President Barack Obama announced on 2 May 2011 that Osama bin Laden, founder and leader of al Qaeda, was killed in an early morning raid by American forces. He said it happened in a compound at Abbottabad, a beautiful, green hill city nestled among the mountains, a few hundred yards from a military academy in the suburb of Pakistan's capital Islamabad.
What strikes any knowledgeable person's mind is the question "is Osama still alive?" There were numerous reports that bin Laden died in December 2001. As early as 17 December 2003 former US Secretary State Madeline Albright told Fox TV that bin Laden was dead. Hameed Gul, retired army General and a former Pakistan intelligence ISI commander stated this week that bin Ladin died way back and was buried in a private place. He added that the intelligence was that the grave was in that compound and thus the attack was to get the body.
There were even reports of bin Laden's funeral in the Egyptian paper al Wafd and the Observer of Pakistan on December 26, 2001. Following is the translation of al-Wafd article that appeared on December 26, 2001.
'News of Bin Laden's death and Funeral 10 days ago:
26 Dec 2001 Islamabad: A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qaeda organization, stating that bin Laden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death.
'The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qaeda fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.'
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| A man identified by the US Defence Department as Osama bin Laden is seen watching himself on television, with U.S. President Barack Obama also on screen. This video frame grab, allegedly taken from the Abbotabad compound, was released by the U.S. Pentagon on May 7, 2011. Reuters |
Lashing out at Obama's claim as a "sick joke", top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter -- and still works with the Defence Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show last week that bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik said that Osama bin Laden died in 2001, "Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known, that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome." He added that the US government knew bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan. He died of Marfan syndrome, a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.
Pieczenik's assertion that bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.
Dismissing Obama's claim British broadcaster and journalist Yvonne Ridley said: "Only gullible Americans believe bin Laden's killing".
The death of bin Laden, she suggested, "might just secure Obama's second term in office, judging from the rather unbridled show of hysteria by the masses gathered in New York's Times Square, Ground Zero and other landmark sites." She says that in October 2001 the Taliban's foreign minister offered to hand over bin Laden but the "reality is that the US needed an excuse to go into Afghanistan." "Osama bin Laden provided that reason otherwise they could have avoided the world's costliest manhunt for the last decade, the futile War on Terror and the catastrophic war in Afghanistan which has cost tens of thousands of lives," .
Challenging Obama's claim David Ray Griffin had this to say in an article under the headline "Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive; in the website " Global Research";
"We had considerable testimony in 2002, from people in position to know, that bin Laden was dead, or probably so. These people included President Musharraf, Dale Watson, the head of the FBI's counterterrorism unit and Oliver North, who said: "I'm certain that Osama is dead. And so are all the other guys I stay in touch with"; President Hamid Karzai; sources within Israeli intelligence, who said that any new messages from bin Laden were "probably fabrications";
Sources within Pakistani intelligence, which "confirmed the death of bin Laden say the reasons behind Washington's suppression of the news on the death of bin Laden was to use al-Qaeda and international terrorism as an excuse to invade Iraq. For this reason, perhaps, the stories about the demise of bin Laden largely came to an end in the latter part of 2002, when the United States was gearing up for its attack on Iraq. From then until now, there have been few such stories.
Recently, however, two former intelligence officers have spoken out. In October 2008, former CIA case officer Robert Baer suggested in passing during an interview on National Public Radio that bin Laden was no longer among the living. When Baer was asked about this, he said: "Of course he's dead."
In March 2009, former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla published an essay in the American Spectator entitled "Osama bin Elvis." Explaining his title, Codevilla wrote: "Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his."
On top of all people in Abbattobad, where several retired army generals live, dismissed in one voice the claim that Bin Laden lived there.
Under such circumstances the question is how come Obama killed bin Laden? Was it a mock operation to divert the public attention from Obama's ever mounting problems within and outside the country?
Why was bin Laden not arrested? Why was he killed? Why was his body not shown to the world as they had done with Saddam Hussein and his sons? Why Osama's remains were hastily dumped at sea, eliminating trace of any evidence?
A senior US Defense official claimed that bin Laden's body was washed and placed in a white sheet, then verses of the Qur'an were recited and the corpse was eased into the North Arabian Sea. Justifying this decision the official added that finding a country willing to accept the remains of Bin Laden was difficult, so the US decided to bury him at sea.
Who was the imam who conducted the funeral prayer? If there was an imam in the naval vessel then it was pre planned. It was disgrace to Muslims worldwide that they could not provide a piece of land to bury Bin Laden's dead body.
Commenting on the disgusting celebrations in America columnist Jody McIntyre said in "Independent.co.uk" that celebrating death is inhuman and there is nothing normal about it. He added that'; Today, we are celebrating the death of former CIA employee Osama bin Laden.
Can one man be solely responsible for atrocities that killed thousands of people? As with Saddam Hussein, as with Muammer Gaddafi, the complete dehumanization of bin Laden as an individual has served as the pretext for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. If we were to follow the logic that the killing of one man called bin Laden comprises 'justice' for the thousands of victims of 9/11, then what would 'justice' be for the estimated one million Iraqis killed since the US and British-led invasion of Iraq ?
The truth is, the conditions that allow bin Laden's ideology to proliferate still exist. The colonialist Israeli occupation of Palestine still exists. The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still exist. The bombing of Libya continues. We do not celebrate those victims of our 'military humanitarianism'; rather, we completely ignore them.
If Osama Bin Laden was killed today, then is the world a better place? Should we feel safer? I do not feel safer to know that a country with a thousand military bases across the world still holds the arrogant vision of itself as the world's policeman. I think there is another reason bin Laden would never be put on trial; perhaps then, we could have found out who he was taking his orders from?
"I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence," sings rapper Lupe Fiasco on his latest single, 'Words I Never Said', "Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it, we're scared of almost everything afraid to even tell the truth…"
When will we stop allowing our fears to blind our sense of humanity?
(The writer is a senior journalist and author of ‘War On Terrorism - The Untold Truths’)
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