By Paul Craig Roberts
May 2, 2011 - Original
Article
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 or 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 bogyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security
complex.
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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing
Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny
of Good
Intentions.
Paul Craig Roberts can be emailed
here
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