Getting bin Laden

This will probably be ignored by the Truthers, but an excellent article in the New Yorker on how the raid went down. NSDQ!

Shortly after eleven o’clock on the night of May 1st, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from Jalalabad Air Field, in eastern Afghanistan, and embarked on a covert mission into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Inside the aircraft were twenty-three Navy SEALs from Team Six, which is officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. A Pakistani-American translator, whom I will call Ahmed, and a dog named Cairo—a Belgian Malinois—were also aboard. It was a moonless evening, and the helicopters’ pilots, wearing night-vision goggles, flew without lights over mountains that straddle the border with Pakistan. Radio communications were kept to a minimum, and an eerie calm settled inside the aircraft.

The Osama Home Videos

The Pentagon has released videos seized during their raid of Osama bin Laden watching himself on television. Apparently he is a bigger egomaniac than Jon Gold.

http://youtu.be/tIZq3nZiNBs

More Reactions

Kristen Breitweiser:

The news of the death of Osama bin Laden gives me a sense of long-awaited, meaningful closure.

Ten years since the senseless, heartless murder of my husband and 3,000 innocent others, final justice has been meted out -- though not swift it is certainly sweet.

Deena Burnett Bailey:

"To say that I'm happy that he was killed just seems odd, and it goes against my Christian faith," she said. "The girls and I were talking about it this morning and one of them said, 'what can we say, Mom? We can't say praise the Lord, he's dead.' I said, I know. You just have to know that someone else made that decision and that he will now stand before judgment for having killed so many people."

Donna Marsh O'Connor:

For ten years I blamed many for Vanessa's death and more for what they did after to make the world more hateful, more violent. But I never knew how much was tied up in the metaphoric bin Laden. And I don't know exactly now why I am crying....

I wonder, does my fierce baby girl, with the fiery hair and eyes, the one who, slight and fragile as she looked, could turn men to toast with a glance, I wonder, is he, bin Laden, in her hands?

Alex Jones flunky Paul Watson:

A multitude of different inside sources both publicly and privately, including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden at one time, told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would only be announced at the most politically expedient time.

Because, you know, it wouldn't have been politically expedient to have it announced, say, prior to the elections in 2006 when the Democrats took over Congress?
Jon Gold's partner in the Revolution, Cindy Sheehan, has the same inside sources as Paul Watson:

I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of OBL, you’re stupid. Just think to yourself–they paraded Saddam’s dead sons around to prove they were dead–why do you suppose they hastily buried this version of OBL at sea? This lying, murderous Empire can only exist with your brainwashed consent–just put your flags away and THINK!

A new term has already been coined for those like Watson and Sheehan: Deathers. When will they start demanding to see the "long form" death certificate?

Old Leatherlungs Jones himself:


Fox Business' head Truther, Andrew Napolitano wants us to know that the killing of Osama was an "illegal whim of the president":

Greatest. Illegal. Whim. Ever!

Hat Tip on Alex Jones: M Gregory Ferris

Well, There Goes the Meme OBL Ain't Wanted for 9-11

Remember how the Troofers always claimed that Osama wasn't wanted for his role in 9-11? They appeared to have some insane notion that the FBI had no evidence connecting him to the attacks.

Well, the State Department has issued an age-progressed photo of OBL on their "Rewards for Justice" website, along with this note:

Usama bin Ladin is wanted in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and for the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

Update: More here:

"There's no mystery here," said FBI spokesman Rex Tomb. "They could add 9/11 on there, but they have not because they don't need to at this point. . . . There is a logic to it."

Hat Tip: Billman in the comments.

Separated at Birth?

Osama bin Laden, from his famous 1996 fatwa:

Hence it is essential to hit the main enemy who divided the Ummah into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion. The Zionist-Crusader alliance moves quickly to contain and abort any "corrective movement" appearing in the Islamic countries. Different means and methods are used to achieve their target; on occasion the "movement" is dragged into an armed struggle at a predetermined unfavourable time and place.

Kevin Barrett on his blog:

The answer is obvious: This war on Islam is being waged by a fanatical minority of Zionists who have used their power in finance, media, political money, and organized crime to essentially take over the US and turn it against its own interests, as well as the interests of the world's Muslims.

