Who Killed Osama Bin Laden?

Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh, author of the controversial “The Dark Side of Camelot,” makes a point during an interview with The Associated Press, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 1997, in New York. Long-silent Secret Service agents from the Kennedy White House only opened up about President Kennedy’s wild sexual antics after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the author of the new book on JFK said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Michael Schmelling)

…by Jonas E. Alexis

 

Seymour Hersh has done it again. The noted journalist is no longer a stranger to controversy. In 1991, Hersh dropped a number of explosives in the political landscape when he said that Israel possessed hundreds of nuclear warheads.[1]

A few years after Hersh detonated the political bomb in his book The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Israeli historian and philosopher Avner Cohen began to produce an avalanche of documents basically saying that Israel used deceptions and psychological operations to acquire those warheads.[2]

Other Israeli writers and journalists such as Michael Karpin ended up saying similar things.[3] Cohen pushed the debate even further by saying,

“In the long term, the more Israel appears to reject peace and to be the one that opposes a two-state solution, the more it will be perceived as a regional bully that possesses nuclear weapons. So the world will be a lot less forgiving on the nuclear issue. The situation of ambiguity, in which you don’t have real legitimacy, is not a good place to be.”[4]

When U.S. officials finally learned about Israel’s nuclear weapons, they were completely shocked because they had underestimated Israel. The officials admitted when they first saw some of those warheads,

“Our thought was ‘Holy shit!’ How could we have been so wrong? We always said, ‘So the Israelis gotten warheads? Okay. So what? Anybody can build those.’ All of a sudden we learned they’d become sophisticated. It blew everybody’s mind.’”[5]

It sure did. Others in the Reagan administration were “paranoid.” One official declared, “It was kept away from the people at Z Division [a special group that provides the United States Intelligence Community with information about foreign nuclear programs].”[6]

Those things were hidden from most journalists and researchers specifically because they were not compatible with Zionist narrative. Some journalists were completely oblivious, and others were simply paid to lie to the media and much of the West for saying things which they knew were complete claptrap. The Brian Williams debacle is a classic example.

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“Brother, make me proud. Tell the American people that you would support my disaster in Iraq. Spice your statement up with political flavor, and if someone picks up your contradiction, you can always apologize later. Hey, look at me! I have never been prosecuted for the six-trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Am I not doing well?”

In 2013, Hersh again threw a grenade in the Zionist castle when he said that the only way to get back to serious journalism is to “fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can’t control.”[7]

Why?

Well, Hersh believes that those editors and reporters lie all the time in order to fulfill the political ideology of their masters. Serious journalism, Hersh argues, has been hoodwinked by the powers that be. Hersh did not specifically say who actually controls serious journalism, but we already know the answer to that puzzle.

If you still don’t know who the masters are, then pick up Benjamin Ginsberg’s study The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State. Lest we be accused of something weird, Ginsberg is a Jewish political scientist at Johns Hopkins. Ginsberg brags on the very first page of his book:

“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual, and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely 2% of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews.

“The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and most influential single newspaper, the New York Times.

“In the late 1960s, Jews already constituted 20% of the faculty of elite universities and 40% of the professors of elite law schools; today, these percentages doubtless are higher. The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked. In 1993, ten members of the United States Senate and thirty-two members of the House of Representatives were Jewish, three to four times their percentage of the general population.

“Jews are even more prominent in political organizations and in finance. One recent study found that in twenty-seven of thirty-six campaigns for the United State Senate, one or both candidates relied upon a Jewish campaign chairman or finance director.

“In the realm of lobbying and litigation, Jews organized what was for many years one of Washington’s most successful political action committees, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and they play leadership roles in such important public interest groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Common Cause…

“After the Democrats’ victory, President Clinton appointed a number of Jews to prominent positions in his administration. Their role in American economic, social, and political institutions has enabled Jews to wield considerable influence in the nation’s public life.”[8]

In any event, Hersh’s statement also suggests that much of what is passing for journalism and politics today is just hogwash. How can people in good conscience continue to support the war in Iraq? How can Jeb Bush honestly look at decent Muslims and Americans in the eye and say that he would order another invasion in the same region if he were in charge?[9] How can this man seriously declare:

“News flash to the world, if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother [with respect to the Iraq invasion], this might not be one of those”?[10]

George Bush, according to the Washington Post itself, was Jeb’s “most influential counselor on U.S.-Israel policy.”[11] Take it from Jeb’s mouth: “If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him.”[12]

Isn’t Jeb insane? America is already handcuffed with a six-trillion dollar bill from the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, and now we have polite people like Jeb saying that his brother did a great job in Iraq!

How is it that Jeb is not in a mental ward? Do these people really want our vote?[13] Jeb was indeed confronted with a similar situation when a 19-year old by the name of Ivy Ziedrich asked him quite bluntly:

“My question is why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars, when we sent young men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? It’s this idea – like, why are you spouting nationalistic rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”[14]

Jeb, as usual, gave the Neoconservative answer. He later added,

“First of all, I’m proud to be George W’s brother. … It’s just the way it is, I can’t deny the fact that I love my family, I love everything about them.”[15]

Now Jeb is not that dumb. But he is so lost in the Neoconservative ideology that he cannot think straight. Reason, in other words, has become a foreign language to him. He is so out of touch with reality that even National Review, a Neoconservative flagship, entitles one of its articles: “Jeb Is Doomed by the Baggage of Previous Bushes.”[16] Listen to Jeb here and see if this man makes sense:

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Going back to Hersh, he was one of the first journalists to declare that the Bush administration trained terrorist groups such as the MEK in Nevada.[17]

Hersh is now saying that the government lied about Osama bin Laden. We all knew that movies such as Zero Dark Thirty were propaganda, but much of the media stayed away from that fact because the Neoconservatives/Neo-Bolsheviks wanted to prove that something good came out of the disaster in Iraq.  Hersh argues that much of what we know about Osama bin Laden and his death is completely fabrication.

“The White House’s story” of Osama bin Laden, says Hersh, “might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.”[18]

Hersh indeed believe that bin Laden was killed in 2011, but he argued that the government lied about what happened to him:

“The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014.

“Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further.

“In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation.” ^[19]

Hersh’s article indeed created a firestorm of controversy. Some distractors have accused him of resurrecting conspiracy theories.[20] The reason seems to be obvious:  those distractors seem to have been aware of the implication of Hersh’s articles.

If Hersh is right, then the government’s story about Osama bin Laden needs revision. If the bin Laden story needs revision, then the Neoconservative ideology would also need revision. Finally, if the bin Laden story needs revision, could it be that bin Laden died long before the war in Iraq? Or could it be that Gordon Duff was right when he said that Bush probably knew that bin Laden died in 2001?

Duff cited a Fox News article which was published in 2001 and which read in part:

“Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. ‘The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead,’ the source said.

“Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

“About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some ‘Taliban friends,’ attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the ‘great leader.’

“The Taliban source who claims to have seen bin Laden’s face before burial said ‘he looked pale … but calm, relaxed and confident.’”[21]

Duff said, “The Israelis had been dealing with phony bin Ladens for years.  With no bin Laden, a cover story had to be invented…”

Paul Craig Roberts, who probably got the information from VT, quickly picked that theme up and humorously declared that bin Laden died twice: in 2001 and then in 2011. Roberts said of the Zionist narrative:

“This fake story together with the fake movie and the fake book by an alleged SEAL team member is the way the fake story of bin Laden’s murder is perpetrated. Bin Laden’s alleged demise at the hands of a SEAL team was a propaganda orchestration, the purpose of which was to give Obama a hero’s laurels and deep six Democratic talk of challenging his nomination for a second term.

“Osama bin Laden died in December 2001 of renal failure and other health problems, having denied in his last recorded video any responsibility for 9/11, instead directing Americans to look inside their own government. The FBI itself has stated that there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11.

“Bin Laden’s obituary appeared in numerous foreign and Arabic press, and also on Fox News. No one can survive renal failure for a decade, and no dialysis machine was found in the alleged Abbottabad compound of bin Laden, who allegedly was murdered by SEALs a decade after his obituary notices.

“Additionally, no one among the crew of the ship from which the White House reported bin Laden was buried at sea saw any such burial, and the sailors sent messages home to that effect. Somehow a burial was held onboard a ship on which there are constant watches and crew on alert at all hours, and no one witnessed it.

“Additionally, the White House story of the alleged murder of bin Laden changed twice within the first 24 hours. The claim that Obama and his government watched the action transmitted live from cameras on the SEALs’ helmets was quickly abandoned, despite the release of a photo of the Obama regime intently focused on a TV set and alleged to be watching the live action.

“No video of the deed was ever released. To date there is no evidence whatsoever in behalf of the Obama regime’s claim. Not one tiny scrap. Just unsubstantiated self-serving claims.”

For nearly two years, the media published an interesting image of a dead bin Laden and the same image was quickly picked up by both Pakistani TV and British newspaper. The British newspaper the Guardian itself declared that the image “was used on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites,” but the whole thing was a colossal hoax. Those media outlets “swiftly removed [the image] after the fake was exposed on Twitter.”[22]

Two writers in the Guardian, however, scorn and laugh at what they call “conspiracy theory.”[23] So, who is really using conspiracy theory here? If you say that such and such event happens, then it is your responsibility to show me the evidence. If the government does not give us solid evidence, aren’t they themselves inventing conspiracy theories? And why didn’t the writers in the Guardian write a nice letter to Washington asking for more concrete evidence so as to disarm those “conspiracy theorists”?

