the wake of her assassination, her husband is now President.

As it happens, I visited Pakistan for a week in October 2008, after a trip to India. Regardless of all the warnings, I could not miss the opportunity to visit Harappa and MohenjoDaro, sites of the ancient civilization.

During my trip, I stayed in Larkana, Benazir Bhutto's home-town, with its poignant photos of her.

In my write-up of the trip, I wrote, in November 2008:

"Larkana was a friendly and pleasant town. Water lay in the fields, sugar and rice were being  harvested, fruit and vegetables abounded in the roadside stalls; I even saw fish for sale. Larkana had  been the home of Benazir Bhutto, and her photo was everywhere. Except for the militants (who are in  the north & west of the country), everyone else seemed to find it hard to get over her loss. She had  been their only hope." http://mailstar.net/india-pakistan.html

The Pakistan Government should continue to refuse all CIA access to Osama's wives and children.

This letter of mine may be reproduced freely, and published in the media, provided that it is uncut and my authorship is acknowledged.

This letter and associated material are at http://mailstar.net/osama-wives.html

(2) Osama was hale and hearty, says youngest wife Amal; he recovered from kidney surgery

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Osama-was-hale-and-hearty-says-wife/Article1-694547.aspx

Osama was hale and hearty, says wife

Press Trust Of India

Islamabad, May 07, 2011

Osama bin Laden, who was shot dead by US forces May 2, was hale and hearty and was "not on dialysis", the al Qaeda leader's wife has told investigators. Osama's youngest wife, Amal al-Sadah, said Osama was hale and hearty and had recovered from his kidney ailment. "He was not on dialysis," Da wn quoted an official as saying. It was widely believed that Osama was suffering from a kidney ailment and needed constant dialysis.

Amal, who hails from Yemen and was just 17 when she wed Osama, has said that the 9/11 mastermind had undergone two kidney surgeries in Afghanistan's south-western Kandahar province during the Taliban regime.

He had recovered and was using homemade medications including water melons.

"He was neither weak nor frail," an official quoted Amal as saying.

"He believed in his own medication," she said.

Amal sustained a bullet injury in her left leg when US commandos stormed Osama's hideout in Abbottabad city May 2. Osama was killed in the daring raid carried out by US Navy SEALs and his body was later buried at sea.

(3) US says it wants access to Osama's three Widows

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/world/asia/09donilon.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

U.S. Seeks to Question Bin Laden’s Three Widows
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: May 8, 2011
 
Thomas E. Donilon, the White House national security adviser, called Sunday for Pakistan to grant the United States access to Osama bin Laden’s three widows, who are in Pakistani custody following the secret American raid that killed the Qaeda leader last week. In addition to possibly learning more about Al Qaeda, American officials hope the women could help answer whether any Pakistani government or security officials were complicit in hiding Bin Laden. ==

US Says It Wants Access to 3 bin Laden Widows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhYJiya4BUQ&feature=player_embedded

Uploaded by AssociatedPress on May 8, 2011

The U.S. says it wants to talk to the 3 widows of Osama bin Laden, who are in Pakistani custody. Officials say information from them could help answer questions about whether Pakistani authorities helped hide the al-Qaida leader. (May 8)

(4) Osama wives were left behind, because one helicopter crashed. Daughter says he was captured alive

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/05/04/147782.html

Bin Laden's daughter confirms her father shot dead by US Special Forces in Pakistan

Wednesday, 04 May 2011

By MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI
SPECIAL TO AL ARABIYA

Senior Pakistani security officials said Osama bin Laden's daughter had confirmed her father was captured alive and shot dead by the US Special Forces during the first few minutes of the operation carried out at the huge compound in Bilal Town, Abbottabad. ??

Besides recovering four bullet-riddled bodies from the compound, Pakistani security agencies also arrested two women and six children, aged between 2 and 12 years, after American forces flew toward Afghanistan. Some reports suggest 16 people, including women and children, were arrested from the house, most of them Arab nationals.

A Pakistani security source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden family members had been transported to Rawalpindi, which is near Islamabad. He added, "They are now under treatment in the military hospital of Rawalpindi, where they have been transported in an helicopter." A source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden's wife had been injured either in her leg or her shoulder.

He added that the members of the household were children and Bin Laden's wife, in addition to a Yemeni woman. He added that the woman might be the personal doctor of the family. Bin Laden was known to be afflicted with renal failure. He had reportedly received treatment in Hyderabad, India, before the 9/11 attacks.

Sources speculated that US Forces could not arrest these family members because there weren't enough places for them in the helicopter, after they lost another chopper during the operation.

About the slain woman: officials said she could either be Bin Laden's wife or a close family member since she offered to sacrifice her life for him. "As per our information, she shielded Bin Laden during the operation and was killed by American commandos," an official said. ??

The US Special Forces only took two bodies with them in the military chopper; one is said to be Bin Laden's and the other his son's. By the time Pakistani security agencies and soldiers arrived at the spot, the US commandos were flying over the mountains in the Pakistani tribal belt, well on their way to Afghanistan. ??

Sources said one of the two women taken into custody from the compound by Pakistani forces was one of Osama bin Laden's several wives.

"She is Yemeni and became unconscious during the operation," said an official. Pleading anonymity, he said the woman was provided necessary medical aid till she became conscious. ??

"During preliminary investigations, the lady said they moved to the Abbottabad house five to six months ago," the Pakistani official said, adding that she did not provide further information about bin Laden or his shifting to the house. ??

The official said a 12-year-old daughter of bin Laden was among the six children rescued from the three-storey compound.

The daughter has reportedly told her Pakistani investigators that the US forces captured her father alive but shot him dead in front of family members. ??

According to sources, Bin Laden was staying on the ground floor of the house and was dragged on the floor to the helicopter after being shot dead by US commandos. ??

There were conflicting reports about the second person the US forces took along with them. Some Pakistani officials say it was one of Bin Laden's sons injured by the US commandos and thrown onto a separate military chopper; others say he was killed in the operation and it was only his dead body that they took along. ??

