As the mother of a young woman killed on 9/11, I have to say that neither I, nor would anyone in my family celebrate or revel at the death of another human being, even if that human being is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is dead and so, still, is my beautiful daughter.
On Sunday night as word of the death of bin Laden spread throughout the world, the media documented these celebrations at both Ground Zero and the White House. Many American citizens denounced the revelry, marking a line in the sand between, once again, us and them, referring to the reports of people throughout the Middle East dancing in the streets after the towers came down. As we sort through what this all does and should mean, I offer the following:
I have personally interrogated underage criminal suspects who could lie better than White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It has been four days since the P.T. Barnum (“There’s a sucker born every minute”) proclamation of the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). President Obama’s account of the firefight has had zero credibility from the outset and it continues to fray and wear thin as each day passes.
What is interesting is that the U.B.L. raid was watched by so many in “real time”; Obama, Gates, Biden, Mullen Clinton and many others.
So why did it take almost 2 full days to clarify that he was not armed, and why did that story gain so much traction?The official blundering that is happening right now is reminiscent of the Bush era.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: “Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
“We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound.”
My next question is this, “why has it taken 4 days to let us know you actually weren’t watching what you said you were watching?”
Maybe they should try SKYPE. (couldn’t resist saying that)
What more could you ask? The blame for carrying out this illegal action of assassinating a defenseless man who was not tried in a court for the crimes he was killed for has been shifted away from the President.
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president.
What I am beginning to wonder is, “who was working harder, the people in the picture or the person taking the picture?”
Preface: This post does not speculate on whether or not Bin Laden was actually killed last week or died previously, or on what images the government may possess, but only on what actually happened and what photographs have been released to date.
The White House said that Bin Laden had a weapon and tried to hide behind his wife like a coward. Now, the White House has admitted both claims were false.
Many of the largest news outlets ran a supposed death photo … but it was quickly proven fake (and see this).
The government now claims that it has a photo showing a dead Bin Laden … but won’t release it.
The photo was supposedly taken in a hangar in Afghanistan. As CNN notes:
Photos of OBLs body at a hangar after he was brought back to Afghanistan. This is the most recognizable with a clear picture of his face. The picture is gruesome because he has a massive open head wound across both eyes. It’s very bloody and gory.
***
The official says the challenge is that the picture that includes the most recognizable image of OBLs face – from the hangar in Afghanistan – is so gruesome and mangled its not appropriate for say the front page of the newspaper.
The fact that the photo wasn’t taken right after the raid in Pakistan – but in a different country – makes it harder to confirm when the photo was taken.
What is interesting is that the U.B.L. raid was watched by so many in “real time”; Obama, Gates, Biden, Mullen Clinton and many others.
So why did it take almost 2 full days to clarify that he was not armed, and why did that story gain so much traction?The official blundering that is happening right now is reminiscent of the Bush era.
U.S. officials issued a revised version of the nighttime raid that killed the world’s most-notorious terrorist, including additional details that revealed other options were on the table before settling on the assault.
The 40-minute raid early Monday in Pakistan left Osama bin Laden dead, along with four others in the complex that sits on a mountainous region near the capital.
Bin Laden was not armed during the raid, but he put up resistance when U.S. forces entered the compound, the White House said. Officials had earlier said that bin Laden was an active participant in the firefight, implying that he was armed and gave the U.S. Navy SEALs little choice but to shoot him down.
According to an AP press release and a CNN blog update it is being reported that the body of Osama Bin Laden has been dumped at sea in accordance with Islamic tradition.
A U.S. official says Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea.
After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.
The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.
Osama bin Laden’s body was buried at sea according to Islamic law because no country was willing or able to take his body for burial on land, senior Defense officials said.
“When there is no land alternative, Islamic law dictates that the body be buried within 24 hours, and that was the basis,” one official said. “
A second senior Defense official said there was no country willing or able to accept the body for burial, and U.S. forces “took pains to observe Muslim law.”
“Today’s religious rites were conducted on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian sea. The ceremony started at 1:10am and finished at 2:10am ET,” the second official said. “Procedures for Islamic body were followed. The body was washed and placed in a white sheet. A military official read prepared remarks, which were then translated into Arabic by a native speaker. The body of Osama bin Laden was placed on a flat board, which was then tipped up, and allowed to slide into the sea.”
That report is from 2006. The FBI still has “no evidence” directly linking Bin Laden to 9/11 and that brings up the question, ” on what grounds was this operation ordered?”
Looking at the FBI webpage today I find that they have updated his profile to “deceased”, yet there is still NO mention of 9/11. (Disclaimer: this links to the FBI web-page for Bin Laden)
It is worth noting the 2010 story about the FBI using a Spanish lawmakers web-photo as a “Bin Laden 10 years later” photo. Worth noting so we remember the level of credibilty that officials have in regards to Usama Bin Laden and the war on terror in general.
