[Peace-discuss] OSB-2

[E. Wayne Johnson]

"My mother was a Bozo-ette in high school".

Paul Craig Roberts weighs in on latest box-office sensation in the 
American Theatre.


Osama bin Laden’s Second Death

by Paul Craig Roberts
Trends Research Institute

If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s 
joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a 
firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take 
it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the 
gullibility of Americans.

Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering 
from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted 
with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for 
a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and 
medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of 
dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to 
find him?

Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media 
celebrating bin Laden’s death, that "bin Laden used his millions to 
bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and 
Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with 
fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, 
Tajikistan and Bosnia." That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to 
bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), 
but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money 
about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds 
in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the 
most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 
million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute 
payments to his far-flung operations?

This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks 
from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from 
celebrants waving flags and chanting "USA USA." Could something else be 
going on?

No doubt President Obama is in desperate need of a victory. He committed 
the fool’s error of restarting the war in Afghanistan, and now after a 
decade of fighting the US faces stalemate, if not defeat. The wars of 
the Bush/Obama regimes have bankrupted the US, leaving huge deficits and 
a declining dollar in their wake. And re-election time is approaching.

The various lies and deceptions, such as "weapons of mass destruction," 
of the last several administrations had terrible consequences for the US 
and the world. But not all deceptions are the same. Remember, the entire 
reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place was to get bin Laden. 
Now that President Obama has declared bin Laden to have been shot in the 
head by US special forces operating in an independent country and buried 
at sea, there is no reason for continuing the war.

Perhaps the precipitous decline in the US dollar in foreign exchange 
markets has forced some real budget reductions, which can only come from 
stopping the open-ended wars. Until the decline of the dollar reached 
the breaking point, Osama bin Laden, who many experts believe to have 
been dead for years, was a useful bogeyman to use to feed the profits of 
the US military/security complex.