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In any event, regardless of one’s view about bin Laden, there is one thing that is quite obvious: the Zionist narrative is filled with unsolved mysteries and internal contradiction. The government added another dimension to those unsolved mysteries by claiming that they buried bin Laden’s body at sea within 24 hours. The government also said that DNA tests confirmed that the body belonged to bin Laden.[24] Again, all of that job was done within 24! The interesting thing is that the Pentagon itself did not buy into this narrative:

“The Pentagon denied more than a year ago it had any records of these tests in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press a day after President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death.”[25]

This brings us to a vital point here. Didn’t the Neoconservatives postulate ad absurdum that bin Laden was one of the most evil persons on the face of the planet? Why couldn’t they give us something substantive about the death of the man? If the Zionist narrative is actually true, why would the government burry the body at sea in a very short time and leave experts and forensic scholars in despair? What was the government hiding? How do they expect historians and other experts to do a thorough investigation on the issue? Isn’t the government basically saying that you either believe what the government tells you or else? As Paul Craig Roberts himself put it then, when was the last time that the government tells us something deep and truthful?

Even the Huffington Post did not hesitate to report:

“But the mystique that surrounded the terrorist chieftain in life is persisting in death. Was it really him? How do we know? Where are the pictures? Already, those questions are spreading in Pakistan and surely beyond.

“In the absence of photos and with his body given up to the sea, many people don’t believe bin Laden – the Great Emir to some, the fabled escape artist of the Tora Bora mountains to foe and friend alike – is really dead.”[26]

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Unsolved mysteries aside, what we do know for sure is that the Zionist government lies all the time to get their dirty work done. The lied about Iraq; they lied about weapons of mass destructions; they lied about Afghanistan; they lied about Libya; they lied about the war on terror; they lied and will continue to lie because their father is the father of all lies.

Furthermore, what we do know is that the FBI encouraged and even provoked people to commit terrorist acts so that the organization can continue to bleed America with the “war on terror” smokescreen. Last July, the Associated Press itself declared:

“The FBI encouraged and sometimes even paid Muslims to commit terrorist acts during numerous sting operations after the 9/11 attacks… “Far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism, the policies documented in this report have diverted law enforcement from pursuing real threats,” said the report by Human Rights Watch.

“Aided by Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute, Human Rights Watch examined 27 cases from investigation through trial, interviewing 215 people, including those charged or convicted in terrorism cases, their relatives, defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

“In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act,” the report said.

“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US,” said Andrea Prasow, the rights group’s deputy Washington director.

‘”But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.’”

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What is the conclusion of all this? The so-called war on terror has been good for the Dreadful Few. They crafted the lie and promote it in the media and in books. For example, in order to make his Neoconservative point, Norman Podhoretz called the PLO and their supporters “beasts” that need to be caged.[27]

The result of the Neoconservative ideology is quite stunning: America is in decline—both politically and economically—and the Israeli regime is militarily gaining some strength.[28] Israel, says Professor Robert Farley of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, “boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world.”[29]

There are other consequences of the so-called war on terror. As former CIA official Philip Giraldi reported,

“The most recent ex-judicial killings come on the heels of a report by the highly respected Nobel prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility that reveals that more than 1.3 million people were killed during the first ten years post 9/11 as part of the so-called ‘global war on terror’ (GWOT) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone.

“The report by the physicians received only limited coverage in the U.S. media. As one might reasonably add Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen to the carnage and update the numbers on Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan for all areas where the U.S. in engaged militarily the current total might easily exceed two million or more. The report stresses that the estimate of the dead is “conservative” based on the most reliable sources, suggesting that there are large numbers of deaths that have been reported but could not be confirmed.

“To be sure not all of those millions of potential war on terror victims were killed by American bullets or bombs but their deaths are the consequence of ill-advised military interventions and operations to destabilize and replace existing governments, starting with the Taliban and continuing in the present with operations directed against Syria. Iran is the next intended target, one should reasonably presume.

“American deaths represent only a tiny percentage of the overall toll, even if one includes the victims of 9/11, less than 10,000 total, which in no way should suggest that it diminishes the impact of those losses on individual families and communities.”

The Solution to all this madness? Giraldi pointed out elsewhere that America needs to declare independence from Israel. In that sense, Americans need to be aware of what the regime has done. In that sense, Americans also need to stop listening to so-called Republican puppets who keep prostrating before the regime. Both Senator Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush come to mind. Cruz declared last March:

“Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel.”

