Opinion Editorials, September 2009

Osama Bin Laden Has Been Dead Since December 2001

By Feroze Mithiborwala

ccun.org, September 14, 2009

 
"If they didn't have an Osama Bin Laden, they would have invented one."
Milt Bearden - CIA agent, in an interview with anchor Dan Rather of the CBS (September 12, 2001)

"The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama Bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11".
(Rex Tomb, spokesman, FBI's Chief of Investigative Publicity)
 
Now that even Asif Ali Zardari the President of Pakistan & General Musharraf are stating that Bin Laden is dead, it is high time that we in India began to both debate as well as challenge this sheer calumny.

Basically the truth and the fact of the matter is that Bin Laden has been dead since the latter half of December 2001. So then why did Bush-Cheney & now the Obama-Hillary combine, as well as the Neoconservatives & Zionist ideologues, continue to insist & actively propagate the myth of Bin Laden?
 
First let us address the 'Politics of Fear', that is an integral part of the flawed 'Global War on Terror', which is part of the Neo-Zioncon doctrine of 'Controlled Chaos'. The ghost of Bin Laden serves multiple purposes both at the Global and Indian context. In India, Bin Laden is used to generate fear in the mind of the Hindu community, the epitome of "Islamic terror" and thus distrust & hatred for the Muslim is its natural corollary.
 
For the Muslims he is meant to be the "false hero" and to wrongly inspire youth to follow the flawed path of extremism and terror.
 
The other primary strategy in propagating the myth of Bin Laden is so that every political struggle against US-Zionist Imperialism is converted into a struggle for the supposed cause of Islam and Muslims and thus reduce every struggle to a narrow religio-sectarian agenda, to the negation of all political, economic & social factors. Every Bin Laden message appeals to "Muslims to wage a jehad against Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists". The agenda is to communalise, divide, confuse and thus weaken society. The agenda is also to further isolate and marginalise Muslims from the mainstream struggles & spread Islamophobia. For example the Palestinian national freedom struggle against Israeli colonial occupation is reduced to a mere Muslim cause as per Bin Laden's announcements & thus weaken the global Palestinian solidarity movement which is today striving for the total "Boycott of Israel".
 
Now let us come to a few facts that will help us establish that Bin Laden has been dead since the last eight years and more.
 
During the period 4-14th of July, 2001 (only two months prior to the 9/11-WTC terror attacks), Bin Laden was in the American Hospital in Dubai. According to the United Press International (Oct 31, 2001), Bin Laden underwent kidney surgery and treatment under Dr. Terry Callaway. According to both the French "Le Figaro" & the "Radio France International", Bin Laden was visited by a top US-CIA agent. This report and the one below are further substantiated by CBS anchor Dan Rather, Peter Bergen, investigative journalist Barry Petersen and Prof. Michel Chussodovsky.
More astonishing is the fact that just a day prior to the September 11 attacks, Bin Laden was undergoing treatment in the Military Hospital in Rawalpindi itself (Le Figaro - Jan 28, 2002). So both the Pakistani Military establishment and the ISI as well as the CIA were more than aware of Bin Laden's whereabouts.

A few days later Dr. Sanjay Gupta (a highly respected Indian-American within the Medical fraternity) gave his assessment that both due to the heavy US bombing of the Taleban areas as well as the fact that kidney dialysis requires a special environment, it is impossible for a patient to survive beyond a week.

According to Pentagon sources, Bin Laden's voice could not be detected beyond December 14, 2001.
Reports of Bin Laden's death have been so widespread that it is a wonder as to how the myth of OBL has been kept alive. Now consider the following reports:

Dale Watson, the FBI chief of counter-terrorism said on BBC that he thought that OBL was dead.
In fact the announcement of OBL's death and the funeral as well, appeared in the Egytian newspaper Al-Wafd on December 26, 2001. Also refer to an article by Robert Burns (26/04/02) on this matter.

Even the Israeli intelligence had announced the death (World Tribune). They also said that the new messages are possibly fabrications.

Reports of his death have appeared in the New York Times (July 11, 2002) as well the Guardian (UK) and the Telegraph (UK).

Both Musharraf and Karzai have been reported saying the same on CNN.

Most recently the most remarkable revelation on this matter was made by none other than the late Benazir Bhutto. In an interview with David Frost on Al-Jazeerah English (November 2, 2007), she made the stunning announcement that Bin Laden was dead and had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. Interestingly Omar Sheikh was an ISI operative and was also responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl. The most telling part is the deafening silence of the International media.

The BBC did carry this interview but edited this line.

WHY??

If this is not "Breaking News", then what is?

