No closure for 9/11 victims' families and survivors

This really pisses me off to no end. Since the very first hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001 we have been fed a string of lies, and stonewalled from getting any real answers to very serious questions. And now the whitewash is complete. No body, no photos, and weak promises of "Bin Laden is dead."

Well, he may indeed be dead. But this whole yarn spun straight from the pages of some Tom Clancy novel is a bunch of bullshit. So let's just recap the events of the past few days here to get the facts straight.

Late Sunday night, while most people in America were going to bed, we began to hear rumors that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Initial reports from "inside White House sources" said that he had been killed in a missile strike about a week earlier, and that the news was delayed so that they could positively identify the remains through DNA analyses.

But when U.S. President Barack Obama came to the podium in the White House to make the official televised announcement, the story was quite a bit different. According to the President, OBL was killed that very day, in a daring raid by commandos. Okay, fine. Maybe some miscommunication in there, maybe a little deliberate obfuscation by the inside sources to cover their own butts for talking to the press. I roll my eyes, but okay, let's give a little benefit of doubt there. But let's have a look now at how the rest of the story has unfolded.

To begin with, the White House has already changed their story a number of times since the President's official announcement. Now we are not talking about leaked insider information being misinterpreted. We are talking about the White House making authoritative statements of fact, and then reversing themselves. The excuse they use is "the fog of war." Bullshit I say. If they didn't "know" they wouldn't have shared the information. They keep slipping up, getting called on it, and have to change their story each time to make it appear believable.

The Raid.

So as I said, it went from a missile strike a week earlier, to a daring commando raid on a compound less than a mile from a prestigious Pakistani military academy. Doesn't say much for Pakistan's ability to protect their borders for one thing. Okay though, let's assume that it was within the capabilities of US elite forces, without any Pakistani clearance, to storm a compound a mile away from their equivalent to our West Point.

As it is being reported now, a forty-man group of operators from CIA SOG, and so-called SEAL Team 6 (who don't even officially exist), flying in two Blackhawk helicopters descended upon the compound in the dark of night. There was a "fierce" firefight, even though, according to their own reports, OBL had no body guards. Several people are reportedly killed, including two couriers, the same couriers it is believed who led them to the compound to start with, and one of OBL's sons. One of OBL's wives is allegedly wounded in the raid as well, and another woman is killed.

The raid culminates with the execution of the alleged terror mastermind himself, Osama Bin Laden, with a precise shot to the forehead, and another in the chest. Initial reports claim that he was armed and that he used his wife as a shield. But as it turns out now, he did not use his wife as a shield, and in fact was not even armed. So what does that really say about our most elite military unit? That they cannot take in an unarmed man alive. A man who should have been taken alive at all costs even if he was armed. Forget about the moral questions of arbitrarily executing an unarmed man, even one so loathed as OBL. But consider the treasure trove of intelligence that was lost by killing him, if in fact he was the terror mastermind he has been made out to be all along.

The dead part of "wanted, dead or alive" is there because we were willing to pay for his remains if someone else killed him. US forces though? US forces should have taken him alive at all costs. It is clear though, that this operation never intended to take him alive at all. This was an assassination mission right from the start. Why? Because we already know everything he knows. We did not need to wrest any information from him. We needed to silence him. And why the "need" to silence him? Well ask yourself this. Why wasn't he wanted for the 9/11 attacks? On his official wanted posted at the FBI, not a single mention of 9/11.

And al-Qaeda? No such thing.

He needed to be brought to justice so that the world would know once and for all that OBL was indeed the terror-chief he has been portrayed as ever since 9/11. That indeed the threat has been real all along, and not staged to further American geo-political agendas, imperialism and war profiteering by the corporations who control the US government.

At some point during the raid one of the helicopters went down due to some mechanical failure. Some reports say that it overheated from hovering for too long in ambient air temps that were too high. So somehow they managed to squeeze 40 men and a dead body into a single helicopter along with a "treasure trove" of computer hardware.

The compound had no internet connection and no telephones, yet contained this supposedly marvelous cache of intelligence data. And nevermind of course, that they had just executed the most important piece of intelligence they could have ever gotten their hands on.

The Body.

Along with the assassination team and the electronics hardware, the body of Osama Bin Laden was loaded onto the Blackhawk helicopter, and brought back to a base in Afghanistan. A base allegedly so modern and well equipped in the middle of the most ferocious war zone in a third world country, that they were able to make a thorough and conclusive DNA identification of the remains, in a matter of a few hours.

