Robert Fisk: Was He Betrayed? Of Course. Pakistan Knew Bin Laden's Hiding Place All Along

Robert Fisk: Was He Betrayed? Of Course. Pakistan Knew Bin Laden's Hiding Place All Along

www.independent.co.uk

A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday.

And then the world went mad.

Fresh from providing us with a copy of his birth certificate, the American President turned up in the middle of the night to provide us with a live-time death certificate for Osama bin Laden, killed in a town named after a major in the army of the old British Empire.

A single shot to the head, we were told.

But the body's secret flight to Afghanistan, an equally secret burial at sea?

The weird and creepy disposal of the body – no shrines, please – was almost as creepy as the man and his vicious organisation.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.fas.org/policy/binladen.html
news.yahoo.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
How Osama Is About To Win The 'War On Terror'
Osama Buried at Sea...within 24 hours. Really?
Bin Laden : Video, photos of body, autopsy, and return of remains to family
Osama Bin Laden Killed in U.S. Raid

Some have said Osama bin Laden is dead.

Some have said Osama bin Laden was already dead.

Some have said Osama bin Laden is not dead.

Who really knows though?

Until such time as I've seen his body dead in front of me it is "allegedly dead".

However, would the Muslim World rebel even further, or would it rejoice?

Quote from : Wikipedia : Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎, ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011) was the founder of the jihadist organization al-Qaeda, responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.

He was also a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family.

Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings.

From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden and his organization had been major targets of the War on Terror.

On May 1, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a raid of bin Laden's suspected location in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The operation was successfully carried out by United States Navy SEALs, with intelligence support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

During the 40 minute raid, bin Laden was shot in the head by the SEALs, the wounds of which were fatal. The SEALs commenced with intelligence searches of the building after which his body was taken in to custody.

Genetic testing and facial recognition were performed to positively identify bin Laden and his body was deposited into the sea for burial less than 24 hours after death.

The date and time of bin Laden's death has come under some scrutiny but it is generally believed to be May 2, 2011.

The spin factory is of course at maximum capacity.

It is cranking out massive spin in America.

It is cranking out massive spin in the Middle East.

It is cranking out massive spin on our beloved ATS.

Round and round the spin goes and where it stops nobody knows.

www.independent.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by SpartanKingLeonidas
Until such time as I've seen his body dead in front of me it is "allegedly dead".

heh, ya, good luck with that.

Anyhow, the overall topic of Pakistan knowing about Binny's hiding spot..well...its my understanding that we (for some reason) give an average of about 2b a year to them..in 2008, we gave them close to 8b. the funds were meant to fight terrorism

I think if its found out they indeed did know of OBL's location...well, I think we need to get that money back...and should they decide not to comply, well, I guess a federal boycott of all their crap could be in order.

Its not a slap in the face of just america..its the entire west, and actually most of non-radical islam.

what tangled webs we weave

reply to post by SaturnFX


Of course.

Any country getting aid from us yet hiding a terrorist should be cut off.

However, the War on Terror, being a phantom war, makes this difficult.

A war no one wants, a war no one wants to fund, and a war no one wants to win.

An unending funding seizure in essence.

Talk about the largest case of Federal and International fraud ever done.

Originally posted by SpartanKingLeonidas


Some have said Osama bin Laden is dead.

Some have said Osama bin Laden was already dead.

Some have said Osama bin Laden is not dead.

Who really knows though?

Until such time as I've seen his body dead in front of me it is "allegedly dead".

However, would the Muslim World rebel even further, or would it rejoice?

SKL,

You know this is one of those moments in time where I am looking at these events but yet I can not connect to them...I instinctively know that this is a production, and our country is a stage, foreign governments, and citizens part of the cast.

This is all familiar, they just keep the production "new" enough to keep as many tuned in as possible.

Its the same stale story with a new twist.

I honestly wish I could believe that Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11
and now he is dead.

I wish with all of my heart that was true. But I know its a lie.

I want to step outside and get some fresh air, but there is none.

And I really want it to stop spinning...but if the producers have thier way...none of us will be
allowed to get off the merry go round.

Which puts us at odds with them...

Peace.

bts~

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


Hit the nail on the head, i won't believe it until i see it.

I feel he never even existed, or did exist but wasn't what the Media portrays him as.

We will just wait for the next Goldstein to appear.

And for now we wait to find out what we are being distracted from.

reply to post by burntheships


I stopped caring what our Government claimed a long time ago.

Except as a means to spread their lies.

And the same goes with the Mainstream Media.

It became more interesting in deciphering their lies then listening to the half-truths.

You might say it became a lot easier to listen in order to hear through the lies than hear any truth.

They are saying on the news that the USGov think bin laden lived at that house since it was built,specially for him 6 years ago.

How on earth would the Pakistani government NOT have known he was there-or at the very least that some shady people were there?
Do they not need building permits etc?


I just can't see it myself.They knew alright.

Also we have the guy on sky news from Pakistan security services saying the Pakistani government allowed the raid,while the American sources are saying the SEALs basically snuck in without asking....

The pakistani gov must be running very low on toilet tissue right about now I expect.
Shady blighters IMO.

