Facing one’s Accusers
There is something quite nasty (and very effective) that I can do to silence you if you challenge a story I tell you. I label you a “conspiracy theorist”, and in two words dismiss you as one of the mentally unbalanced who believes in alien abductions and who saw Elvis at the mall on Saturday.
But what if you’re not mentally unbalanced? What if my story is simply full of holes? What if nothing I say makes any sense, where my logic is flawed, where the pieces just don’t fit together, and where many of my “facts” range from implausible to outrageously false?
Conspiracy theories most often arise because governments lie. At various times, they perpetrate all manner of unsavory or illegal activity and, if exposed, claim ‘plausible deniability’, engage in various cover-ups, spread misinformation, attack their accusers’ character. The truth is admitted only when finally impossible to avoid.
So when the facts don’t add up, when the story doesn’t make sense, we believe we are being lied to yet again. And we probably are.
Graphic representation of aircraft striking the Pentagon on 9-11. Do you recall Iraq’s WMDs? The yellowcake uranium? Saddam’s biological weapons? Iraq’s (fake) links with al Qaeda?
Did you watch the US military video of Iraqi citizens joyfully pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein in the courtyard?
Did you see the entire version, the one where the US army cleared and blocked the square, hoisted a crane to pull down the statue, then had dozens of cameramen filming a couple of hundred totally confused Iraqis cheering on command?
US government propaganda at its best, overflowing with jingoism of Iraq celebrating its “liberation” and welcoming the US as “saviors”. But in fact, just another big lie, made for TV. An “American Moment” scripted for the ignorant and simple-minded.
Do you fondly remember Jessica Lynch, the heroine who wasn’t? or Pat Tillman, the Iraq war poster boy who was shot three times in the head by one of his own comrades? Do you recall the Gulf of Tonkin, where the US military faked an attack on its own ship to justify entrance to the Vietnam war?
You can read brief background articles on Jessica Lynch and on Pat Tillman here.
Have you read all the recent press about the US military purchasing software that permits it to flood the internet social media with fake personas to spread misinformation and to influence and control public opinion in countries all over the world?
Do you recall Ian Tomlinson who died during the London G-20 protest? Government physicians testified under oath the man died from a heart attack, then from “a loss of blood”, but then video showed him being brutalised by the police and further medical autopsies showed that he died from police-inflicted injuries. The policeman is now on trial for manslaughter, but only after a year of coverups and lying by all levels of authority.
Did you read about Adam Nobody, a 27-year-old man who was attacked and beaten by police officers in Toronto during the last G-20 meeting? Police threw him to the ground and kicked in all the bones in his face, police chief Bill Blair claiming the man was “armed and dangerous”. Again, independent video showed a peaceful bystander being attacked without provocation. Chief Blair then claimed the officers responsible could not be identified because they had removed their badges and were wearing face plates. An enormous public outcry magically resulted in identification only a day later and now officers are facing charges.
Did you read about Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered to death by Canada’s RCMP officers in Vancouver in 2007? The police claimed he was agitated and violent, threatening the officers, swinging furniture and they acted in self-defense. But then a bystander’s video showed four policemen approaching a perfectly calm traveller, and without provocation firing their tasers multiple times until the man finally collapsed and died. The government, the police, the legal system, covered up this obvious murder, lied in every way possible, restricted and hamstrung the legal enquiries for years. It is only after four years of coverup and avoidance that some justice may result.
There is a very long list of these stories that can be recited, and this is only with governments and militaries; the mainstream media are, if anything, worse.
There is no shortage of reports of “news” events that in fact never occured, nor any lack of biased and twisted articles, in many cases knowingly misleading and dishonest. And it isn’t only CNN and Fox News who are guilty of such misinformation; the NYT, the Economist magazine, Canada’s Globe and Mail and National Post, and many others are well-known for their gifted (and unapologetic) misrepresentations of reality.
We have all read about Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. But now we discover from Wikileaks that the US Embassy in Beijing stated there was no “massacre”, that no students died there, but in fact all left peacefully after brief negotiations with the military. And we discover that the US government and all the US and Western media had access to this information – not only at the time, but ever since.
And yet successive US governments and various major Western media including the New York Times and the Economist magazine for two egregious examples, have published and fostered the myth of thousands of deaths – totally fabricated in spite of clear evidence to the contrary from the US Embassy in Beijing and numerous foreign reporters whose reports were ignored.
You can read two articles documenting the truth about Tiananmen Square here and here.
These are the people who commit the acts, produce the coverups, deny the truth, accuse the victims, and generally lie about far too much. Who are they to then accuse the public of being “conspiracy theorists”?