The officials say not all children rescued from the house belonged to the al-Qaeda leader. All were being kept at a safe place. The US has not been given access to the detained women and children, the officials claimed. About the second woman, many officials feel she could be a close relative of Osama or his servant. ??

Similarly, according to information Pakistani officials collected from detained persons, Osama was neither armed nor did inmates at the compound fire at the US choppers or commandos.

"Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the US forces and their choppers. Their chopper developed some technical fault and crashed and the wreckage was left on the spot," a well-informed official explained. ??

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces maintained a cordon around the compound and its surrounding areas and did not allow the media access to the area until the remaining wreckage of the US military chopper was removed. Some media were given access to the spot but no one was allowed to enter the compound.

The Pakistan Army has sealed two main entrances of the house and deployed military and police for its protection. ??

A sizeable number of national and international journalists have arrived in Abbottabad to cover the extraordinary story. Before opening the area to the media, Pakistani soldiers shifted two buffaloes, a cow and around 150 hens from the compound to an unknown location. ??

Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound on Monday and Tuesday. Also, they said, it was a simple house comprising 13 rooms, six on the ground floor and the remaining on the first and second floors.

"There was no bunker or tunnel inside the house and that's why I don't understand why the world's most wanted man would have decided to live here," a senior official said. ??

He said two brothers, Arshad Khan and Tariq Khan, owned the house. Both belonged to Tangi area in Charsadda district. Officials said they had no information about the two brothers and their business. ??

According to a neighbor, the dwellers of the compound never mixed with anyone.

"It was a very reserved family and never attended any wedding or funeral ceremony in the area," said Qari Mastana Khan of Bilal Town. "But they were kindhearted and would provide clean drinking water and food to poor neighbors. During the holy month of Ramadan, they invited us for Iftar dinner at their house and served us delicious food. Arshad Khan had three kids and his brother Tariq four," Khan added. ??

Another interesting aspect, which the residents shared about the house and its inmates, was the strict behavior of the family, who in the last six years, had never allowed women of the neighborhood to enter their house or permitted their own ladies to visit neighbors. Also, children playing in the streets and nearby fields were never allowed into the compound, not even when their balls inadvertently went across. ??

"Usually, when their ball falls past the wall of a house, the children just go there and pick it up but they were never allowed into this particular house. Whenever their ball fell there and the children went to retrieve it, whoever opened the door gave them money to buy a new ball instead of allowing them to enter and search for their ball," said an elder of the area, Mohammad Fayaz. ??

He said all these details made him suspicious but were not enough to make him believe the world's most wanted man was hiding in his neighborhood.

(Al Arabiya's correspondent in Islamabad relayed this article.)

(5) Helicopter that crashed was going to bring wives & children for questioning

From: Sandhya Jain <sandhya206@bol.net.in> Date: 08.05.2011 09:36 AM

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1769

Bin Laden, Bin Laden, wherefore art thou bin Laden?

Peter Eyre

8 May 2011

... Bin Laden's wife, a 27-year-old Yemeni, is now being treated in military hospital in Pakistan where the authorities have already refused an American request to question her. In a further blow to the US, the Pakistan government has said she will be sent home to Yemen once she has recovered.

The girl is being held by the Pakistani authorities, along with bin Laden’s wife and another woman, thought to be either a relative or servant. In a statement, the Pakistan government said all were in ‘safe hands’ and would eventually be sent back to their countries of origin. There was no official comment on any US bid to question the al Qaeda leader’s wife. ...

Yet another report said two of the helicopters were stealth and were being used as pathfinders backed by two larger Chinooks. As an ex-military man and aviation expert I believe the term pathfinders is only used to describe aircraft that find and mark the target and do not actually take part in the action; they remain in the area in a coordination role. But one of these stealth choppers came down in the compound, leaving its brand new tail in the field over the wall.

The report added that the helicopter that crashed was going to be used to bring back the other members of the family for questioning, a mission abandoned when they lost the helicopter. ...

Peter Eyre, a former British Naval officer, worked at NATO headquarters, and spent a lot of time in the Middle East and South East Asia as a petroleum consultant; he lives in the UK and writes regularly for the Palestine Telegraph; his website is www.eyreinternational.com

(6) US demands to interrogate youngest wife Amal, but Pakistan refuses, won't even let them see her

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/may/070511-Osama-Bin-laden-wife-US-intel-Amal-al-Sadah.htm

US keen to get Osama's Wife no 5

By: Agencies            Date:  2011-05-07               Place: Washington

Amal, who took a bullet in her leg to shield her terrorist husband, is a valuable intel resource for the US

After last Monday's raid on Osama's hideout in Abbottabad, the US navy SEALs had left Amal al Sadah behind. But now a diplomatic tussle has erupted between the US and Pakistan over her custody. According to media reports, Pakistan turned down the American demand to interrogate her and even rejected the its request to see her in a military hospital in Rawalpindi where she was being treated. The navy SEALs had shot her in the calf of her leg while she was apparently pushed in front by her husband on seeing the commandos. ...

As reported by Time magazine, Amal in a 2002 interview to a Saudi woman's magazine explained how, after the 9/11 attacks, she had made her way out of Afghanistan back to Yemen with assistance from Pakistani officials.

"When the US bombing of Afghanistan started, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them. I did not know that we were going to Pakistan until they handed us over to the Pakistani government," she is quoted by the magazine. So far, Pakistan is refusing to let US officials anywhere near Amal, for she may know too many uncomfortable truths. ...

(7) Pakistan government refuses CIA demand for access to Osama wives

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\05\07\story_7-5-2011_pg7_18

Pakistan Daily Times

Saturday, May 07, 2011

Osama's wife spent six years in house

ISLAMABAD: One of three wives living with Osama Bin Laden has told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the al Qaeda chief's hideout for six years without leaving its upper floors, a Pakistani intelligence official said on Friday.