The Zionists know that if Muslims gain even a tiny fraction of the power they ought to have, relative to their proportion of the world's population, Israel as a Jewish apartheid state is finished.

That is why the heavily-Zionist-influenced media churns out Islamophobic fantasies 24/7/365. And that is why the Zionists have duped the U.S. into a war on Islam, disguised as a self-evidently-absurd "war on terror," launched by the 9/11 coup d'etat.

It is time for patriotic Americans to rise up and overthrow the Zionist facist regime that overthrew our government and burned our Constitution on September 11th, 2001. And it is time for Americans to demand a rational foreign policy that takes account of American interests, rather than being subservient to the interests of Zionism.

Osama.

Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy --your enemy and their enemy-- the Americans and the Israelis. they are asking you to do whatever you can, with one own means and ability, to expel the enemy, humiliated and defeated, out of the sanctities of Islam.

Kevin:

Since when did YOU decide you were going to put up with all this, instead of doing what the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine are doing and actually fighting back?

David Ray Hearts Osama

When David Ray Griffin is not hanging out with nutjob anti-Semitic pseudo-intellectuals, he is being interviewed on one of Kevin Barrett's radio shows. But I repeat myself...

In any case he was on Barrett's show on June 27th promoting his new book arguing that Osama bin Laden is dead, and, well, Griffin seems rather taken with his dead Saudi fundamentalist. From 39 minutes in:

Beside the fact, that this picture, and you know you can't go much by a picture, but I read a lot about him, and he was known as a very remarkable young man. As a student at school, when people would say, have a bet or something where they needed people to hold money, it was always bin Laden that they would give it to, because he was the one person that everybody could trust. He was known as a very pious, honest person. And the fact that we have made him into this demon is probably a terrible thing that we have done to his memory.

Gee, the last thing I would want to do is sully the memory of Osama bin Laden.

Add Interpol and Parade Magazine to the Coverup

Parade Magazine had a cover story last weekend on the world's most wanted individuals with captions detailing their crimes provided by Interpol. Somebody forgot to tell Interpol of the fantasy by the fruitcakes where OBL isn't wanted by the FBI for 9-11.

Is there anybody in the world not involved in the coverup?

Bin Laden Research

Well somehow I doubt that Kevin Barrett or David Ray Griffin will get around to conducting research like this:

Flagg Miller, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, has been combing through never-before-heard audiotapes that once were in the Al Qaeda leader’s private library.

Al Qaeda terrorists have released numerous audio and video recordings of bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks, but the tapes in Miller's possession offer the first behind-the-scenes access to the terrorist’s private world. They reveal how he developed his anti-American sentiment and the progression of Al Qaeda's military strategy, warfare tactics, recruiting methods and training camps.

"He has a far more raw militant voice than what many people are used to," Miller said in an interview with FOXNews.com. "He talks about the United States being the No. 1 enemy dating back to a time before the first Gulf War. These tapes suggest that anti-Americanism was there earlier than many have thought."

More Ignorant Etho-Centric Troofers

Another bin Laden tape was released yesterday, and troofers, with their extensive experience in international affairs hanging out at the local IHOP, are protesting its validity:

Look who's back in time to celebrate easter and the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

It seems strange and suspicious that Bin Laden would resurface to bing up the Danish cartoon issue of 2005 so long after the whole thing has been forgotten by the rest of the world.

Of course by "forgotten by the rest of the world" he means, "Neither me nor my pothead friend Joe have heard about this for months. The part of the world that bin Laden cares about, however, has certainly not forgotten this.

From Thailand, March 13th:

It was an excited but peaceful crowd that gathered in Lumphini Park, Bangkok, early yesterday morning to protest the reprinting of the Danish Muhammad drawings and what they call ‘a second insult’ of the Prophet Muhammad. More than 600 Muslims walked from Lumphini Park to the grounds of the Danish embassy to raise their voices in asking the Thai Muslim community to condemn the reprinting of the drawings and boycott all Danish products.

