Ian Williams September10, 2007 9:00am Osama At Large
The US senate, in all solemnity, sat last week and voted to double the reward for the apprehension of Osama bin Laden to $50m. So $25m was not enough to motivate the military and security forces of the world's superpower to catch the slippery Saudi? Or is it possible that there is another reason why Osama, for all the rewards being offered, has still not been caught?
Reading Cif commenters can often lead one to the conclusion that not a sparrow falls unless it has been shot by Islamic militants, poisoned by the CIA, or had its sense of direction befuddled by the Trilateral Commission. In my experience most such "plots" are just an attempt by bystanders to rationalize unbelievable and culpable stupidity on the part of governments.
On September 11, 2001, I lived down by the World Trade Centre, watched it happen, and lived in the poisonous fug of the noxious funeral pile for the rest of the year.
The Murdoch tabloids at the time carried front page pics of the beturbanned Osama Bin Laden which all the downtown shops prominently displayed:"Wanted, Alive or Dead," they proclaimed. Understandable. And then they disappeared as the war drums began to beat against Iraq, too be replaced with the omnipresent triptych of Osama, Saddam and the burning WTC.
Of course neither the tabloids nor the cable news media went out of their way to point out that Osama bin Laden was a former prot�g� of the CIA and its Pakistani surrogates, which is why one of my earliest hopes for a silver lining, that Americans might realize that foreign policy was not something that exclusively happened to foreigners, soon evaporated.
But reading the transcript of the latest OBL tape - which apart from its invocation to Islamic conversion could indeed read like a Guardian editorial on geopolitics - does raise the question of what he is still doing at large, with access to video cameras, hair dye and barbers?
Is it significant that OBL did not discourse on issues such as gay marriage, evolution, abortion and faith-based organizations, where his black heart beats in close harmony with those of the conservative right?
Conspiracy theorists should be asking the question: "Objectively, who benefits from allowing this malevolent, self-confessed mass murderer to remain at large?"
Well, think about an administration that has used the terrorist bogeyman to justify outright war on two countries and threatens another. One that has declared economic and diplomatic war on others; that has used the terrorist threat to build up its arms budget to unprecedented heights; that has extended the prerogatives of the president beyond all constitutional measure - and invented a whole set of them for the vice-president.
Would all this have been possible if Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice and revealed to be just a ramblingly discursive, albeit murderous, faith-based fanatic?
It's a tough call, and on the face of it, it's more plausible than the average conspiracist plot to think that OBL is out on license to allow the Bush administration to frighten voters when they go to bed.
But on the realist side, the spectacular incompetence and mendacity of this White House is demonstrable. They did indeed get the wrong man and go after Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with 9/11 - while letting the man in the turban escape.
On the dilemma front it's the equivalent of choosing between the proffered conversion to Islam or the callow conservative brand of fundamentalist evangelism espoused by the White House.
But I rather discount the chances of anyone collecting the senate's munificent reward until after the coming debacle in Iran, which we will, of course, have to bomb in case the Ayatollahs there are sheltering the man who regards Iranian Shi'as to be heretical abominations.
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`We have come to such a pass, that it is the first duty of intelligent men to restate the obvious' - George Orwell
Adam28bansGhaznavi's Response:The entire USA political economic position is based on the Petrodollar...
(Itself the geo strategic extension of the Federal Reserve, a PRIVATE bank controlled by a Rothschilds led cabal that prints fiat currency it then lends the USA govt, which then raises taxes to pay said loans. Eg: Executive Order 11110: �On June 4, 1963 President Kennedy signed this virtually unknown Presidential decree, which had the authority to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest, essentially putting the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank out of business. The order returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Johnson reversed the order shortly after taking office in November, 1963. Some conspiracy theorists believe this executive order was the cause of President Kennedy's assassination.�)
...The secret agreement brokered by Kissinger (when the USA fell off the gold standard in 1971) in 1973 with the Saudis (as swing producer able to flood the market & destroy any state defying their policy) that ALL oil be sold in $. THIS preserved the $ status as global reserve currency & gave the USA an unlimited credit card, enabling it to pass off the costs of its institutionalised hyperinflation ($9Trillion nat debt, $60Trillion accumalated other liabilities as per brookings institute estimates & the $415Trillion derivatives pyramid � according to Bank of International Settlements estimates) onto other states just by PRINTING $ & fund the army required to protect the petrodollar (costing more than the rest of the planet's put together) via the same printing press. THIS is how the cold war was �won�, by bankrupting the USSR, by bankrupting the world.
(Eg USA petrodollar regime allied themselves with Saudi monarchy, who as custodians of Mecca had to cover themselves from the threat of leftist or Islamic fascist jihadi convergence; & allied themselves with the most reactionary fascist forces by giving them vast amounts of danegeld to make trouble elsewhere. ESPECIALLY Pakistan. Eg from where, Zbigniew Brzezinski [pictured at bottom of link with Osama Bin Laden]... ...orchestrated the development of the mujahadeen including one Osama Bin Laden, to draw the Russians into invading out of fear of their central Asian missile bases being over-run with jihadis)
THIS is why old soviet central Asia, Iraq & Eastern Europe are ringed with an arc of USA bases. To keep the oil/ gas sold in $ & help subvert any govt (eg Putin's who sells his oil in Roubles) not complying.
THIS is why Saddam Hussein was deposed, because he sold his oil in Euros, making 17% more on his deals than his neighbours�. �This is why the Iranians are being targeted by USA naval nuclear build up, because they are opening up a non $ oil bourse. This is why even Chavez was subject to coup attempt in 2002, because he switched to Euros.
THIS is why Putin is being subject to assassination plots & attempts to overthrow him (with Berezovsky as focal point of the plot - encompassing petrodollar fiends, dispossessed oligarchs, neo cons & shadowy finance, think Jacob Rothschild, friend of Mikhail Khordokhovsky who also purchased this so called 'political prisoner's' shares in Yukos, becase Putin switched from $ to demanding payment in Roubles. THIS is WHY the $ is finally dying.
& why the regime has no choice but to give away California for Anbar province to keep the psycho political focus of its own people divided to retain control of the geo strategic pol/econ agenda; (hence the orthodox left in backing unrestrained migration functions as the tragic internal prop to hyperfascism.)
This is ALSO why the USA Fed Resrve cabal seeks a strategy of tension pretext/ atrocity (as Zbigniew Brzezinski warned ); to try & bring in the AMERO/ North American Union at the point of a smoking nuclear sixshooter. SO that they can try to:
1) write off the old debts 2) have an endless supply of cannon fodder for more wars to prop up the Amero with other states' oil & gas. 3) Portray white USA citizens as `not pulling their weight' in the `war on terror', enabling them more easily to be drafted; including by Mexican Zetas.
Much More Info on: The Controlled Demolition of the Petrodollar Imperium: