Monday, May 9, 2011

No tales from dead OBL

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9/2011



Assuming the real Osama bin Laden was still alive when Obama ordered the US Navy SEALs to raid his Abbottabad lair, and considering that no firefight ensued during the assault as officially reported, why did they have to kill this most wanted “terrorist leader?” Was it out of sheer spite or rage, or a vicarious long distance revenge thrill? Or was it something else?

Washington says it had never intended to capture Bin Laden, only to kill him. US officials have repeatedly tried to equate this with “justice.” Three people died in the assault and a video of the “spy thriller” showed blood splatters where there were neither weapons nor empty shells. Is this the “rule of law” America speaks of? Doesn’t this smack of old Westerns and Charles Bronson vigilante flicks?

Even setting all that aside, the real question remains: Doesn’t the US want to know the details of how bin Laden so masterfully executed the so-called 9/11 terror attacks?

A bin Laden caught alive would have been a treasure trove of information: How did he elude the world’s largest intelligence dragnet (by the CIA, Mossad, and all the allied intelligence operations combined) for 10 years? What were the details of his group’s 9/11 World Trade Center attack plans; and who were the contacts?

A living Osama bin Laden would have also been crucial in finally breaking the back of al-Qaeda’s global network (if ever one does exist outside the realm of US intelligence assets). Flushing out these details would have helped prevent the kind of “terrorist backlash” Uncle Sam is now telling the world to brace for.

From a pragmatic standpoint, wouldn’t keeping Osama alive have been more prudent than simply killing him then saying that the photos of his cadaver can’t be shown as these may further inflame hatred toward the West? Didn’t the US for a minute think that the many countries it calls its allies would certainly have wanted to mine bin Laden for intelligence in solving their own terrorism problems, such as RP’s supposed al-Qaeda cells in Mindanao ?

The more one thinks about it, the more the killing of an unarmed target smacks of “a dead man tells no tales” scenario. Whether it was really bin Laden himself or, as some high Pakistani military sources as well as intelligence researcher Webster Tarpley put it, a “pseudo-bin Laden,” the bottom line is the same: His death gives the US a happy closure (however, tenuous that is). The important thing for now is to give the American people a final end to the story.

Never mind if that leaky closure breaks open again as the corpse was hurriedly sank into the sea. Never mind if a forensic autopsy that could still squeeze some final answers is sure to never occur. All that is of utmost significance is the way the US government insists that it meant only to kill, never to capture — making it out as a state out for bloodthirsty vengeance instead of peace.

Human civilization started organizing international bodies, such as the League of Nations and today the UN, to “end all wars.” These institutions established conventions for conflicts across the globe, the rules of engagement, as well as bodies to try war crimes and such.

However, Obama and the US today, and for the past decades, clearly have had none of these. But should we still be surprised at their barbarity after having seen the atrocities at Guantanamo, the extrajudicial “renditions” of suspects to third countries, the massacre of countless civilians by US Predator drones, or the killing of Gaddafi’s grandchildren and son for which US and Nato express no compunction and apologies for? Even a look back at our own Philippine history will reveal the US’ barbarity in its murder of at least a million of our ancestors.

If any, an occasional admission of collateral damage, with one or two trials (out of thousands of cases against US servicemen) is all that has ever come about. Obama’s effusive triumphalism over the “bin Laden” kill project only infuses a dehumanizing, lawless mindset of “endless war” instilled by the likes of “Clash of Civilizations” prophet Samuel Huntington.

Oddly enough, the real underlying debate in the world today is between that “Clash of Civilizations” paradigm and what Eastern nations such as China and Iran continuously proffer as a “Dialogue of Civilizations.”

Unfortunately, in the midst of the blood and hate-mongering, as well as the promotion of “tit-for-tat” terrorism by the most powerful terror state (the US ) against enemy terror bands (e.g., al-Qaeda), dialog is a lost cause. That is, unless the peoples of the world wake up to the subtle psychological ploys in these “spy thrillers” by Western media.

Allowing the global warmongers to get away with their lies is ushering the world into “endless war” and, imminently, pocket nuclear battles. These are already happening with the depleted uranium contamination in such Iraqi towns as Fallujah and in the Nato bombing of Libya .

In 2001, many among the so-called “conspiracy theorists” already predicted that the US was building up toward war when Dubya Bush pronounced the three words that started it all, the “Axis of Evil.” The wars, of course, did come.

Now, after the bin Laden kill, instead of an end to these terror wars, Hillary Clinton warns the world of al-Qaeda retaliation. Yet, as Western covert forces have time and again committed much graver acts of terror and blamed it on others — no different from Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag — the worst case scenario is a “dirty bomb” somewhere in a population center, which will then be blamed on Western targets (Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.) to justify tactical nuclear weapons use.

Ultimately, the goal is the re-colonization of Africa and the Middle East; then a tightened encirclement of China. It’ll be a repeat of the start of the War in the Pacific where the West embargoed oil to Japan.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m.; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, with this week’s topic, “Ten Years of PNAC: Project for a New American Century;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)

The new 9/11 and WMD hoax

CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9-15/2011



The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) north and south towers was not engineered by Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden (OBL) because neither had the means. It was an inside job that had the highest American political and security officials involved.

All these years, they’ve been hiding the fact that these were all controlled demolitions. (Else, how was it that WTC Building 7, which was not hit by any plane, also collapsed?) And so today, 70 percent of New Yorkers already doubt the official government story.