“A day after Cruz and Liberty it was Jeb Bush’s turn. He repudiated James Baker, his father’s secretary of state, after Baker had mildly criticized Netanyahu’s rejection of a possible Palestinian state, with Bush’s press spokesman asserting ‘Governor Bush’s support for Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unwavering.’

“In a follow-up op-ed last Wednesday, Bush cemented his credentials as a worthy heir to his brother George in terms of intellectual vacuity by opposing nuclear negotiations with Iran before asserting ‘The Obama administration treats announcements of new apartment buildings in Jerusalem like acts of aggression.’ Jeb is apparently unaware that there are half a million settlers on the West Bank on stolen Palestinian land.

“Every Republican presidential wannabe makes an obligatory trip to Israel to kiss Netanyahu’s ring. And the neoconservative claque is meanwhile crowing about Bibi, calling him the ‘leader of the free world.’ One blogger quipped ‘Has it got to the point that the GOP should cut through all the red tape and simply nominate Benjamin Netanyahu as their 2016 candidate?’

“The most recent GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney went so far as to pledge himself to take Israel’s advice before doing anything in the Middle East. Cruz, like Romney, has made very clear his willingness to be guided by Israel and it appears that Bush 3 will do more of the same.

“Selling out to Israeli interests has become de rigueur for Republican politicians and presidential hopefuls as well as for a heck of a lot of Democrats as well. Former Bill Clinton U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson recently commented that Israel is ‘our anchor in the Mideast.

“Our beachfront is Israel. They’re our strongest ally’ while Senator Chuck Schumer, who is poised to become Senate Minority Leader, has declared ‘One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer– to be the shomer Yisrael (guardian for Israel). And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body…’”

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[1] Seymour Hersh, The Sampson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991).

[2] Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

[3] Michael Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

[4] Natasha Mozgovaya, “Interview/Why Israel Should End Its Policy of Nuclear Ambiguity,” Haaretz, August 26, 2010.

[5] Hersh, The Samson Option, 291.

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the ‘Pathetic’ American Media,” Guardian, September 27, 2013.

[8] Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1.

[9] Jessica Taylor, “Jeb Bush Would Have Authorized Iraq War—Even Knowing What We Know Now,” National Public Radio, May 11, 2015; Igor Bobic, “Jeb Bush: I, Too, Would Have Authorized Iraq Invasion,” Huffington Post, May 10, 2015; Daniel Politi, “Jeb Bush: I Would Have Invaded Iraq, Too,” Slate, May 10, 2015.

[10] Jessica Taylor, “Jeb Bush Would Have Authorized Iraq War—Even Knowing What We Know Now,” National Public Radio, May 11, 2015.

[11] Robert Costa and Matea Gold, “One of Jeb Bush’s top advisers on Israel: George W. Bush,” Washington Post, May 7, 2015.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Jeb realized that the statement would have actually sent him to the political gallows, and he corrected himself by saying that he misunderstood the question. These guys are brilliant! Maggie Haberman, “Jeb Bush Clarifies Remarks on Supporting Iraq War,” NY Times, May 12, 2015.

[14] Quoted in Ed O’Keefe, “On the trail, Jeb Bush faces hostile questions about Iraq war,” Washington Post, May 13, 2015.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Deroy Murdock, “Jeb Is Doomed by the Baggage of Previous Bushes,” National Review, May 15, 2015.

[17] Seymour Hersh, “Our Men in Iran?,” New Yorker, April 5, 2012.

[18] Seymour M. Hersh, “The Killing of Osama bin Laden,” London Review of Books, Vol. 37. No. 10, May 21, 2015.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Dan Murphy, “Seymour Hersh and the ‘truth’ behind the Osama bin Laden raid,” Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2015.

[21] “Report: Bin Laden Already Dead,” Fox News, December 26, 2001.

[22] Amelia Hill, “Osama Bin Laden Corpse Photo is Fake,” Guardian, May 2, 2011.

[23] Patrick Kinsley and Sam Jones, “Osama Bin Laden Death: The Conspiracy Theory,” Guardian, May 5, 2011.

[24] “Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama,” BBC, May 2, 2011.

[25] Richard Lardner, “Bin Laden’s Identity Verified By DNA Test After Deadly Raid, Report Reveals,” Huffington Post, August 30, 2013.

[26] Robert Burns, “Osama Bin Laden Death Confirmed by DNA Testing,” Huffington Post, May 2, 2011.

[27] Quoted in Thomas L. Jeffers, Norman Podhoretz: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 198-199.

[28] See for example Robert Farley, “Israel’s 5 Most Deadly Weapons of War,” National Interest, May 12, 2015.

[29] Ibid.