Stories that don’t add up
The events of 9-11 have fallen firmly into the realm of conspiracy theory, but not entirely without reason. There are several serious questions that have never been adequately addressed. One is the damage to the Pentagon. A large-diameter civilian aircraft with a wingspan of almost 150 feet flies into a building and leaves only a 2-meter hole, with almost no visible wreckage outside. No wings, no engines, no tail, no charred and twisted remains – and no bodies. Almost nothing in fact – except other holes that appear to have been created by missiles.
Or the clear video footage of the second plane to hit the World Trade Center, with the huge container clearly visible under its right wing – resembling a missile, but far too large; by all appearances a large fuel tank that apparently self-ignites only seconds before the crash. No civilian airliner carries such a container under its wings; what was it doing there?
There are many other such issues with 9-11 but we have only questions, no answers.
There was Flight TWA 800 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic off New York City that was blamed on an electrical short exploding fuel vapors, but that apparently ignored more than 200 eyewitnesses who claimed with some certainty that they saw a missile. Many of these witnesses were airline pilots or military personnel, one of whom apparently stated, “I’ve been in the military for more than 30 years and I know a missile when I see one”. Speculation was that one of the many US military ships and submarines just offshore at the time, had conducted a missile test that had perhaps gone awry.
FBI agents conducted interviews with many of these witnesses, but no verbatim records of the interviews were produced; instead, the agents submitted their own written summaries that witnesses were not permitted to review or correct. When the NTSB held its public inquiries, the FBI prevented them from examining any of the eyewitnesses. No answers; only questions.
You can do your own research on this one, but here is a link to what appears to be a serious collection of eyewitness accounts: Read here
There are many other such events where the official explanation is either non-existent or avoids addressing the obvious deficiencies and anomalies. It is not difficult to admit the very real possibility that a government or military is lying yet one more time. Why wouldn’t we be supicious? Suspecting conspiracies is more rational than the terminal naivete the authorities appears to propose.
Let’s look at the Death of Osama bin Laden
The deceased, prior to killing, washing, shrouding and blessing. We have four military helicopters flying hundreds of kilometers into a country, to a destination less than 35 minutes from the capital.
That destination is Abbottabad, a small town of 100,000 people which, by all media accounts, contains 7 military bases, with the aircraft landing at the target compound situated only a few hundred meters from the country’s main military academy.
The aircraft survive the trip and arrive at their destination, but the local military doesn’t know anything happened.
And that’s because the US military has “new secret stealth technology” that would prevent possibly millions of the local population from hearing the choppers anywhere along the flight path. And besides, they flew “low, between the hills, to avoid the radar”. I know they can do that, because I saw it on TV.
Then we have 77 marines engaged in an “intense 40-minute firefight”, which would have to suggest many hundreds (if not thousands) of rounds being fired each minute, along with grenades being thrown.
Then another 20 minutes to collect the body and the “treasure trove” of computers and data.
Then the marines blow up one of their helicopters, climb aboard the other three and retrace their several-hundred kilometer flight out of the country.
And after a total foreign military excursion lasting about five hours, the local military still doesn’t know anything happened, although in a later version the White House claimed the Pakistani Military “may have scrambled assets”. If this is a true story, its more than just the “assets” that were scrambled.
From this, we can conclude only that the Pakistani military are so incompetent that for the first three hours they didn’t even know anything was happening. And that during the next couple of hours they couldn’t find or track four enemy military aircraft that had just launched an all-out assault on their own home town.
Bin Laden is dead – Let’s Cheer in the Streets
The now-famous fake White House photo-op. Obama, Hillary, military personnel, and the White House staff, intently watching Flintstone reruns while waiting for news of the Pakistan invasion. What proof do we have that bin Laden was really there and was actually killed in this exercise?
Well, first of all, and most importantly, we have the DNA match. We’re told that “Hours after bin Laden was killed, his corpse was flown to Afghanistan to be identified through DNA analysis”. Readers may not be aware that every well-equipped commando team carries a genetic lab on almost all missions and are fully trained to do DNA matches on a moment’s notice.
Accurate DNA testing normally takes a couple of weeks though in some cases it can be done faster. However, we are fortunate that someone unspecified (only weeks before the raid) “invented” a new test that can be done in only a few hours.
Then of course, bin Laden’s 11-year-old daughter confirmed that she saw him killed. Unfortunately, she “was taken into custody” by the local authorities and nobody in the world will ever have access to her again.
And we also have bin Laden’s wife who also was there and saw him killed, but who also was unfortunately “taken into custody” by the local authorities and nobody in the world will ever have access to her again.
And of course we have the photos of the body, but which are unfortunately “too gruesome” to ever show anyone – much more gruesome than all the torture and other photos we’ve already seen. But the US reveled in publicly displaying the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s two sons whom they killed in their invasion. Why weren’t those photos too gruesome for the public to see?
The photos can’t be shown because that might inflame “Anti-American sentiiment”, and heaven knows we don’t want that. We also have live video of the consecration, rites and burial of the body at sea, but unfortunately that video won’t be released either.