In the background lies Israeli intelligence, together with a Jewish financier who gained at least $3.5-billion in insurance payments and sued for up to $7 billion more. George W. Bush used the post-WTC hysteria to attack Afghanistan which supposedly harbored OBL and then Saddam Hussein, despite his anti-OBL disposition, by “sexing up” propaganda on his cache of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), now totally debunked as a hoax.

This new tale of the US’ killing of OBL is the latest hoax this time around, a new Weapon of Mass “Distraction” to divert people’s attention from the massively negative impact of the US and NATO’s killing of Moammar Gaddafi’s three pre-teen grandchildren and his youngest son Saif al-Arab.

Personally, the impact on me was so great I wanted to write an article entitled “We are all Saif al-Arab today” to commemorate the brutal murder of these innocents by the Western hegemonists. Filipinos may not feel the impact as much as the Arab nations, but the US, NATO, and their Arab puppet allies would have been put in an impossible spot when the bodies of Saif al-Arab and Gaddafi’s grandchildren were presented to the world--which happened but with a muted reaction, owing to the pre-emptive “spy thriller” of OBL’s death (a mood the Americans wanted to project and which the Philippine Daily Inquirer dutifully bannered).

The attention of the world should be on the inhumanity of the US and NATO in Libya, which Obama successfully diverted, along with his own crashing public popularity.

OBL has been a US ally and avatar in the Afghan war against the Russians. The Al Qaeda he is supposed to lead has been exposed again and again in the past. Shortly before his untimely death in August 2005, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Given this reminder, it should not be difficult then to understand why the US, NATO, and Al Qaeda are united in Benghazi, Libya to depose Gaddafi. Al Qaeda was used in Kosovo to break up Yugoslavia. Al Qaeda in Mindanao and the MILF are assets of the US and, when necessary for US interest, will be used to rebel in full against the Republic. They’re not that different from the “peace panel” on the Philippine side, which, being made up of US assets, wants a postponement of the ARMM elections--to weaken local government warlords and strengthen their MILF nemeses.

Teddy “Boy” Locsin was wrong on his morning “Mambobola” program of May 3 where he said the killing of Bin Laden spells the end of the “Anti-Terror War.” It will and is already actually escalating as news headlines across the globe show, with justifications on increased heavy armed presence in public places; greater intrusions into privacy via extra-judicial wiretappings; and websites already banning comments questioning Obama’s story on Bin Laden’s “death” (Huffington Post is one). Hasn’t he learned from the local version of Al Qaeda and OBL, the Abu Sayyaf and leaders just as Abubarak (1998) and Kaddafy Janjanlani (2006), whose deaths authorities claimed would have ended the group’s activities, only to have it (Abu Sayyaf) resurrect endlessly whenever the military needed eruptions of violence to suit its ends?

Locsin is also wrong in fawning over Obama for this “kill” and his endorsement of the US forces’ return to RP, which only promotes a repeat of the victimization of the Philippines in World War II as a “sapper” country. It seems the whole caboodle in “Mambobola” has been taken in by the hoax that OBL was cornered in that little house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which, contrary to US reports, the locals deny is a mansion, just 1.5 kilometers from the Pakistan Military Academy (Pakistan’s own West Point). That area must have always swarmed with security and cadets, yet nobody ever noticed anything? Even my youngest twin boys couldn’t believe Obama especially when it was reported that OBL’s body was buried-at-sea. Someone even commented, “Maybe with military honors as a soldier of the US?”

People should recall that popular and dyed-in-the-wool CBS news anchor Dan Rather’s report on 9/11 where he said a CBS investigation discovered that Osama Bin Laden was admitted for dialysis to the military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on September 10, 2001 under heavy US protection. Fast forward today with that shot of Obama and Hillary Clinton, with their staff, viewing the video of the firefight that supposedly did OBL in, and begin to see flashes of the 1997 “Wag the Dog” flick with Robert de Nero.

Bin Laden, the bogeyman, has been very useful to the US neoconservatives and defense industries for their profit-mongering. The likelihood is that Bin Laden had already died years ago from his kidney failures. There have been numerous assertions in the past from such figures as Benazir Bhutto (before her assassination) that OBL had died. Alex Jones of prisonplanet.com also reports a Republican source telling him OBL has been preserved in cold storage for eventual use. Is that why the alleged corpse was dumped into the ocean?

Former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul went on the Alex Jones Show and described the unverified assassination of OBL as symbolic theater, a “make believe drama” for Obama’s upcoming re-election campaign. We won’t have the whole story for some time but the truth will out soon, like the WMD lie of Bush and the WTC 9/11 hoax. What we should learn, and Teddy Locsin should take this seriously, is not to be taken for a ride by the warmongers who will ruin this world and this country called the Philippines for the nth time.

Meanwhile, let me point out the major historical error in Gloria Arroyo hack Rigoberto Tiglao’s April 28 column on Danding Cojuangco’s coco levy fund machinations. He is correct that the PCGG exemplifies the height of the Yellow government’s incompetence in failing to nail Danding, but his account of the 1992 elections is wrong--it was not Danding who ran to soil Imelda Marcos’ chances for the presidency but the other way around. The real protector of Danding wasn’t Cory Aquino but the Americans who also probably used him in its operation to martyr Ninoy Aquino and force a counter-democratic revolution in 1986.

On the other hand, I have praises for Ellen Tordesillas on Michael Ray Aquino’s possible extradition. Her blog raises the issue of Fr. Baldostamon who witnessed Almonte’s offer to the Dacer children to see their father, provided they maintain their public mourning. Ellen provided information that I had long searched for, the whereabouts of the priest--in Linköping, Sweden. Very good investigative work, Ellen!

(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)