The woman, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, and the other two wives of Bin Laden are being interrogated in Pakistan after they were taken into custody following the American raid on Bin Laden's compound in the town of Abbottabad.

Pakistani authorities are also holding eight or nine children who were found there after the US commandos left. The corpses of at least three slain men were also left behind, while Bin Laden's body was taken and buried at sea.

The wives' accounts will help show how Bin Laden spent his time and how he managed to avoid capture, living in a large house close to military academy in a garrison town, a two-and-a-half hours' drive from the capital Islamabad.

Given shifting and incomplete accounts from US officials about what happened during the raid, the women's testimonies may also be significant in unveiling details about the operation.

A Pakistani official said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers had not been given access to the women in custody. ...

The Pakistani intelligence official did not say on Friday whether the Yemeni wife has said that Bin Laden was also living there since 2006. “We are still getting information from them,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give his name to the media.

A security official said the wife was shot in the leg during the operation, and did not witness her husband being killed. He also said one of Bin Laden's eldest daughters had said she witnessed the Americans killing her father.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's intelligence agency has concluded that bin Laden was “cash strapped” in his final days and that al-Qaeda had split into two factions, with the larger one controlled by the group's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, according to a briefing given by a senior officer in the agency. The officer spoke to a small group of Pakistani reporters late Thursday. A top military officer also present at the briefing told The Associated Press what was said, as did two of the journalists. All asked that their names not be used because of the sensitivity of the meeting. ...

(8) Yemen tries to gag Osama wives, tells them not to talk to media about him

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/07/yemen.bin.laden.wife/

Exclusive: Bin Laden's young Yemeni bride was confident, conservative

Ibb, Yemen (CNN) -- When 18-year-old Amal al-Sadah became the fifth wife of 43-year-old Osama bin Laden in 2000, she was "a quiet, polite, easygoing and confident teenager" who came from a big, conservative family in Yemen, a relative told CNN in an exclusive interview. ...

The Yemeni government is apparently pressuring the family not to speak publicly about their notorious in-law, bin Laden, Ahmed said.

"From what I know, the government would give the Sadah family an extremely difficult time and always warns them from talking to the media," Ahmed said. "The government tells them that the information or comments they give would be misunderstood or misinterpreted and could hurt the family more than the government." ...

(9) Pakistan president, jilted in Washington, visits Moscow instead

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME07Df03.html

May 7, 2011

Pakistan seeks solace in the Kremlin

By M K Bhadrakumar

The Kremlin has announced a three-day "official visit" by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to Russia beginning next Wednesday at the invitation of President Dmitry Medvedev.

Such visits are scheduled in advance while formal announcements are kept until a later date. Nonetheless, Zardari's talks within inscrutable Kremlin walls will attract huge attention regionally and internationally as they will be taking place within a fortnight of the la affaire Abbottabad, which has prompted speculation regarding the United States-Pakistan relationship following the killing on Monday of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in that Pakistani town.

Also, the Russians (and Pakistanis) have chosen to schedule the trip ahead of Zardari's visit to Washington, which has already been postponed once and now seems quite unlikely to take place in the near future.

At the very least, Moscow is indicating that the imperatives of the Kremlin constructively engaging Russia with regard to regional security (which has been evident for the past two to three years) remain very much in place and the sensational killing of Bin Laden doesn't come into that matrix. ...

Interestingly, Russian media coverage of the killing of Bin Laden has been factual and balanced and has been devoid of any sensationalism or undue flights of over-interpretations - the overall impression being that there are many ambiguities in the American version (or versions) of what really took place and the final version is yet to appear and, therefore, it is premature to conclude anything beyond the domain of speculation. ...

Moscow is watching with unease the strong American diplomatic and political pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to agree to a Status of Forces agreement that legitimizes a long-term US military presence in the region. A spate of Russian commentaries has appeared in the recent period about the imperative need of revamping and strengthening the capabilities - political as well as military - of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization as a counter-alliance to NATO. ...

Russia can offer a lot - membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to begin with, at the alliance's summit meeting in June in Astana.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(10) David Ray Griffin never said categorically that Osama was dead

David Ray Griffin presented in his 2009 book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? evidence (not proof, but
evidence) that Osama died on or about December 13, 2001; and argued that subsequent videos and messages purportedly issued by him were fraudulent.

But unlike less careful 9/11 Dissidents, Griffin never went further and categorically stated that Osama was dead. Here is his summary of his position, from his book Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (2009):

{Introduction, p. x} Obviously, if bin Laden is dead, a hunt to find him would necessarily be futile. To have a rational policy, therefore, the Obama administration will first need to determine whether bin Laden is dead or alive.

There is evidence on both sides of this question. The main evidence that he is dead comes from reports that he died in Tora Bora late in 20101, combined with the fact that communications with him had been regularly intercepted until then and those interceptions came to an end at that time. The main evidence that bin Laden is still alive comes from messages, purportedly from him, that are contained in audio- and videotapes. Obviously, if bin Laden has been dead since late 2001, all of these messages have been fabricated. But if at least some of them are authentic, then the reports of his death in 2001 were untrue.

{p. 77} One reason to consider all of the post-200 1 bin Laden tapes fabrications, as we have seen, is the strong evidence that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001. A reason to suspect that these tapes have been produced by agents of the US government or its allies—rather than by its enemies—is that they and other supposed al-Qaeda messages often appeared at times that were convenient for the Bush administration ...

{As an example: }

{p. 79} On October 29, 2004, just four days before the US presidential election, another "confession video" appeared. Its bin Laden figure delivered a message that, according to CIA analysts, was "clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."8 And it did.

{endquote}

Griffin summarised the book in this article:

Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
Global Research, October 9, 2009
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15601

And Griffin updated the book in this article:

Did Osama bin Laden Confess to the 9/11 Attacks, and Did He Die, in 2001?
Global Research, April 30, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18923

(11) Robert Baer, former CIA field officer & TIME's intelligence columnist, says Osama videos could have been faked (2008)

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1859354,00.html

When Will Obama Give Up the Bin Laden Ghost Hunt?