Meanwhile, here in New York State, an autopsy alone can take days. The full lab reports in a the recent high-profile murder of teenage girl who's body was dumped in a suburban ballpark took over a month to complete. Yet in the middle of some stone-aged desert town the U.S. managed to get a conclusive, highly technological, complete scientific analyses of the remains of the most wanted criminal in history done in a matter of a few hours. Of course, we had to do this, in order to make sure that we conformed with Islamic custom to bury the body as soon as possible. How convenient.

So we bury the body in the Arabian Sea. Wait what? We go to all this trouble and then just dump his body in the ocean. What ocean? The Arabian Sea. Now, I know most Americans are terrible at geography and if they actually looked at a map they couldn't tell you the difference between Australia and Afghanistan, but here's a big clue folks. They are opposites, Australia is an island, surrounded by ocean. Afghanistan on the other hand, is a land-locked country, surrounded by the land of other coutnries. There is no ocean on any of it's borders.

Abbottabad, the city where this raid is said to have taken place, is on the Northwestern frontier of Pakistan, along their disputed border with India. That city is a thousand miles from any ocean. So we rushed the body from Abbottabad, to some base in Afghanistan, did a rush autopsy, lab work and DNA test, then packed his corpse onto some other aircraft, another helicopter or light transport plane capable of landing on an aircraft carrier over a thousand miles away, to get his body dumped in the ocean in less then 24 hours. The flight times alone for such a journey really stretch the believability if you stop to actually think about this story we are being told.

Okay, so let's assume that the bullshit story of trying to conform to Islamic tradition is true. We really did want to bury him with the dignity of his faith which says it should be done quickly. Why dump him in the ocean? That is actually an affront to his religious dignity. A Muslim who dies on land is supposed to be buried in the land. Now their faith does allow for burial at sea if the person dies at sea and cannot be buried in the land, but that was not the case here. It is also offensive to transport the body. Muslims are supposed to be buried in the land where they died, and are not to be transported. The body is to be washed and shrouded, placed in a Mosque, funeral prayers offered, and then be buried within 24 hours.

Tombstones, elaborate grave markers, and gravesite offerings are discouraged. Which basically shoots down the American excuse that they didn't want his grave to turn into some terrorist shrine. Besides that, there were plenty of other things that could have been done to prevent that. Like bringing the damn body back to the States for one thing. For another, they didn't seem so concerned about what happened to the corpse when they offered to turn over the body to Saudi Arabia, who declined.

Okay, to recap, we went out out of our way and bent over backwards for one tenet of his Islamic faith while ignoring just about all the other funeral traditions, and while ignoring the need for scientific analyses of the remains, to pack his dead ass back onto another helicopter and fly him over a thousand miles, back out across Pakistan by the way, to drop him on a ship and dump his body in the ocean. And that makes sense to people? Why go to all that trouble to dump him in the ocean if they weren't hiding something?

The Photo.

On the night of the announcement, several main stream media outlets began circulating a picture of what was believed to be the body of Osama bin Laden. A fairly gruesome image, that fits the description that the White House is still using. A bullet entry wound just slightly off center in the forehead, with both eyes exploded in their sockets.

That photo was quickly proved to be a fake, and the propaganda machine was pushed back on its heels. Of course, most of us expected to see a photo, and when the first one proved to be a fake, we expected to see the "real" one. Today, President Obama has decided that he will not release an "authentic" photo of the body. And it appears that a bunch of morons out there are just fine with that.

Supposedly, the President does not want to incite unrest, does not want it plastered over front pages and television screens where the children might see it (oh no, not the children), and is basically saying "America doesn't do that, we are better than that." Yea right. Every other time we killed someone, like Saddam's sons, the pics were released. We have always released pictures of the bodies. And even this time we are doing it. We will get to see pics of OBL's son who died in the raid as well as a few other people in the compound. But no pic of the grand prize.

How the FUCK do Americans find this reasonable?

Especially considering all the questions and conspiracy theory swirling about 9/11 still a decade later, this event had to be executed perfectly. to give real closure to the victim's families and survivors of the 9/11 attacks. To leave Americans no doubt whatsoever that Osama bin Laden was dead, and that the whole thing went down the way they said it went down. But nooo, our government couldn't even get that right. You know why don't you?

I mean seriously, are they just trying to prove how fuckin stoopid Americans really are?!