Originally posted by doom27
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

Hit the nail on the head, i won't believe it until i see it.

I feel he never even existed, or did exist but wasn't what the Media portrays him as.

We will just wait for the next Goldstein to appear.

And for now we wait to find out what we are being distracted from.

I have no doubt the man existed just like I have no doubt Jesus Christ existed.

It is however the legend of those two men's stories I disbelieve.

And no, I am not comparing them, only referencing them as parallel persons.

They are not alike in any way, shape, or form, except for the creation of myths surrounding them.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f75932d4680a.jpg[/atsimg]

Amazon Review :

Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 offers revealing details of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the years before the September 11 attacks.

From the beginning, Coll shows how the CIA's on-again, off-again engagement with Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet war left officials at Langley with inadequate resources and intelligence to appreciate the emerging power of the Taliban.

He also demonstrates how Afghanistan became a deadly playing field for international politics where Soviet, Pakistani, and U.S. agents armed and trained a succession of warring factions.

At the same time, the book, though opinionated, is not solely a critique of the agency. Coll balances accounts of CIA failures with the success stories, like the capture of Mir Amal Kasi.

Coll, managing editor for the Washington Post, covered Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.

He demonstrates unprecedented access to records of White House meetings and to formerly classified material, and his command of Saudi, Pakistani, and Afghani politics is impressive.

He also provides a seeming insider's perspective on personalities like George Tenet, William Casey, and anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke ("who seemed to wield enormous power precisely because hardly anyone knew who he was or what exactly he did for a living").

Coll manages to weave his research into a narrative that sometimes has the feel of a Tom Clancy novel yet never crosses into excess.

While comprehensive, Coll's book may be hard going for those looking for a direct account of the events leading to the 9-11 attacks.

The CIA's 1998 engagement with bin Laden as a target for capture begins a full two-thirds of the way into Ghost Wars, only after a lengthy march through developments during the Carter, Reagan, and early Clinton Presidencies.

But this is not a critique of Coll's efforts; just a warning that some stamina is required to keep up.

Ghost Wars is a complex study of intelligence operations and an invaluable resource for those seeking a nuanced understanding of how a small band of extremists rose to inflict incalculable damage on American soil.

--Patrick O'Kelley

Somehow I doubt the man was anything more than a inconvenient truth hiding in plain sight.

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/df5dc657613c.jpg[/atsimg]

Publishers Weekly :

The bin Ladens are famous for spawning the world's foremost terrorist and building one of the Middle East's foremost corporate dynasties.

Pulitzer Prize–winner Coll (Ghost Wars) delivers a sprawling history of the multifaceted clan, paying special attention to its two most emblematic members.

Patriarch Mohamed's eldest son, Salem, was a caricature of the self-indulgent plutocrat: a flamboyant jet-setter dependent on the Saudi monarchy, obsessed with all things motorized (he died crashing his plane after a day's joy-riding atop motorcycle and dune-buggy) and forever tormenting his entourage with off-key karaoke.

Coll presents quite a contrast with an unusually nuanced profile of Salem's half-brother Osama, a shy, austere, devout man who nonetheless shares Salem's egomania.

Other bin Ladens crowd Coll's narrative with the eye-glazing details of their murky business deals, messy divorces and ill-advised perfume lines and pop CDs.

Beneath the clutter one discerns an engrossing portrait of a family torn between tradition and modernity, conformism and self-actualization, and desperately in search of its soul.

(April 1) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

All rights reserved.

The 9/11 Commission was nothing more than a created buffer to distance the investigators.

To create a hunters blind, if you will, to keep the Bush, Al Saud, and Bin Laden family unconnected.

Which only succeeded with crippling the C.I.A. and F.B.I. to create Homeland Security.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


Therein lies the rub as the bard tells us.

Too much hearsay and not enough facts making it to daylight.

Know what happens to those kept in the dark and fed manure?

They get tired of it unless they truly are that dense and vegetative.

So, the question is of course, how much of the world is dense and vegetative?

I would say about 99.9% at this point.

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
Also we have the guy on sky news from Pakistan security services saying the Pakistani government allowed the raid,while the American sources are saying the SEALs basically snuck in without asking....

I heard an interview on the radio. Forget who the guy was.

He said - - there was one of those "off the record" agreements between Pakistan and America - - - that US forces could do covert missions to apprehend criminals - - - but that the Pakistan government had the right of denial.

Bin Laden was a hero to many Pakistanis. It put the government in a precarious position.

Anyway - - - this does seem logical/probable to me.

Originally posted by Annee

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
Also we have the guy on sky news from Pakistan security services saying the Pakistani government allowed the raid,while the American sources are saying the SEALs basically snuck in without asking....

I heard an interview on the radio. Forget who the guy was.

He said - - there was one of those "off the record" agreements between Pakistan and America - - - that US forces could do covert missions to apprehend criminals - - - but that the Pakistan government had the right of denial.

Bin Laden was a hero to many Pakistanis. It put the government in a precarious position.

Anyway - - - this does seem logical/probable to me.

Of course.

An ultimate case of deniability.

Without repercussions of culpability.