From Senegal, March 13th:

Meanwhile, arguments over the way Islam is portrayed in the West continue to cause controversy within the Muslim world. In recent weeks, the republication of controversial political cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad by Danish newspapers sparked protests in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Thailand, Iran and Sudan.

Iran, March 12th:

Hundreds of angry students have staged a protest in front of the Danish embassy in Tehran to condemn the reprinting of cartoons deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers.

Some 300 foreign and Iranian students from Qom seminary schools chanted "Death to Denmark" and "Death to America", warning the Danes "not to follow the American anti-Islamic policy" and asking Islamic countries to boycott Danish products.

But because they have not heard about it in their mom's basement, apparently nobody in the world cares about this issue. Don't hold your breath waiting for his fellow troofers to correct him.

Osama: I Did It

I question the timing:

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden called on Europeans to stop helping the United States in the war in Afghanistan, according to excerpts of a new audiotape broadcast Thursday on Al-Jazeera television.

Bin Laden said it was unjust for the United States to have invaded Afghanistan for sheltering him after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, saying he was the "only one responsible" for the deadly assaults on New York and Washington.

"The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that," the al-Qaida leader said.

Just when the 9-11 Truth Movement was about to ignite a revolution in the streets!

The FBI also shoots down the long-standing claim by Ed Haas that it has no evidence tying Osama to the attacks:

FBI analysts were reviewing the tape but were not immediately able to say how long it was or when it might have been recorded nor could they provide other details. Spokesman Richard Kolko said it was being examined "to determine if it is authentic and for any intelligence value."

"As the FBI has said since 9/11, bin Laden was responsible for the attack," Kolko said in a statement. "In this latest tape, he again acknowledged his responsibility. This should help to clarify for all the conspiracy theorists, again — the 9/11 attack was done by bin Laden and al-Qaida."

Asked for a comment, Dylan Avery declined to take his head out of the oven.

Hat Tip: Commenter N. O'Brain

Nut In the Newsroom

Jeff Ferrell of KSLA (Shreveport, LA CBS affiliate) joins the kooks by harping on the "no mention of 9-11 on Osama's Most Wanted poster" story. Jeff, it's really quite simple. The Most Wanted list is a "sacred list", and even though the Bush Administration pulled off 9-11, killing thousands, they are unwilling to cover their tracks by changing that "sacred" list.

And yes, Ferrell's a longtime crackpot.

Gun rights may (or may not) protect us if the government declares martial law.

Bin Laden Indicted for 9-11!

Kudos to JREF Forum member State of Grace for unearthing this. It turns out that Osama Bin Laden actually has been indicted for his role in 9-11, in Spain.
Spain's leading investigating judge issued the first known indictment against Osama bin Laden in the Sept. 11 attacks yesterday, accusing al-Qaida of using the country as a base to plot the devastating strikes on New York and Washington.

Investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon indicted 35 people for terrorist activities connected to bin Laden's al-Qaida network. In a nearly 700-page document, Garzon wrote that Spain served "as a place or base for resting, preparation, indoctrinating, support and financing" of al-Qaida.

The indictment charged bin Laden and nine others with membership in a terrorist organization and "as many crimes of terrorist murder ... as there were dead and injured" in the deadly Sept. 11 attacks.

The article also makes it very clear why he has not been indicted in the US.

There are no indications that U.S. prosecutors will seek an indictment of bin Laden in the Sept. 11 attacks any time soon. U.S. officials believe they have the legal tools necessary to arrest him with the existing indictment in the 1998 embassy bombings as well as the Defense Department's authority to detain enemy combatants.

Terrific find by State of Grace!

Judicial Watch: Did Osama Charter Plane For Family Members In US?

Holy smoke, this should cause something of a sensation:

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released new documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) related to the “expeditious departure” of Saudi nationals, including members of the bin Laden family, from the United States following the 9/11 attacks. According to one of the formerly confidential documents, dated 9/21/2001, terrorist Osama bin Laden may have chartered one of the Saudi flights.