Saddam Hussein was taken alive, mocked and ridiculed, put on public trial and subjected to a public hanging. Osama bin Laden would have been the trial of the century. For the US to willingly forego a capture, is surely nonsense.
There’s no need to be disrespectful
U.S. officials initially said Mr. bin Laden’s body was handled in keeping with Islamic tradition, which involves ritual washing, shrouding in a white sheet and burial within 24 hours.
“Traditional procedures for Islamic burial were followed,” a senior administration official said.
Religious rites were performed on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. Mr. bin Laden’s body was placed in a weighted bag and was then positioned on a flat board, tipped up and “eased into the Arabian Sea”. The burial was said to have occurred at 6 a.m. GMT, about 12 hours after the firefight in which he was killed.
“A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker,” a U.S. Defence official said.
U.S. officials have cited two reasons for a sea burial: First, they did not want his grave to become a shrine; second, they did not feel any country would accept his remains.
Let’s get rid of the body
So we have the US, which is well-known to have the world’s most humane, respectful, and religious military that always treats its entire trail of dead (and live) Arab bodies with the utmost reverence, “taking into custody” the corpse of bin Laden.
They fly him to a ship on the Sea of Question Marks, lovingly wash his body, dress him in a linen shroud, reverently conduct a Muslim religious funeral rite complete with appropriate prayers in Arabic, then “slowly ease his body into the sea”.
Is this the same US military that killed Arabs as trophies and collected their severed fingers as souvenirs? Are these the same people who run Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib?
Of the more than 100 Arabs whose deaths at Guantanamo Bay have been documented (and only God knows how many deaths at other places that were not documented), were “traditional procedures for Islamic burial followed” for any of those?
For all those deaths resulting from torture, did “a military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker”?
Let’s look at the damaged helicopter
The helicopter supposedly in bin Laden’s compound, before and after destruction – in broad daylight the next day. The various explanations behind the White House version of the helicopter crash (“a heart-stopping moment”) are clearly nonsense.
Anyone with even a small amount of flight experience or knowledge of basic aerodynamics would know the presented “facts” cannot be true.
Look at the photo of the aircraft. We are told the commandos destroyed their damaged aircraft with explosives before they departed the compound with bin Laden’s body – at 1:00 AM local time. So then why are we seeing photos of the damaged aircraft in broad daylight and presumably the next day? And you can see the aircraft wasn’t destroyed when locals were nosing around it.
But take a closer look at the photo above. Does this look like a model airplane to you? The wall is about 3 meters high, the aircraft only about 5 meters long, maximum, with no door and only 2 small windows. Compare the size of the man near the helicopter with the size of the aircraft; at best it might hold 4 people. This aircraft and two more like it managed to carry 77 navy SEALS with all their weaponry hundreds of miles on a combat mission? You’re kidding me, right?
Lastly, and at the risk of being picky, look at the photo on the right, of the aircraft after its destruction. Most explosives of my acquaintance tend to rip things apart and scatter the pieces all over hell, but the US navy SEALS apparently have a new “stealth” explosive that totally destroys an aircraft and then gathers all the leftover bits into a neat little pile for the trashman to take away.
First, we were told the helo crashed because it was trapped in “vortices” behind the compound wall. But the only vortex would be that caused by its own rotor blades, the air cushion into which every helicopter descends on every landing.
There is no way a chopper can create supplementary vortices in an open space that would be so severe as to cause its own destruction. Or, to put it another way, if one aircraft can do this, they will all do it.
Then we were told the crash was due to the chopper being “hot and high”, which is a reference to reduced lift being caused by thin air, either due to very high air temperatures or very high altitude.
In these conditions, an airplane’s wings or a helicopter’s rotors cannot produce as much lift because the air is less dense. This usually means it cannot fly as high, or carry as great a load as at a lower altitude or lower temperature.
But the aircraft had already supposedly made the trip from Afghanistan to Pakistan in that same temperature and at the same altitude. These conditions would not measureably change upon arrival at the compound, and certainly not enough to affect flight characteristics.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, clarified that “The air temperature in the compound was hotter than expected and the helicopter was too heavy to stay aloft under that condition.” And this is just patent nonsense. If the helicopter wassn’t “too heavy” to have flown hundreds of miles to its destination, it certainly wasn’t “too heavy” to land. And there is no way the air temperature in the compound would be any higher than the surrounding air. Feinstein is clearly fabricating misinformation.
We do have a photo of a damaged helicopter, but with insufficient details to conclude much of anything, especially the location. Actually, that’s not quite true. We can conclude three things. One is that the aircraft is not of the kind the US claimed was used in the raid, and the second is that there ain’t nothing “stealthy” about this damaged chopper. The third is that the chopper wasn’t “destroyed” by the commandos as claimed.