Many countries, whether we're addressing America or Pakistan, have many factions.

Some support those crusaders.

Some support those hunting crusaders.

Some support both sides and profit off of the conflict.

If funding is threatened it makes for a weaker enemy and weaker collaboration.

reply to post by SaturnFX


You raise some good points but for all we know the Pakistanis had Bin Laden under House Arrest for the CIA and was keeping him on ice, providing that it even was Bin Laden killed in the raid.

The War on Terror is a pretext for as Cheney put it, "A war that will not end in our lifetime" in other words, endless war.

So who benefits from endless war, especially where the wars are occuring, the Oil Companies that enjoy record profits off the speculation war in the Middle East adds to the cost of oil, the Banks who finance the military endeavors, the Military Industrial Complex that builts the equipment, and a bankrupt and corrupt US Government that can use it as an excuse to place layer after layer of over lapping domestic security to safe guard itself as a enterprise against the citizenry rebelling against it's wastes, excesses, and frauds.

Is that worth 8 Billion a year to a willing partner in the deception.

You can't win a war on terror by terrorizing the innocent populations of a half a dozen countries and your own citizens.

You can't win it with gunboat diplomacy, corrupting International Bodies, and employing dual standards, while killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the proces.

You can only create exactly what they wanted, the pretext for war without end.

Americans need to start thinking like intelligent independent minded people again.

Our problems with the Islamic world can be easily solved, through aide instead of weapons, education instead of dictating terms, holding Israel to the same standards as every other nation, and we ourselves adhering to our own constitutional principles.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Prior to the "Great Russian Bear" falling I saw this coming.

We, America, as a country, have to have an enemy to fight or our country collapses.

Our economy is built upon the war machine through the Military Industrial Complex.

Of course through many years of research it has been discovered as a ruse in the midst of a ruse.

Russia was never supposed to win but only give the appearance of being an adversary.

The real goal was to push an international body of bureaucracy to the head of power.

While losing all national boundaries which is how the War on Terror will truly fulfill funding.

Sooner or later all countries will surrender their individuality to the United Nations.

And this is through manhunts like the one which allegedly killed Osama bin Laden.

To create an international means of hunting down any and all insurrectionists.

Originally posted by doom27
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

Hit the nail on the head, i won't believe it until i see it.

I feel he never even existed, or did exist but wasn't what the Media portrays him as.

We will just wait for the next Goldstein to appear.

And for now we wait to find out what we are being distracted from.

You know, that was my first thought when I first heard his name repeated in the press ad nauseum back in the late 90s. Goldstein.

I do believe he really existed, in that there was a person with that name and fit the photos we saw.

But from what I've read by people who really seemed to know, he was mainly a money-man but not really involved in anything operational. And al Qaeda itself was far more fragmented and unstructured than anything presented in the media - more like the internet itself than an organization.

reply to post by Jessica6


Has anyone else noticed the name of the organization Osama bin Laden supported?

Quote from : Wikipedia : al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (play /ælˈkaɪdə/ al-KY-də or /ælˈkeɪdə/ al-KAY-də; Arabic: القاعدة‎, al-qāʿidah, "the base" or "the database"), alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa'ida, is a militant Islamist group founded sometime between August 1988 and late 1989.

It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad.

Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, most notably the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001.

The U.S. government responded by launching the War on Terror.

Al-Qaeda has continued to exist and grow through the decade from 2001 to 2011.

Characteristic techniques include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets.

Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement, who have taken a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, or the much more numerous "al-Qaeda-linked" individuals who have undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, but not taken any pledge.

"The base" or "the database" seems an odd choice of names.

Especially considering Osama bin Laden's family assisted in building U.S. Military bases overseas.

As well as the nuisance databases American's hate due to phone solicitations among other things.

A list of questionable people doing questionable activities leads to more questions if you ask me.

And it gives a certain amount of deniability to foreign policy actions happening overseas.

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


Thats a really good point SKL, you make about the name and the "database"

One of the big aspects of this is the timing....

How perfect is that the ME is in "revolutions" staged as they are....

In the minds of the peoples its time for a change...

Enter stage left the new and improved Muslim Brotherhood, exit Bin Laden.

Washington is a JOKE!

First they kept giving Pakistan money which Pakistan used to buy weapons to use against India, but U.S. STILL kept giving them money year after year after year

And now this, they are thinking to stop giving them money, soon another thing will happen again

END FOREIGN AID!!!!!!!!
It only goes to dictators and puppets

reply to post by burntheships


The first time I heard the name I was suspicious.

Not to mention we're supposed to believe the translators without question.

Just as we're supposed to believe Government without question.

Well, I was taught to always question authority, and to expect it if I am that authority.

Only time will tell if Osama bin Laden is dead not a media release of information.

It will not surprise me in the least if he pops up in some huge public location.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Our economy is collapsing down around our ears.

Yet funding for aid to foreign countries still flows out.

This is likened to a man being wounded at the femoral artery yet donating blood.

Interesting, one would think the dying man needs that lifeblood, would one not?

Yet another means of securing the cashless society by killing off the useless paper cash.

Trading one useless cash system for a useless digital cash system with the World Bank.