The document states: “ON 9/19/01, A 727 PLANE LEFT LAX, RYAN FLT #441 TO ORLANDO, FL W/ETA (estimated time of arrival) OF 4-5PM. THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN…THE LA FBI SEARCHED THE PLANE [REDACTED] LUGGAGE, OF WHICH NOTHING UNUSUAL WAS FOUND.” The plane was allowed to depart the United States after making four stops to pick up passengers, ultimately landing in Paris where all passengers disembarked on 9/20/01, according to the document.

(bold added for emphasis).

It will be interesting to see how the "Truthers" incorporate this into their theories, given that most of them don't believe Osama pulled off 9-11. I suppose it will be added to "The FBI doesn't want Osama for 9-11" evidence.

Hat tip to our buddy Rob Breakenridge for pointing this out.

Update: I should have indicated in my original post my skepticism of the possibility that the plane was actually chartered by OBL. Sometimes I forget that the first rule of blogging is the same as the rule to get onto Jim Rome's radio show: Have a take and don't suck. My take is that it is extremely unlikely that OBL chartered that plane, and far more likely that it was the Saudi Royal Family.

Look It Up

One thing that becomes more and more apparent, is that to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theorists does not require any great investigative ability, worthy of a Bob Woodward. In fact it usually requires nothing more than just looking up the source that the theorist is citing, or a quick check of the supporting facts. Some of our frequent commenters have provided us with some good examples.

First, while arguing against the NIST report, BG posts the following:

British engineers strongly disputed official American claims that the towers became more vulnerable to collapse after the hijacked aircraft scraped vital fire protection from their steel frames.

While this is an accurate quote, another commenter points out that he is leaving out is the following:

We have carried out computer simulations which show that the towers would have collapsed after a major fire on three floors at once, even with fireproofing in place and without any damage from plane impact." Lane said the difference of opinion was significant because clients had begun to demand that designs had NIST-compliant fire protection (NCE 30 June).

So in reality, rather than supporting the controlled demolition hypothesis, these engineers argue even more strongly against it than even NIST did!

Our second example comes from Swing Dangler who posts the following, while arguing that it would be out of character for Al Qaeda to not claim responsibility for a terrorist attack:

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for arming Somali factions who battled U.S. forces there in October 1993, and who killed 18 U.S. special operations forces in Mogadishu in October 1993
Source:CRS Report for CongressReceived through the CRS Web
Order Code RL33038
Al Qaeda: Profile and Threat Assessment

August 17, 2005

I found this interesting, because I remember following the events at the time, and read the book Black Hawk Down, as well as watching the movie. I even remember reading Mark Bowden's original newspaper series on the events. I don't recall any mention of Al Qaeda claiming responsibility at the time. In fact the term Al Qaeda was not even in widespread use until the 1998 embassy bombings.

A quick web search backs this up. Osama bin Laden did not claim a connection to the attacks until 1997, 4 years later:

In October 1993, 18 U.S. servicemen involved in the U.S. humanitarian relief effort in Somalia were killed during an operation in Mogadishu. One soldier's body was dragged through the streets.

Bin Laden was indicted in 1996 on charges of training the people involved in the attack and in a 1997 interview with CNN, bin Laden said his followers, together with local Muslims, killed those troops.

For comparison, bin Laden stated that Arabs were responsible for 9/11, in an interview only a few months after 9/11. Interestingly enough, in this same CNN article, bin Laden also denies a connection to the embassy bombings:

On August 7, 1998, eight years after the U.S. deployment in Saudi Arabia, a pair of truck bombs exploded outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Bin Laden has denied responsibility, but prosecutors allege his culpability is evident on faxes sent by his London cell to at least three international media outlets. They also point to incriminating statements by certain alleged embassy bombers who are admitted al Qaeda members.

So much for the theory that Al Qaeda always takes credit for its attacks. In fact, it is easier to find cases where they deny responsibility.

Messages from Osama bin Laden

While I unfortunately missed the actual broadcast, I was interested in Kevin Barrett's interview, discussed here, with Bruce Lawrence, described by Barrett as "America's top bin Laden expert". So I decided to look into this professor, and see if he is really who Barrett claims he is, and if he really backs up Barrett's claims.

First of all, he is a professor of religious studies at Duke University, although for whatever reason, he is not teaching currently. Looking up his university webpage bizarrely forces you to his personal website, without allowing you to stay at the original. His personal website appears designed to sell books more than anything.

