By Victor Thorn
If authentic, the killing of Osama bin Laden would stand as a monumental achievement for the Obama presidency. But in actuality, this staged event more closely resembles the propaganda campaigns surrounding U.S. soldiers Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. Unforgivably, both of these individuals were used for propaganda purposes by the Bush administration
to create feel-good moments of patriotism.
Yet again, Barack Obama is reading from the Bush-Cheney play book in regard to chicanery. According to the original story told by Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan, two dozen elite Navy Seals—with shoot-to-kill orders—stormed bin Laden’s home in Abbottabad and engaged in a chaotic fire-fight that lasted 20 minutes.
Once the gunmen reached the third floor, Brennan claimed, they encountered an armed bin Laden hiding behind a female human shield, presumed to be his wife. “He was firing behind her,” Brennan stated.
Brennan, who claimed to have watched the entire episode live, in real-time transmitted via helmet mini cameras, boasted, “He [bin Laden] was engaged in a fire-fight with those that entered the area . . . bin Laden went down firing at the Navy Seals.”
Yet, by the next day, White House officials backtracked, admitting that bin Laden, or the man they are calling bin Laden, had not been armed and no wife or any other woman was used as a human shield.
Still, White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted bin Laden “resisted arrest without a weapon.”
Supposedly frail and sickened by kidney failure, how could a 53-year-old man resist 24 of the best trained Seals in the U.S. Navy?
Of all the countless media reports and tours of “bin Laden’s home,” why didn’t any of them mention a dialysis machine on the premises?
Allegedly, bin Laden—portrayed as the world’s most dangerous terrorist—was the last person encountered inside the compound. He’d conceivably heard helicopters, explosions, gunfire and screams, yet didn’t pick up a gun to defend himself?
Another added element of strangeness involves the Obama administration’s refusal to identify precisely whom the Seals battled for 20 minutes in the intense fire-fight, especially since they admitted no guards stood outside the mansion.
It’s now been proven that Brennan lied about bin Laden going down in a blaze of glory. Either a 20-minute gun battle ensued, or it didn’t. Plus, it’s also been established that only one man present at the compound, a courier, carried a weapon, and he was immediately shot.
During a May 2 speech, Obama asserted that bin Laden had been “captured, then killed.” However, if bin Laden had been in U.S. custody, what did he say, if anything?
He had been, after all, America’s premier bogeyman for nearly a decade. To cover this quandary, CIA Director Leon Panetta contradicted Obama by saying that bin Laden had been killed instantly.
To further increase the dramatics of this event, the White House released an iconic photograph of Obama’s entire Cabinet purportedly watching the fire-fight unfold. So there is no mistake, Seattle’s King 5 TV described the scene: “Faces of the president’s Cabinet members showed intense anxiety and shock as they kept close watch over the fire-fight in Pakistan that led to Osama bin Laden’s death.”
Initially, reports actually had Obama seeing bin Laden being shot through the eye. For her part, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen with a hand held over her mouth, gulping with apparent panic at what she’s seeing. Clinton noted, “Those were 38 of the most intense minutes.”
But Panetta yet again revealed the truth about what transpired. “There was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from the camera mounted on the helmets of the U.S. Special Forces was cut off.”
Did White House officials stage the entire photo-op? Did all those in attendance stare at a blank screen while making it appear they were witnessing an actual assassination? Afterward, Mrs. Clinton blamed her melodramatic reaction on a “spring allergic cough.”
As AFP chronicled in the May 9 and 16 edition, there is a plethora of evidence indicating that bin Laden died some 10 years ago, and that the operation on May 1 was merely an attempt to revive a failing presidency.
Or, as antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan so adroitly emphasized, “I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of bin Laden, you’re stupid. Just think for yourself . . . this lying, murderous empire can only exist with your brainwashed consent—put your flags away and think.”
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Freedom is always illegal!
When we ask for freedom, we have already failed. It is only when we declare freedom for ourselves and refuse to accept any less, that we have any possibility of being free. "Why should we bother with 'realities' when we have the psychological refuge of unthinking patriotism?"
Gary Leupp - Professor of History, Tufts University
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