By ROBERT BAER   Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008

In a talk at the Atlantic Council this week, CIA director-general Michael Hayden said Osama bin Laden is alive. I'll take his word for it. But bin Laden's strange disappearance makes one wonder what exactly happened to him. The last relatively reliable bin Laden sighting was in late 2001. A video that he apparently appeared in last year shows him with a dyed beard. More than a few Pakistani intelligence operatives who knew bin Laden scoff at the idea he would ever dye his beard. They think the tape was manipulated from old footage, and that bin Laden is in fact dead. But then again, they would have an interest in making Americans believe bin Laden is dead, since it would relieve U.S. pressure to find him by any means necessary, including going into Pakistani territory.

And what about all the other audiotapes bin Laden has put out since 9/11? Experts will tell you that off-the-shelf digital-editing software could manipulate old bin Laden voice recordings to make it sound as if he were discussing current events. Finally, there's the mystery as to why bin Laden didn't pop up during the U.S. election. You would think a narcissistic mass murderer who believes he has a place in history would find it impossible to pass up an opportunity to give his opinion at such a momentous time, at least by dropping off a DVD at the al-Jazeera office in Islamabad. (Read "Barack Obama on Homeland Security.")

I posed these questions to half a dozen of my former CIA colleagues who have been on bin Laden's trail since 9/11. What surprised me was that none of them would say for certain whether he is alive or dead. Half of them assumed he is dead, while the other half assumed he is alive. I suppose a lot of their timidity had to do with the still open wounds regarding the CIA's missing an event like Saddam Hussein's destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It would be so much easier to miss the death of a single man.

The important point of Hayden's talk was that Muslims have turned against bin Laden, realizing that his campaign against the West has ended up killing more Muslims than it has Islam's enemies. Al-Qaeda may be picking up adherents in North Africa and Yemen, preparing its return, but it certainly is no longer in a position to destabilize Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country. And, although Hayden didn't say it, there is no good evidence that bin Laden is capable of mounting a large-scale attack. He failed to pull off an October surprise, as many in the FBI and CIA feared he would.

Despite all this, whether bin Laden is alive or dead is actually pretty irrelevant. President-elect Barack Obama has no real choice but to revitalize the search for him, if only for political considerations. If al-Qaeda were to attack in the U.S. in the first months of his term, Obama would end up explaining why he wasn't more vigilant for the rest of it.

But what if bin Laden really is dead, buried under a hundred tons of rock at Tora Bora, or so weakened that he might as well be dead? Indefinitely crashing around Afghanistan's and Pakistan's wild, mountainous tribal region on a ghost hunt cannot serve our interests. The longer we leave troops in Afghanistan, the worse the civil war there will become. One day Obama will need to give up the hunt — declare bin Laden either dead or irrelevant. He has more important enemies to deal with, from Iran to Russia.

Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower

(12) Ugly America celebrates extra-judicial killing of of Osama, targets Athletes who dissent

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 09.05.2011 02:48 PM
Subject: [wvns] Athletes who disagree get targeted

US football player targeted for criticizing celebration of Bin Laden killing

By Jerry White

WSWS, 7 May 2011

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/mend-m07.shtml

Following the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the news media and virtually every avenue of American popular culture was activated to manufacture an atmosphere of jingoism and celebration over the dirty killing of the Al Qaeda leader.

As has so often been the case, in particular since September 11, 2001, professional sports has been used to create a false aura of "national unity" and intimidate anyone critical of the criminal actions of the US government.

The backward chants of "USA! USA!" by a section of the crowd at the Philadelphia Phillies vs. the New York Mets baseball game Sunday night—following the announcement of the bin Laden killing—was followed by a week of sporting events where soldiers threw out the ceremonial first pitches and the routine singing of the national anthem at the National Basketball playoffs became the occasion for even more crude displays of flag-waving patriotism and militarism.

Sportscasters from the ESPN cable network were immediately dispatched to solicit pro-government comments from prominent athletes in an effort to demonstrate the supposed unanimity of public opinion. In an interview with Minnesota Vikings football coach Mike Priefer, a former Navy helicopter pilot, ESPN commentator Jay Crawford urged the coach that defensive players who tackle ball carriers on kickoff returns were a "well-trained team, working in precision," just like the Navy Seal assassination squad.

Whether they shared the right-wing political conceptions or were naïve and taken in by the propaganda blitz, several prominent athletes issued statements praising the military and President Obama. There were, however, notable and, in the present circumstances, courageous exceptions. Since sports cable channels and news media would not broadcast such statements, the athletes making criticisms used their Twitter accounts.

The day after Obama's announcement of the killing, Rashard Mendenhall, the 23-year-old star running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, tweeted: "What kind of man celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side."

Mendenhall's comments—which were bound up with his religious convictions and skepticism in the government's version of the 9/11 events—were immediately seized upon for a rabid campaign accusing the football player of being disloyal and contemptuous of the 3,000 Americans killed by the terrorist attacks. The fraternity of cable television sportscasters—who, with few exceptions, generally appeal only to the base instincts of sports fans—demanded that the National Football League block athletes from having access to Twitter and social networking sites.

On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Steelers President Art Rooney II released a statement regarding Mendenhall, saying it "is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments." He added, "The entire Steelers organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done."

In the face of the torrent of criticism, Mendenhall issued a clarification on his blog, which, while expressing religious conceptions and some conciliation to pro-war propaganda, nevertheless upheld his initial comments and the right to the express them.

"This controversial statement was something I said in response to the amount of joy I saw in the event of a murder. I don't believe that this is an issue of politics or American pride; but one of religion, morality, and human ethics. I wasn't questioning Bin Laden's evil acts. I believe that he will have to face God for what he has done. I was reflecting on our own hypocrisy. During 9/11 we watched in horror as parts of the world celebrated death on our soil. Earlier this week, parts of the world watched us in horror celebrating a man's death."

