As mentioned in the title, I have doubts about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Here’s why :
Even though I understand that detaining/sending him to trial would have created significant issues (hostage taking, for instance), he still was, quite obviously, the single most important source of informations about Al Qaida, so intelligence services would logically want him alive.
In this situation, wouldn’t stating that he has been killed while in fact he’s secretely detained somewhere be the best of both worlds?
And of course, no evidence that he was actually killed was provided, the pictures of his body not having been released. Providing fake pictures could have been an option, but there’s no doubt that such pictures would have been closely studied by many people, and a faked one would probably have been spotted by a number of experts.
So, am I a nutty conspiracy theorist for suspecting that he might not have been, in fact, killed, but instead abducted?
These two statements seem to be contradictory. If he was abducted, why not just knock him out, take photos of the body, and say he was dead? There is no way anybody could distinguish an unconscious body from a dead one based upon a photograph.
Unfortunately, yes. Your hypothetical requires dozens (hundreds?) of people to cooperate without spilling it. There were women in the house (and at least one in the same room when bin Laden was killed) who were not taken into custody, but rather turned over to Pakistan after being interrogated for example. There were plenty of people who witnessed the body and burial. It is quite unreasonable to assert that bin Laden might still be alive.
For the record, I agree that bin Laden alive is worth more than bin Laden dead. I wish the squad could have captured him instead of killed him, but I don’t doubt that the official story is the actual story.
If he was taken alive, why photo him where he was taken? You’d do it somewhere else, with appropriate special effects to simulate death. Not that I think he wasn’t killed, the firestorm if he had turned up alive would have been too insane anyway. Now if the compound had gone up in flames and he was reported dead…
But none who knew him personally - just from 10 year old grainy photos and such. There’s also the “y’all look alike to me” factor. If (and, granted, that’s a big if) there was indeed such a conspiracy, providing a body Bin Ladenish enough for superficial observation wouldn’t be too complicated for CIA goons, even more so if the ruse was planned before the raid was even launched.
Besides, the people who witnessed the body and burial were all US military. Which gives them a pretty darn good incentive to keep any doubts they might have quiet.
It’s not a conspiracy theory as understood because it really is irrelevant and non essential. It does not really amount to anything significant. You’re safe while you still can flaunt it around as a sign of non-conformance plus it’s a great water-cooler subject.
It’s like Jerry in one of Seinfeld episodes says that he sews on his pants the label with size 33 even though he’s really 34 :o
But… isn’t the more interesting question HOW did they confirm?
Did he not show up at the scheduled conference call? His Skype was offline? Did he send audio tape to his cohorts? His Facebook status was updated to “Dead”? CSI Karachi?
You know Vinyl, in spring of 1992 in my hometown a political party leadership representing Bosnians held a number of meetings regarding the increasingly worrying situation in the country and the town itself. They also had a scribe who took meeting notes and actions.
No need for me to tell you what happened that summer.
Forward 12 years later, one of the major Serb war criminal was in front of a judge defending his case in front of a judge of ICTY. In the weeks leading up to the start of his trial, on the Serb controlled TV news outlets a number of “revealing” documents have been presented including a notebook claimed to contain notes from the meetings of those who already have been dead for 12 years on the direct orders of the guy who was charged. Even TV newscasters and newspaper columnists read or commented selected excerpts that “show” the “true intentions” of Bosniaks in the months leading to a summer of 1992. Essentially the story was that if Serbs did not do what they did they would suffer the fate worse than what they in fact did to Bosniaks.
However, when presented at the court as evidence a separate process was undertaken to establish veracity of the meeting notes. They took weeks of painful and public verification process that almost threatened to overshadow the real issue at the trial. But the judge insisted and after several months it was determined (among other things) that all the “incriminating” notes were in fact added or written over existing notes and they clearly written to misrepresent series of events and clear the accused of any charge. ICTY court rejected that as evidence and the trial continued that found the accused guilty and sentenced him to 18 years in prison.
But, the funny thing was that in Serbian controlled media space there was no mention of the studios review of the evidence and, of course, no word that the whole thing was made up. So, today, if you ask those people they will still point to those made up notes and the “spirit” of it. When you tell them that they were made up with the goal of misrepresenting the reality they start cracking jokes like the one you just did.
As far as the “abduction” raid in Abbottabad goes, how do you suppose it differs from the official account(according to this piece in the New Yorker)? Specifically, if there’s a chance that Osama’s wife Amal saw anything that does not line up with the official account, why was she shot in the calf instead of the head a half dozen times?
I’m not sure I agree. (a) he had been somewhat isolated from Qaida for obvious reasons; (b) to the extent he was communicating with them, it was by note, thumb drive, whatever, which – the odds are pretty high – were still in his house. They have been confiscated and are being analyzed for hints as to the structure and plans of AQ.
As to past AQ terrorism – most of it’s not a whodunnit. We don’t need OBL to tell us how 9/11 was planned, we’ve pieced that together pretty comprehensively already.
And that’s all assuming he would have talked, and would have told the truth.
That guy had some great access, and it’s a great article. Wonder if the military gave the access precisely to quell CTs. If the story’s a fake, someone’s done a Hell of a job building in highly plausible circumstantial details.
Cool story, bro. But I’m not sure how it helps prove that Osama bin Laden is still alive, or how we managed to get al Qaeda to willingly participate in the conspiracy.
I have it on good authority that Osama is being held captive at NASA’s simulated moon landing site along with the 9/11 flight crews and passengers, the Tuskeegee Airmen and Hitler’s cloned children. They’re all as happy as clams, stoned out of their minds on the CIA’s massive stash of crack cocaine.