The accompanying photo, taken in daylight, would have been made the day after the assault – in other words, long after the chopper had supposedly been destroyed by the departing SEAL team. The second portion of the photo does appear to show a destroyed helicopter, but destroyed by whom? Either way, the facts don’t appear to match the story.
Consider the “firefight”
What proof do we have that there was actually a firefight? Well, one “Pakistani citizen” conveniently Twitted that he (or she) could hear gunfire. Unfortunately, everyone else in Abbottabad must have been busy shopping or praying, or maybe watching the goats, and were oblivious to all the gunfire and explosions occurring only meters from their homes.
There is no documented record anywhere of any awareness whatsoever of all this activity, by any local residents – including the Pakistani military. Abbottabad has since been overrun by media representatives who have all been silent on this point, in part because their access to the locals has been forbidden.
Moreover, it would (or should) occur to most readers that for this kind of military operation, the safely permissible in-and-out time is more likely to be two minutes rather than 40. Anyone needing 40 minutes for a commando raid should stay at home.
It should also occur to most thinking people that a 77-marine 40-minute firefight seems a bit excessive to kill three men, especially when at least one and possibly two are not armed, and especially in such a small building where one grenade would end the battle by killing everybody.
We were told repeatedly of the “intense 40-minute firefight” that culminated in the confrontation and death of bin Laden. But later the White House claimed the commandos went straight to bin Laden at the beginning of the exercise. So they got through the opposition to the top floor, killed their prey, then had their “intense 40-minute firefight” on the way out? Not likely.
Where’s the proof?
What evidence do we have that anything actually happened in Pakistan? None, whatsoever.
Some readers may be aware of documented reports that bin Laden, on the day before 9-11, was in a hospital in Pakistan undergoing kidney dialysis – a treatment required weekly for those with failed kidneys. The stories about him hiding in caves in Tora Bora for years are patent nonsense unless he carried his dialysis machine with him. Moreover, there have been persistent reports that Osama bin Laden has been dead for years, having succumbed to renal failure.
It is very likely that Osama bin Laden is dead. Unfortunately, his death may be unrelated to the made-for-TV American version of events.
And more Inconsistencies
Did I say that? I didn’t mean to say that
. I forgot the plot. The White House admitted that its initial account of the killing of bin Laden had been riddled with errors, but that was just because they were trying to give everyone as much information as possible while “in the heat of the moment” during an “intense battle”. But who was in that intense battle? The White House PR staff?.
One of bin Laden’s wives was killed while “rushing the commandos”.
So we have a man with two of his wives sitting in a small room upstairs, a swarm of deadly soldiers bursts in (most likely yelling “Go, Go, Go’), and some young woman bravely charges the dozens of heavily-armed commandos.
She charges them to do what, exactly? Does that make any sense to you? Me neither.
Still hoping to plug some of the major holes in their fable, the White House then revealed the US Navy SEALs were carrying a handy CIA “pocket guide” to the occupants of his compound.
The listing conveniently included the names and ages of all the occupants there, including bin Laden’s wives, children and grandchildren.
The suggestion was they had a “mole” inside the compound (wink, wink). But who would that be? One of the wives, perhaps, or maybe the grandchildren?
And what now?
“It is quite possible a false or partial narrative was given of how bin Laden was found,” said a CIA official. “Intelligence can only function in silence and in the dark. In this case, it was a PR operation, not an actual military one, but the value to Washington was seen as even greater than an actual military victory on the field.”
An easier way to translate this bin Laden situation is that the whole story of the brave US military operation was a fabrication, similar to previous PR stunts like the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch in 2003 and the death of Pat Tillman in 2004. Both were massive Hollywood-scripted, nationally celebrated events used to bolster support for increasingly unpopular wars. In both cases, blatant misinformation via US government-issued propaganda were employed to market war and militarism overseas.
This is how Americans fabricate their history, how they spin their patriotism and bake their jingoistic cake. Like the heroine Lynch tale, the death of Osama bin Laden may be only one more definitive myth of the war. These stories do not rely on truth.
And it would seem that only in America will tens or hundreds of thousands of the Exceptionalist, the Jingoistic, the Terminally Naive, party in the streets when their leader was apparently successful in putting out a contract murder on someone he didn’t like. What a country.
Never before in history have lies been so powerful and pervasive, and worth so much in terms short-term of political capital. There is little doubt that before it is finally discarded, the war on terror will go down in history as one of the most expensive and damaging fables in human history.
Here is the text from two brief articles you may care to read:
From GlobalResearch.ca, “Washington Still Working Hard to Plug Gaps in the Bin Laden Assassination Story”
From People’s Daily, “Bin Laden Buried in Sea of Question Marks”
You can access both articles
Here.
Obtained from bearcanada.com