On Friday, sports apparel maker Champion fired Mendenhall, who recently signed a four-year contract and had been a sponsor with the company since his NFL career started in 2008. While hypocritically claiming to respect his right to express such views, the company said, "We no longer believe that Mr. Mendenhall can appropriately represent Champion and we have notified Mr. Mendenhall that we are ending our business relationship."

The statement added, "Champion is a strong supporter of the government's efforts to fight terrorism and is very appreciative of the dedication and commitment of the US Armed Forces" and said Mendenhall's comments and opinions "were inconsistent with the values of the Champion brand."

Despite the witch-hunt atmosphere, other athletes also spoke out. Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Chris Douglas-Roberts tweeted after hearing of Bin Laden's death, "Is this a celebration??"

(13) Assassination of Osama - Fidel Castro

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 08.05.2011 11:58 AM

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden

by Fidel Castro Ruz

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24670

May 7, 2011

Those persons who deal with these issues know that on September 11 of 2001 our people expressed its solidarity to the US people and offered the modest cooperation that in the area of health we could have offered to the victims of the brutal attack against the Twin Towers in New York.

We also immediately opened our country’s airports to the American airplanes that were unable to land anywhere, given the chaos that came about soon after the strike.

The traditional stand adopted by the Cuban Revolution, which was always opposed to any action that could jeopardize the life of civilians, is well known.

Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people. Such behavior, which has been maintained for more than half a century, gives us the right to express our views about such a sensitive matter.

On that day, at a public gathering that took place at Ciudad Deportiva, I expressed my conviction that international terrorism could never be erradicated through violence and war.

By the way, Bin Laden was, for many years, a friend of the US, a country that gave him military training; he was also an adversary of the USSR and Socialism. But, whatever the actions attributed to him, the assassination of an unarmed human being while surrounded by his own relatives is something abhorrent. Apparently this is what the government of the most powerful nation that has ever existed did.

In the carefully drafted speech announcing Bin Laden’s death Obama asserts as follows:

“…And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

That paragraph expressed a dramatic truth, but can not prevent honest persons from remembering the unjust wars unleashed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands of children who were forced to grow up without their mothers and fathers and the parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.

Millions of citizens were taken from their villages in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and many other countries of the world.

Still engraved in the minds of hundreds of millions of persons are also the horrible images of human beings who, in Guantánamo, a Cuban occupied  territory, walk down in silence, being submitted for months, and even for years, to unbearable and excruciating tortures.  Those are persons who were kidnapped and transferred to secret prisons with the hypocritical connivance of supposedly civilized societies.

Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended and its religious traditions desecrated.

How could he now prevent the women and children of the person who was executed out of the law and without any trial from explaining what happened? How could he prevent those images from being broadcast to the world?

On January 28 of 2002 the CBS journalist Dan Rather reported through that TV network that on September 10 of 2001, one day before the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Osama Bin Laden underwent a hemodialysis at a military hospital in Pakistan.  He was physically unfit to hide and take shelter inside deep caves.

Having assassinated him and plunging his corpse into the bottom of the sea are an expression of fear and insecurity which turn him into a far more dangerous person.

The US public opinion itself, after the initial euphoria, will end up by criticizing the methods that, far from protecting its citizen, will multiply the feelings of hatred and revenge against them.

Fidel Castro Ruz - May 4, 2011


(14) "This was a kill operation"; Osama would only have been saved "if he had waved a white flag of surrender"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-kill-idUSTRE74151S20110502

US commandos knew bin Laden likely would die

By Mark Hosenball

Mon, May 2 2011

WASHINGTON | Mon May 2, 2011 1:10pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. special forces set out to kill Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the sea to make it harder for the al Qaeda founder to become a martyr, U.S. national security officials told Reuters on Monday.

"This was a kill operation," one of the officials said.

"If he had waved a white flag of surrender, he would have been taken alive," the official added. ...

(15) US admits Osama was unarmed; he was assassinated in the best Soviet style

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/osam-m05.shtml

Washington's official story unravels, confirming extra-legal execution of Bin Laden

By Barry Grey

5 May 2011

It took less than two days for Washington's official story of the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden to unravel, revealing amidst the rubble of the initial lies a cold-blooded extra-legal execution.

The American media, in accordance with its willing and eager role as propaganda arm of the government, is doing its best to limit the damage from the retraction of earlier claims and continue utilizing the murder of Bin Laden and four others, including a woman, to intimidate, debase and brutalize public opinion.

On Monday, Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, told a press conference that Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs after having "engaged in a firefight," weapon in hand. "Whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don't know," Brennan added.

Less than 24 hours later, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted that Bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot in the head.

Carney was obliged to correct another falsehood put forward the previous day by Brennan. The counter-terrorism official had reported that Bin Laden's wife was killed after the terrorist leader used her as a human shield to protect himself. On Wednesday, Carney, reading from a brief statement drafted by the Pentagon, said Bin Laden's wife had been wounded in the leg, not killed, and had not been used as a human shield.

The White House further acknowledged that it had misidentified which of Bin Laden's sons was killed—it was Hamza, not Khalid. It said that the woman killed in the raid was the wife of Bin Laden's courier. She was allegedly caught in the crossfire between the SEALs and Bin Laden's defenders on the first floor of the three-story compound in a well-off section of Abbottabad, Pakistan.

According to official US accounts, Bin Laden and his family members were on the third floor when the attack came early Monday morning, Pakistan time.

The original version put out by Brennan was designed to debunk the view that the purpose of the mission was to execute Bin Laden and bolster the claim, made for legal reasons, that the commandos had orders to capture their target if he did not resist.

"If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat," Brennan said, "the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that."

In his press conference Tuesday, Carney continued to claim that the commandos were prepared to take Bin Laden alive if he did not resist. Asked by a reporter how he could resist without a gun, Carney said vaguely that there were "other ways" to resist than with arms.