Unlike most of the Scholars for 9/11 "Truth" (Lawrence doesn't appear to belong to any of the 3 splinter groups) he appears qualified in a relevant field. Although his rather out-of-date C.V. shows degrees in religious studies, rather than language or history, he does appear to have a fair amount of experience, some abroad, in the study of Islam, and even the Arabic language. Claiming that he is America's top expert on Osama bin Laden might be a bit of an exaggeration though, as far as I can tell Dr. Lawrence has not actually written a single book on Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. The closest he has come is a 1989 book on Islamic fundamentalism titled "Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age". Perhaps this just speaks to the lack of academic work in this area by American scholars?

What Lawrence has worked on, however, is as the editor of a book titled Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden. Aside from the 21 page introduction though, he did not write the book, it is just a compilation of bin Laden speeches. In fact he didn't even translate it, that was done by a man named James Howarth. It is still a work worth further research though, so I endeavored to search the dusty leather-bound tomes of Suzallo Library for a copy.

What I found was rather interesting. In this book, Dr. Lawrence does not question the authenticity of any of bin Laden's speeches, in fact the only mention of this issue is by Howarth, who wrote the following in the translator's notes:

Nevertheless, although the question of authenticity inevitably arises when ever a message is released in bin Laden's name, the 24 statements in this collection, issued over a 10 year period, have all been accepted by a majority of the experts who have examined them.

Additionally, not a single one of the 24 statements published in this work include any denial by bin Laden of complicity in 9/11. The two incidences where Barrett claims that bin Laden denied involvement, are completely absent from the book. In fact at least 4 of the statements included, explicitly state that the attack was carried out by Arabs. Starting with an October 21st 2001 interview (page 112):

These repercussions cannot be calculated by anyone, due to their very large - and no less than $1 trillion by the lowest estimate, due to these succesful and blessed attacks. We implore God to accept those brothers within the ranks of the martyrs, and to admit them to the highest levels of Paradise.

Continuing in the same interview, from page 119:

As for the World Trade Center, the ones who were attacked and who died in it were part of a financial power. It wasn't a children's school! Neither was it a residence. And the general consensus is that most of the people who were in the towers were men that backed the biggest financial force in the world, which spreads mischief throughout the world. And those individuals should stand before God and rethink and redo their calculations. We treat others like they treat us. Those who kill our women and our innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they stop doing so.

Later, from a December 26th, 2001 statement titled, "Nineteen Students" (from page 149):

It was not nineteen Arab states that did this deed [9/11]. It was not Arab armies or ministries who humbled the oppressor who harms us in Palestine and elsewhere. It was nineteen post-secondary students - I beg God Almighty to accept them - who shook America's throne, struck its economy right in the heart, and dealt the biggest military power a mighty blow, by the grace of God Almighty.

From a February 14th, 2003 statement (page 194):

One of the most important positive effects of our attacks on New York and Washington was to expose the reality of the struggle between the Crusaders and the Muslims, and to demonstrate the enormous hostility that the Crusader feels toward us.

From an October 29th, 2004 statement (page 242):

For example, al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the September 11 attacks, while America lost more than $500 billion, at the lowest estimate, in the event and its aftermath. That makes a million American dollars for every al-Qaeda dollar, by the grace of God Almighty.

He continues later to mock President Bush on the same page:

For your information, we agreed with the general commander Mohammed Atta, may God bless his soul, to carry out all operations within twenty minutes, before Bush and his administration could be aware of them, and it did not occur to us that the Commander-in-Chief of the American armed forces would leave fifty thousand of his citizens in the two towers to face this great horror on their own, just when they needed him most. It seems that a little girl's story about a goat and its butting was more important than dealing with aeroplanes and their butting into skyscapers. This gave us three timess the amount of required time to carry out the operations, praise be to God.

There are even more speeches where bin Laden praises the attacks, although he makes no mention of who carried it out, presumably though, if bin Laden were actually denouncing the attacks, or thought it was carried out by the Americans in order to blame him, he would not be praising them. There is, however, no denial or any indication by Lawrence that any of these admissions are fraudulent.