Osama bin Laden’s Second Death
by Paul Craig Roberts
Trends Research Institute
May 2, 2011
Related link: Top 10 Reasons for bin Laden's Death Announcement
Until the decline of the dollar reached the breaking point, Osama bin Laden, who many experts believe to have been dead for years, was a useful bogeyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security complex.
If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans..
Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?
Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that "bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia." That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?
This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting "USA USA." Could something else be going on? No doubt President Obama is in desperate need of a victory. He committed the fool’s error of restarting the war in Afghanistan, and now after a decade of fighting the US faces stalemate, if not defeat. The wars of the Bush/Obama regimes have bankrupted the US, leaving huge deficits and a declining dollar in their wake. And re-election time is approaching.
The various lies and deceptions, such as "weapons of mass destruction," of the last several administrations had terrible consequences for the US and the world. But not all deceptions are the same. Remember, the entire reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place was to get bin Laden. Now that President Obama has declared bin Laden to have been shot in the head by US special forces operating in an independent country and buried at sea, there is no reason for continuing the war.
Perhaps the precipitous decline in the US dollar in foreign exchange markets has forced some real budget reductions, which can only come from stopping the open-ended wars. Until the decline of the dollar reached the breaking point, Osama bin Laden, who many experts believe to have been dead for years, was a useful bogeyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security complex.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
Copyright © 2011 Paul Craig Roberts
Top 10 Reasons for bin Laden's Death Announcement
10. They ran out of Bin Laden look-alikes to use in fake videos
9. People stopped believing that a cave-dweller on a dialysis machine was still
alive after 10 years
8. People discovered the Frost/Bhutto interview on YouTube where she confirmed
that Bin Laden was dead already, back in 2004 – probably died in December 2001
7. They want to be able to say something was achieved for the TRILLIONS spent on
wars over the last 10 years and the thousands of innocent civilian lives
6. They need a distraction from the upcoming Gaza Flotilla and from the upcoming
vote in the UN on Palestinian sovereignity, and the Move-Over-AIPAC conference
this month
5. They need us to remain terrified of the upcoming retaliation for Bin Laden’s
death to justify the continuance of the TSA’s “Grope or Fry” policy
4. They need a distraction from the birth certificate controversy
3. They need a distraction from the murders of Ghadafi’s son and grandchildren
2. They need a ploy to remake Obama as a hero to the “USA! USA!” crowd and get
him re-elected
1. They need an excuse to pull troops out of Afghanistan to deploy elsewhere and
take us into war once more – probably Syria/Iran
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