With yesterday's anniversary of the "killing" of Osama Bin Laden, I was reminded of what I learned, or at least what I read, not long after that occasion. Turns out there has been a lot written about it.
When Barack Obama declared the terrorist mastermind dead on TV in May 2011, he was actually the ninth high-profile person to make the same announcement.
December 26, 2001, Fox News reported on a Pakistan Observer story that the Afghan Taliban had officially pronounced Osama Bin Laden dead earlier that month. According to the report, he was buried less than 24 hours later in an unmarked grave in accordance with Wahabbist Sunni practices. Living in caves without benefit of dialysis equipment had taken its toll.
January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced quite bluntly in reference to Bin Laden: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”
July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials, "I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore,” but “I have no evidence to support that.”
October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.”
November 2005, Senator Harry Reid revealed that he was told Osama may have died in the Pakistani earthquake of October that year.
September 2006, French intelligence leaked a report suggesting Osama had died in Pakistan.
November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.
March 2009, former US foreign intelligence officer and professor of international relations at Boston University Angelo Codevilla stated: “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.”
May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”
May 2011, President Obama has added himself to the list. Osama’s body was buried at sea less than 12 hours after his death with no opportunity for any independent corroboration of his identity, the same question of credibility can be leveled at ALL of the above.
But given that an informed consensus has formed around the opinion that Bin Laden died long ago due to kidney failure, will the people of America hold their President to the highest standard in presenting evidence that the person killed was actually Osama Bin Laden, and that he actually died in the way described, or will this pronouncement go unquestioned like so many other deaths in the never ending war of terror?
(Source: James Corbett, The Corbett Report, 2 May, 2011)
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