Sorry, But I Don’t Believe This Gonzalo Lira breaks down troublesome aspects of the bin Laden mythos. Excerpts:
My readers know I don’t truck in conspiracy theories. I believe Elvis is dead, I believe Paul never died, I believe 9/11 was a terrorist incident, and I believe Neil Armstrong did in fact land on the moon.
But I don’t believe Osama Bin Laden was killed over the weekend.
..
Just to be clear, I do not believe Bin Laden is still alive. I believe what a lot of intelligence analysts have been privately saying for a long time now: That Bin Laden died of kidney failure in December 2001, and that he was buried by his followers in an unmarked grave in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After all, it was a known fact that Bin Laden had severe kidney problems. People who spoke with him in 2000 and 2001 said how sick he looked, and described symptoms that matched kidney failure. From these accounts, the international intelligence community was pretty much in agreement that he had some sort of severe kidney problems. Without dialysis or a kidney transplant—neither which would have been available to him in the aftermath of 9/11—he wouldn’t have much chance of long term survival.
..
Bizarre: That the mastermind of the most egregious terrorist attack in U.S. history—the worst mass killing of American citizens on U.S. soil since the Civil War, as I understand it—was treated so la-di-da by the American defense and intelligence communities.
Yet after 2003, for the next eight years, the American military offered up a mere token effort to find him “dead or alive”. An attitude that makes absolutely no sense at all—
—unless you already know that the man is dead, and that his body will likely never be found.
This was my impression: The American defense and intelligence agencies knew he was dead, and knew they would never likely find his body. In fact a couple of intelligence types I know privately confirmed this line of thinking.
And:
The whole story smells: Where he was supposedly located; how he was shot twice in the head, rather than captured; how he was buried at sea; how there’s (so far) no picture of his corpse.
The American military might claim that they held on to bits of DNA samples of the corpse they say is Osama Bin Laden’s. They might claim that this is proof positive that he is dead. But as far as I’m concerned—and I’m a non-conspiracy, fairly skeptical sort—I’ll never believe them. A lab report is not the same as an actual corpse.
To insist: I do not for a second doubt that he is indeed dead. I just don’t believe that he was killed this past weekend. I believe that he died quite some time ago—years ago, in fact.
In my mind, whoever was killed this weekend was not Osama Bin Laden.
And, most importantly..
Someone might argue that, if what I think is true—that Bin Laden died years ago, and this is some big old hoax—then what would be the point of this hoax?
Yup. One might argue that.
My readers know I don’t truck in conspiracy theories. I believe Elvis is dead, I believe Paul never died, I believe 9/11 was a terrorist incident, and I believe Neil Armstrong did in fact land on the moon.
But I don’t believe Osama Bin Laden was killed over the weekend.
..
Just to be clear, I do not believe Bin Laden is still alive. I believe what a lot of intelligence analysts have been privately saying for a long time now: That Bin Laden died of kidney failure in December 2001, and that he was buried by his followers in an unmarked grave in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After all, it was a known fact that Bin Laden had severe kidney problems. People who spoke with him in 2000 and 2001 said how sick he looked, and described symptoms that matched kidney failure. From these accounts, the international intelligence community was pretty much in agreement that he had some sort of severe kidney problems. Without dialysis or a kidney transplant—neither which would have been available to him in the aftermath of 9/11—he wouldn’t have much chance of long term survival.
..
Bizarre: That the mastermind of the most egregious terrorist attack in U.S. history—the worst mass killing of American citizens on U.S. soil since the Civil War, as I understand it—was treated so la-di-da by the American defense and intelligence communities.
Yet after 2003, for the next eight years, the American military offered up a mere token effort to find him “dead or alive”. An attitude that makes absolutely no sense at all—
—unless you already know that the man is dead, and that his body will likely never be found.
This was my impression: The American defense and intelligence agencies knew he was dead, and knew they would never likely find his body. In fact a couple of intelligence types I know privately confirmed this line of thinking.
And:
The whole story smells: Where he was supposedly located; how he was shot twice in the head, rather than captured; how he was buried at sea; how there’s (so far) no picture of his corpse.
The American military might claim that they held on to bits of DNA samples of the corpse they say is Osama Bin Laden’s. They might claim that this is proof positive that he is dead. But as far as I’m concerned—and I’m a non-conspiracy, fairly skeptical sort—I’ll never believe them. A lab report is not the same as an actual corpse.
To insist: I do not for a second doubt that he is indeed dead. I just don’t believe that he was killed this past weekend. I believe that he died quite some time ago—years ago, in fact.
In my mind, whoever was killed this weekend was not Osama Bin Laden.
And, most importantly..
Someone might argue that, if what I think is true—that Bin Laden died years ago, and this is some big old hoax—then what would be the point of this hoax?
Yup. One might argue that.
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