On Monday, Brennan made much of Bin Laden's supposed use of his wife as a human shield. In line with the policy of demonizing and dehumanizing those singled out to serve as bogeymen and pretexts for US military aggression, Brennan said: "Here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield. I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."

This, it was soon was revealed, was concocted out of whole cloth.

There is evidence that the new official version is no less a tissue of lies. Al Arabiya on Wednesday cited senior Pakistani security officials who said a 12-year-old daughter of Bin Laden who survived the attack and is in Pakistani custody told them the US forces captured her father alive and shot him dead in front of family members. The Pakistani officials added that Bin Laden was killed in the first few minutes of the operation and on the first floor of the compound.

This flatly contradicts the US government story that the commandoes had first to shoot their way into the first story in order to get to the third floor, and that they confronted Bin Laden in the midst of ongoing firefights with his defenders. Al Arabiya reported that there was no gunfire from the residents of the compound and that Pakistani officials who investigated the scene after the raid found no weapons.

The newspaper wrote: "According to information Pakistani officials collected from detained persons, Osama was neither armed nor did inmates at the compound fire at the US choppers or commandos.

"‘Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the US forces and their choppers. Their chopper developed some technical fault and crashed and the wreckage was left on the spot,' a well-informed official explained.

"Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound on Monday and Tuesday."

This report was almost universally ignored by the US media. At the daily White House press briefing on Wednesday, Carney announced that the White House would give out no further details on the raid, lamely asserting the need to protect counter-terrorism sources and operational methods.

The clumsy efforts to cover up the flagrant illegality of the raid—both the violation of Pakistani sovereignty and the extra-legal execution of Bin Laden and others—point to the broader context of unanswered questions and non-credible claims. ...

(16) U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Bin Laden killing was US self-defence - because he did 9/11

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/05/04/uk-binladen-selfdefense-idUKTRE74352X20110504

Bin Laden killing was US self-defence - U.S. Attorney General

WASHINGTON | Wed May 4, 2011 5:30pm BST

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday forcefully defended the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. military forces as an act of national self defence and said that he made no attempt to surrender.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that bin Laden had no intention of being captured by American forces which conducted the operation over the weekend in Pakistan.

"Let me make something very clear, the operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful. He was the head of al Qaeda, an organisation that had conducted the attacks of September 11. He admitted his involvement," said Holder, the chief U.S. law enforcement officer. ...

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and James Vicini, editing by Sandra Maler)

(17) FBI website does not list Bin Laden as Wanted for 9/11 (even after his murder)

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists

USAMA BIN LADEN

{Retrieved April 3, 2011}

Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States; Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States; Attack on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death

REWARD: The Rewards For Justice Program, United States Department of State, is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to the apprehension or conviction of Usama Bin Laden. An additional $2 million is being offered through a program developed and funded by the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association.

Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.

Bin Laden is left-handed and walks with a cane.

(18) Bin Laden not indicted for 9/11, not Wanted by FBI over 9/11 - Washington Post (2006)

Justice Department Not Seeking 911 Charges Against Bin Laden!
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 28, 2006; Page A13

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700687.html

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a longtime and prominent member of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, which notes his role as the suspected mastermind of the deadly U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998.

But another more infamous date -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- is nowhere to be found on the same FBI notice.

The curious omission underscores the Justice Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin Laden is "a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but does not provide details.

The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain.

Exhaustive government and independent investigations have concluded otherwise, of course, and bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders have proudly taken responsibility for the hijackings. FBI officials say the wanted poster merely reflects the government's long-standing practice of relying on actual criminal charges in the notices.

"There's no mystery here," said FBI spokesman Rex Tomb. "They could add 9/11 on there, but they have not because they don't need to at this point. ...There is a logic to it."

David N. Kelley, the former U.S. attorney in New York who oversaw terrorism cases when bin Laden was indicted for the embassy bombings there in 1998, said he is not at all surprised by the lack of a reference to Sept. 11 on the official wanted poster. Kelley said the issue is a matter of legal restrictions and the need to be fair to any defendant.

"It might seem a little strange from the outside, but it makes sense from a legal point of view," said Kelley, now in private practice. "If I were in government, I'd be troubled if I were asked to put up a wanted picture where no formal charges had been filed, no matter who it was."

Bin Laden was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list in June 1999 after being indicted for murder, conspiracy and other charges in connection with the embassy bombings, and a $5 million reward was put on his head at that time. The listing was updated after Sept. 11, 2001, to include a higher reward of 5 million, but no mention of the attacks was added.

Others on the list include Colombian drug cartel leader Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez and fugitive Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger, charged with a role in "numerous murders" in the 1970s and 1980s.

The FBI maintains a separate "Most Wanted Terrorists" list, which includes bin Laden and 25 others who have been indicted in U.S. federal courts in connection with terror plots. But this second bin Laden listing also makes no mention of Sept. 11.

"The indictments currently listed on the posters allow them to be arrested and brought to justice," the FBI says in a note accompanying the terrorist list on its Web site. "Future indictments may be handed down as various investigations proceed in connection to other terrorist incidents, for example, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."

(19) Holder told a House panel in 2010 that bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom"

http://www.twf.org/News/Y2010/0325-BinLaden.html

March 25, 2010
The Wisdom Fund

Staging bin Laden's 'Death'

by Enver Masud

It appears that we are being primed for the "death" of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Attorney General Eric Holder told a House panel this month that bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom."

Others who have examined the evidence, and the "bin Laden tapes," have concluded that bin Laden is dead.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that the US has had no reliable information on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden in years.

But the US needs a neat ending to its war on Afghanistan.

Staging bin Laden's death will be seen as a fitting end to this genocidal war for the control of energy resources. Of course it will have to be done so that visual identification is not possible.

We suspect that when bin Laden is "killed," we'll just have to trust the folks that lied us into war to confirm they got him. ==

http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/holder-compares-bin-laden-to-charles-manson-says-he-deserves-the-same-legal-rights/

Holder Compares Bin Laden To Charles Manson, Says He Deserves the Same Legal Rights

Posted 16/03/2010 by sfcmac

Another example of the Obama regime's fatuous inability to tell the difference between a civilian criminal and a wartime enemy combatant. During a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, Eric Holder, the incompetent moron that heads the Department of Justice, stated that Osama bin Laden is comparable to a mass murderer like Charles Manson, and therefore, should get the same Constitutional rights afforded to the average American. ...

John Culberson (R-TX): "You said that terrorists have the same rights as Charles Manson, correct?"

Holder: "I said that murderers have the same rights as Charles Manson, and if these people are charged with murder, in essence that's..those are the kinds of rights that they would get" ...

Culberson: "By granting Osama Bin Laden the right to appear in a U.S. courtroom, you are clothing Osama Bin Laden with the protections of the U.S. constitution. That's unavoidable and something that you've skipped right past…."

Holder: "You are talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is that we will be reading the Miranda Rights to the corpse of Osama Bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom."

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/29842591/holder-bin-laden-has-same-rights-as-charles-manson.htm

The video of the exchange is at the link.

(20) Bali bomber, arrested in Abbottabad in January, may have spilled beans on Osama

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bali-bomber-umar-patek-helped-lead-world-to-osama-bin-ladens-hideaway/story-fn8ljzlv-1226050116997

Bali bomber Umar Patek helped lead world to Osama bin Laden's hideaway

Amanda Hodge in Abbottabad and Peter Alford    The Australian    May 05, 2011  12:00AM

BALI bomber Umar Patek was seeking a meeting with Osama bin Laden when he was arrested a few kilometres from the al-Qa'ida chief's hideout.

The arrest in Abbottabad of Patek, the last major figure who was still at large for the 2002 Bali attacks that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, has raised a critical question: did Patek give vital information to the mission to kill bin Laden, or did his arrest by Pakistani intelligence risk upsetting the American operation?

Patek was arrested on January 25, nine days after stopping in the mountain garrison town on his way to meet senior al-Qa'ida leaders in North Waziristan. ...

US security officials admitted yesterday that, contrary to earlier reports, bin Laden had been unarmed and did not use a woman as a shield when he was shot dead by US Navy SEALs. ...

It is believed bin Laden's oldest child at the compound, a 13-year-old, watched her father die. ...

Yesterday, more details emerged about the secret life of the bin Laden family behind the 5.5m security walls and barbed wire. One neighbour told The Australian the residents were virtually self-sufficient, growing their own vegetables and digging their own water well.

Despite all attempts to fly under the radar in the close, affluent suburb of businessmen and serving and retired army officers, occasional trips by the women outside the compound always sparked curiosity, given the fact that they emerged in darkened vehicles in full burkas.

The inevitable question now is whether bin Laden was able to come and go in one of Pakistan's most secure cities - under the noses of senior army officers and police - under cover of a burka.

Several analysts yesterday conceded the fact that two of the world's most wanted terrorists - who fought the Soviets together in Afghanistan in the 1980s - were hiding in the same Pakistani town at the same time was a remarkable, even improbable, coincidence.

While US authorities have maintained they tracked bin Laden through his courier, Pakistan's highest selling Urdu newspaper, Jang , yesterday reported, without attribution, that the final clues leading to bin Laden's hideout were extracted from Patek under ISI interrogation and handed to the CIA.

Retired Pakistani general turned security analyst Talat Masood told The Australian yesterday "it is highly possible" that Patek's arrest was the final nail in bin Laden's coffin. "His arrest was almost certainly quite significant in that sense," he said. ... ==

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME04Df01.html

May 4, 2011

Bali bomber may have been vital link

By Jacob Zenn

Like Osama Bin Laden, he was one of the most wanted international terrorists. And like the al-Qaeda leader, he was discovered in the relative peace of Abbottabad. ...

For nine years after the Bali bombing Patek, like Bin Laden, lived on the run, often in southern Mindanao in the Philippines, training terrorists from Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He evaded the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States, despite a US$1 million American bounty on his head. ...

Patek was captured with his wife hiding out on the second floor of the home of the parents of an al-Qaeda facilitator who worked as a clerk in a post office in Abbottabad.

Pakistani security forces detained the facilitator, Tahir Shazad, in January when he picked up two French militants who were intending to travel with Patek to North Waziristan and Afghanistan at Lahore's international airport. Pakistani intelligence, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had placed Shazad under surveillance one year before his capture when he was seen with an Arab terror suspect.

The detainment of Shazad led directly to the capture of Patek and his wife, who were sheltered in the home of the parents of a university student in Abbottabad after the student invited the couple in as guests. Pakistan security forces detained the student who is still in custody.

The link to Bin Laden's hideout was through a courier that the CIA had been working on tracking for years. Could Patek's facilitator and this courier have been connected, and could Patek, Patek's facilitator, or even Patek's wife, have revealed valuable information to Pakistani intelligence that was relayed to the US and became the game-changer in President Barack Obama's decision to send in special forces? If Pakistan had been monitoring Patek's facilitator for about a year, the time frame matches closely with Obama's statement that he knew of Bin Laden's suspected hideout since August 2010.

The lag in time between Patek's actual capture on January 25 and Pakistan's announcement on March 29 may have been in order to prevent Bin Laden and his collaborators from having enough time to plan to relocate to another hideout. Any movement on Bin Laden or his family's part would have required a thorough plan as any exposure to the outside would have placed them at risk of detection.

Naturally, the mansion where he was hiding had no telephone access or Internet and no view in from the outside. Even the balcony was hidden from outside view because of the high walls surrounding the perimeter.

Although it is unclear when Bin Laden and his family first took residence in Abbottabad, the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership may have purposely preserved the city's relative peace in order to not draw attention to Bin Laden's hideout. In fact, in April 2009, Taliban fighters set up a base of operations 60 kilometers northwest of Islamabad in the Kala Dhaka district of Mansehra, which borders Abbottabad, but the Taliban never crossed into or threatened Abbottabad.  ...