The news of Bin Laden being killed is unlikely to help, or soothe these 9/11 family members:
As a preface to the “news” of Osama Bin Laden’s death I have gathered headlines carried here on Nor Cal Truth and other respected bogs over the last few years detailing the saga of Osama Bin Laden. Please review these articles and become familiar with more details of this very complex story.
The news segment below is from 2006, however I had not seen the video report about Bin Laden and the lack of evidence to indict him for 9/11.
Osama bin Laden’s role in the events of September 11, 2001 is not mentioned on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” poster.
On June 5, 2006, author Ed Haas contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters to ask why, while claiming that bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 1998 bombings of US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the poster does not indicate that he is wanted in connection with the events of 9/11.
Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI responded, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” Asked to explain the process, Tomb responded, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”
Everyone knows that Osama Bin Laden confessed to 9/11 on videotape.
Admittedly, German experts say (rough English translation here) that the Bin Laden confession tape was mistranslated. But what do the Germans know, other than how to make beer?
Sure, an American computer expert says that a Bin Laden video released in 2007 was spliced together from earlier footage, and that:
There are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really bin Laden is to see him talking in the video….
It has been years since the United States has had good intelligence on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin laden, although he is thought to be in Pakistan, CIA director Leon Panetta said on Sunday.
He also gave a sobering account of the war in Afghanistan, saying the Taliban seemed to be strengthening with a stepped-up campaign of violence, even as U.S.-led forces undermine the Islamist movement with attacks on its leadership.
Progress is being made in the nearly nine-year-old conflict but “it’s harder, it’s slower than I think anyone anticipated,” Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week” program. He did not directly answer a question about whether the war was being won.
Gary Faulkner, 50, is being held in Pakistan after being stopped near the border with Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, Pakistani police announced Tuesday. He was carrying a pistol, a sword, night-vision equipment and Christian religious books, said Mumtaz Ahmed, a police chief in the area.
He told police that he had been looking for bin Laden since al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and had traveled to the area several times before, Ahmed said
The suspect was arrested in the northern mountains of Chitral, once a rumoured hiding place of bin Laden, near Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, said police officer Mumtaz Ahmad Khan.
Police identified him as Gary Brooks Faulkner. He was caught armed with a pistol, a dagger and a sword, carrying night-vision goggles, a night-vision camera and religious literature on Christianity, Khan said.
In 2009, I published a little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?1 Much evidence, I showed, suggested that Osama bin Laden had died on or about December 13, 2001. (Although this book was ignored by the US press, it received major reviews in British newspapers,2 and it even provided the basis for a BBC special.3) Pointing out that the only evidence to the contrary consists of “messages from bin Laden” in the form of audiotapes and videotapes that have appeared since 2001, I devoted one chapter to an examination of the most important of these tapes, showing that none are demonstrably authentic and that some are almost certainly fakes.
In the chapter preceding that examination, I discussed two videotapes containing purported interviews of Osama bin Laden in the fall of 2001, when the issue was whether he had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I suggested that both of these tapes, in which bin Laden allegedly admitted his responsibility, were fakes. If they were, I pointed out, this fact would increase the likelihood that all of the “Osama bin Laden tapes” appearing in the following years – when the question of whether he was still alive was added to that of his responsibility for 9/11 – were also fakes.
The clearest example, I argued, was the most famous of the so-called bin Laden confession videos. Having allegedly been found in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in late November 2001, it is sometimes called the “November 9 bin Laden video,” because this date was stamped on it, implying that this was when it was made. It is also called the “bin Laden video of December 13,” because that was the date on which it was released to the public by the Pentagon – which is perhaps significant, given the evidence that bin Laden may have died on that day. (If he had, he would have obviously, and perhaps conveniently, been unable to comment on whether the tape was authentic.) In any case, I provided several reasons for concluding that this video was almost certainly fabricated.
During a round-table discussion at the French Senate January 29, 2010, on the topic of “Where are we at with Al Qaeda?”, Alain Chouet — former head of the Security Intelligence Service of the DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security: the French equivalent of the CIA or MI6) — demystified the concept of “Al Qaeda” and denounced the inappropriate responses and other instrumentalizations by the West, without however deflating the dangers of Islamic extremism.
The video below has been subtitled into English and edited to include the best parts of Alain Chouet’s passionate discourse containing no stonewalling or political doublespeak, placing itself light-years ahead of the official discourse about September 11th and “the nebulous Al Qaeda” that the mainstream media have been reporting for far too long.
Would you like to know what the French “spies” think of Al Qaeda? Hold-on tight, the masks are about to fall. Alain Chouet’s stance, which no one would dare qualify as conspiratorial, is in no way different than the information the French Association ReOpen911 modestly (but tenaciously) reports via our site.
Posted by Brian 