Does not this statement warrant international attention? Would not have this statement guaranteed higher TRP ratings and increased newspaper circulation? But not a word. The complicity of the corporate media is apparent.
 
But then people ask me and rightly so that, "what about all these Bin Laden-Al Qaeda tapes?, how do you explain that?". So lets deal with that issue as well.
 
Bin Laden tapes have appeared prior to his death in December 2001, but since then the world has been subjected to a barrage of fake tapes. Prof. Bruce Lawrence of Duke University, is the world's leading expert on these tapes and has studied every tape since then and it is his analysis and that of Diana Lee, Wayne Madsen as well as others that I put before you.

The first fake Bin laden tape was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001 and found in a deserted house in Jalalabad. It shows a stout and healthy man posing as Laden and making the claims of the destruction of the WTC. The most glaring error in the video is that the Laden duplicate is signing the confession letter with his right hand. Bin Laden used his left!

Another Laden video appeared just prior to the US presidential election on October 29, 2004, a few days after Bush had lost the first Presidential debate to John Kerry the Democratic nominee. The calls for a jehad against America helped to boost Bush's ratings and was a factor in his ultimate victory.

The Bin laden audio tapes began to arrive in 2002. These tapes were also meant to achieve and create a climate of fear at the global level. However the experts at the IDIAP, the world's premier voice identification institute based in Switzerland, have clearly stated that the voice on the tapes was not that of Bin Laden.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda tapes have also appeared in India and the political agenda is the same. Last year (June 8, 2007) an Al Qaeda tape surfaced in Kashmir claiming that Al Qaeda had established a base in India. It appeared only a day after an Israeli Military delegation arrived in India to advice the government to combat "Islamic terror in Kashmir". Even certain Indian intelligence and military sources rejected the tape as a fake.

But now the pattern at the global level of releasing the Bin Laden-Al Qaeda tapes has undergone a remarkable change. Earlier there would be a direct relay of the tapes without any fanfare. But now unbelievably the release is accompanied with a curtain raiser at a global scale. The release of the tapes is announced a few days prior to the final release. The news of the same appears in practically every newspaper and channel of note the world over. The ground is prepared to ensure that as many people as possible see the tape and register its message of fear and hatred. It is basically akin to a curtain raiser for a new movie or a music video.
 
Consider the following:

It was on the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that we were subjected to this mirage. The announcement of the new Bin Laden message flooded the airwaves and newspapers. We then saw a Bin Laden, hale and hearty and with a black beard. The reports stated that Laden's bodyguard (where did he come from and did he have a name?) had "revealed" that Bin Laden was healthy and was living with his four wives (how cliched!), in a compound (where, which country, city, location?). The media did not ask a single question. Worse was to follow. After a few days we had another Bin Laden photograph plastered all over the front pages, but this time with a "white beard". Did the dye run off or had he lost his virility?. It was all so ridiculous, but they got away with it.

Then the Mumbai Mirror (29/05/08) reported that a new Laden tape is due in the next 24 hours. What's more, this time the contents of the tape were also known to the "sources" even prior to the release. So we know then as to who writes all the scripts for these tapes, don't we?. The report ominously states that the tape "will urge jehadis to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons against civilians". It quotes intelligence sources that have spoken to ABC News.
I too was very confused in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks but I began to ask questions and seek answers independent of the corporate media, as the unfolding socio-economic and political scenario did not make rational sense. The incident that made me question and challenge the dominant paradigm was the following.
 
On the 14th of February 2003, prior to the final US-NATO attack on Iraq, an Al Qaeda tape appeared. It asked the Muslims of the world to unite and wage a jehad against the Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists of the world. I was too stunned because of the simple fact that I was aware that on the next day the Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, people of faith and none, were going to march in their millions across the streets of USA, South America, Canada, Europe, Australia along with their Muslim brethren to oppose the impending war on Iraq. Clearly, the Al Qaeda tape had been released with the specific agenda to divide the masses of the world and further serve to demonise the Muslims. From that day I began to maintain a record of the Al Qaeda tapes and I found a design, a clear objective and purpose that was basically serving the cause of the Zionist empire.
 
Terror is and has always been an instrument of Imperial Zionist foreign policy. It is the politics of terror that is reshaping the geo-strategic and economic map as well as leading to the deepening of the religio-cultural & ethnic fault lines across the world. It is the myths of terror that seek to confuse and weaken the anti-imperialist masses and their struggles against neo-liberal globalization and perpetuate hatred for Muslims and spread Islamophobia, which itself is now a global phenomenon.
 
Thus it is imperative that we expose these myths and the lies of Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. It is actually a very simple task and it must be done.