Notes
1. Umar Patek Is Close To Osama bin Laden Jakarta Updates, April 1, 2011.
2. Bali terrorist sighted in Yemen 9 News, March 2, 2011.

Jacob Zenn is an independent consultant in international security in Washington, DC and a third-year law student in Georgetown Law's Global Law Scholars program.

(21) White Suzuki in Peshawar led CIA to Osama

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/03intel.html?_r=1

Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden

By MARK MAZZETTI, HELENE COOPER and PETER BAKER

Published: May 2, 2011

WASHINGTON — For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car's license plate.

The man in the car was Bin Laden's most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.

On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program.

And just like that, history's most expansive, expensive and exasperating manhunt was over. The inert frame of Osama bin Laden, America's enemy No. 1, was placed in a helicopter for burial at sea, never to be seen or feared again. A nation that spent a decade tormented by its failure to catch the man responsible for nearly 3,000 fiery deaths in New York, outside Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, at long last had its sense of finality, at least in this one difficult chapter. ...

Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller, Charlie Savage and Steven Lee Myers from Washington, Adam Ellick from New York, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.

(22) Killing Bin Laden allows the US to withdraw without loss of face - Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28029.htm

The Agendas Behind the Bin Laden News Event

By Paul Craig Roberts

May 04, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The US government's bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. Indeed, the new story put out on Tuesday by White House press secretary Jay Carney bears little resemblance to the original Sunday evening story. The fierce firefight did not occur. Osama bin Laden did not hide behind a woman. Indeed, bin Laden, Carney said, “was not armed.”

The firefight story was instantly suspicious as not a single SEAL got a scratch, despite being up against al Qaeda, described by former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld as ‘the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43817

Every original story detail has been changed. It wasn't bin Laden's wife who was murdered by the Navy SEALs , but the wife of an aide. It wasn't bin Laden's son, Khalid, who was murdered by the Navy SEALs, but son Hamza.

Carney blamed the changed story on “the fog of war.” But there was no firefight, so where did the “fog of war” come from?

The White House has also had to abandon the story that President Obama and his national security team watched tensely as events unfolded in real time (despite the White House having released photos of the team watching tensely), with the operation conveyed into the White House by cameras on the SEALs helmets.

If Obama was watching the event as it happened, he would have noticed, one would hope, that there was no firefight and, thus, would not have told the public that bin Laden was killed in a firefight. Another reason the story had to be abandoned is that if the event was captured on video, every news service in the world would be asking for the video, but if the event was orchestrated theater, there would be no video.

No explanation has been provided for why an unarmed bin Laden, in the absence of a firefight, was murdered by the SEALs with a shot to the head. For those who believe the government's story that “we got bin Laden,” the operation can only appear as the most botched operation in history. What kind of incompetence does it require to senselessly and needlessly kill the most valuable intelligence asset on the planet?

According to the US government, the terrorist movements of the world operated through bin Laden, “the mastermind.” Thanks to a trigger-happy stupid SEAL, a bullet destroyed the most valuable terrorist information on the planet. Perhaps the SEAL was thinking that he could put a notch on his gun and brag for the rest of his life about being the macho tough guy who killed Osama bin Laden, the most dangerous man on the planet, who outwitted the US and its European and Israeli allies and inflicted humiliation on the “world's only superpower” on 9/11.

When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged “discrepancies” that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place. The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex.

There is no doubt that the US is sufficiently incompetent to have needlessly killed bin Laden instead of capturing him. But who can believe that the US would quickly dispose of the evidence that bin Laden had been terminated? The government's story is not believable that the government dumped the proof of its success into the ocean, but has some photos that might be released, someday.

As one reader put it in an email to me: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of their ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”

Governments have known from the beginning of time that they can always deceive citizens and subjects by playing the patriot card. “Remember the Maine,” the “Gulf of Tonkin,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “the Reichstag fire”--the staged events and bogus evidence are endless. If Americans knew any history, they would not be so gullible.

The real question before us is: What agenda or agendas is the “death of bin Laden” designed to further?

There are many answers to this question. Many have noticed that Obama was facing
re-election with poor approval ratings. Is anyone surprised that the New York Times/CBS Poll finds a strong rise in Obama's poll numbers after the bin Laden raid? As the New York Times reported, “the glow of national pride” rose “above partisan politics, as support for the president rose significantly among both Republicans and independents. In all, 57 percent said they now approved of the president's job performance, up from 46 percent.”

In Washington-think, a 24% rise in approval rating justifies a staged event.

Another possibility is that Obama realized that the the budget deficit and the dollar's rescue from collapse require the end of the expensive Afghan war and occupation and spillover war into Pakistan. As the purpose of the war was to get bin Laden, success in this objective allows the US to withdraw without loss of face, thus making it possible to reduce the US budget deficit by several hundred billion dollars annually--an easy way to have a major spending cut.

If this is the agenda, then more power to it. However, if this was Obama's agenda, the military/security complex has quickly moved against it. CIA director Leon Panetta opened the door to false flag attacks to keep the war going by declaring that al Qaeda would avenge bin Laden's killing. Secretary of State Clinton declared that success in killing bin Laden justified more war and more success. Homeland Security declared that the killing of bin Laden would motivate “homegrown violent extremists” into making terrorist attacks. “Homegrown violent extremists” is an undefined term, but this newly created bogyman seems to include environmentalists and war protesters. Like “suspect,” the term will include anyone the government wants to pick up.

Various parts of the government quickly seized on the success in killing bin Laden to defend and advance their own agendas, such as torture. Americans were told that bin Laden was found as a result of information gleaned from torturing detainees held in Eastern European CIA secret prisons years ago.

This listing of possible agendas and add-on agendas is far from complete, but for those capable of skepticism and independent thought, it can serve as a starting point. The agendas behind the theater will reveal themselves as time goes on. All you have to do is to pay attention and to realize that most of what you hear from the mainstream media is designed to advance the agendas.



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