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POLICE STATE:

Since the government can't have Americans stop being scared of terrorists, should we expect a terrorist attack soon? I'm sure the Feds have some poor patsy lined up ready to take a fall in the next few days or weeks.

WAR:

US forces kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

"Bin Laden met his end 10 years after the 9/11 attacks in a firefight with a small team of U.S. forces that launched a daring raid on the compound where he was holed up with some trusted advisers. He was hiding only 35 miles from Pakistan's capital Islamabad."

So he was living just outside Islamabad. So much for the theory he was in the lawless region.

"Intelligence officials secured a major intelligence breakthrough about four years ago when they learned the name of a trusted courier believed to be living with Osama, according to senior administration officials who asked not to be named.Two years ago intelligence officials learned the courier was living in an elaborate compound somewhere. In August they pinpointed its location outside Pakistan's capital.
It was a massive compound that overshadowed other homes in the community, an affluent neighborhood popular among retired military officers."

He was hanging out in a prominent compound - it's always a compound - surrounded by retired Pakistani military.

"The secret operation was conducted by U.S. forces without the knowledge of any other country. The U.S. government has always maintained the right to unilaterally go after bin Laden if he was located."

Could this story make it any more obvious the US thought the Pakistanis were hiding him without specifically saying so? Apparently they used DNA testing to prove it was bin Laden. Apparently a picture of his corpse exists.

"The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site."
And...
"U.S. officials also said bin Laden was identified through "facial recognition," a reference to technology for mapping unique facial characteristics, but it was not clear exactly how the Navy SEAL troops performed the comparison."

Are they carrying portable facial scanning tools now?

"The body was later taken to an American warship, but the senior Pentagon official declined to say which one and where the ship was situated."

Maybe ships carry facial scanning tools. Maybe that's why they took the body to a ship.

"The body was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration."

Buried at sea? Why? He was killed in northern Pakistan, far from any sea. Maybe they wanted to keep terrorists from treating is grave as the grave of a martyr? But it seems very suspicious they would bury him at sea without allowing any independent verification that it was him.

"The U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial."

That's convenient.

"Long believed to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military academy."

And...

""Intelligence analysis concluded that this compound was custom built in 2005 to hide someone of significance," with walls as high as 18 feet and topped by barbed wire, according to one official. Despite the compound's estimated $1 million cost and two security gates, it had no phone or Internet running into the house."

More evidence that implicates the Pakistani government.

""Justice has been done," President Barack Obama said late Sunday from the White House in an announcement that seemed sure to lift his own political standing."

And...

"The development seems certain to give Obama a political lift as the nation swelled in pride. Even Republican critics lauded him."

Conveniently timed to boost Obama's poll numbers before the 2012 election, but I would think if he had a choice, he would have preferred later to now. A year from now killing bin Laden will be tiny compared to our economic woes. But it will provide him a temporary boost that he might be able to capitalize on somehow. On the other hand, maybe they thought if they did this next year, it would be too late to save Obama's re-election campaign. Maybe they thought they had to stop the slide now given the economic problems they know are coming.

"Panetta was directly in charge of the military team during the operation, according to one official, and when he and his aides received word at agency headquarters that bin Laden had been killed, cheers broke out around the conference room table."

Why was the CIA Director in charge of a military team? Granted, Obama has proposed he become the next Secretary of War, but that hasn't happened yet. This is another sign that our intelligence groups are now subsidiaries of the military. This article almost accuses the Pakistani government of hiding him:

"In his announcement, Obama said he had called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari after the raid, and said it was "important to note that our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding."One senior administration told reporters, though, "we were very concerned ... that he was inside Pakistan, but this is something we're going to continue to work with the Pakistani government on."
The compound is about a half-mile from a Pakistani military academy, in a city that is home to three army regiments and thousands of military personnel. Abbottabad is surrounded by hills and with mountains in the distance.
Critics have long accused elements of Pakistan's security establishment of protecting bin Laden, though Islamabad has always denied it, and in a statement the foreign ministry said his death showed the country's resolve in the battle against terrorism.
Still, bin Laden's location raised pointed questions of whether Pakistani authorities knew the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man."

That's as close to an accusation as you can get without it being one. Muslim clerics are unhappy he was buried at sea. So am I. I don't want to be too jaded here, but that makes me skeptical. I can believe the US government is so brain-dead, it doesn't realize that Americans are skeptical of it, but that's a lot of work to hide a body so nobody else can ever examine it.

"Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca.Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.
"The Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don't think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration," said Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric in Lebanon."

Radical clerics will use any excuse to incite violence against the US, so I don't put much stock in this. I'm more concerned about the possibility they buried the body at sea to hide a fake.

"A U.S. official said that the burial decision was made after concluding that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. There also was speculation about worry that a grave site could have become a rallying point for militants"

I get that. But they could have had independent analysts identify the body before burying it at sea. I also get that it might not cross their minds they should so because of arrogance. The same arrogance that kept Obama from releasing his birth certificate until he got wiped out in an election and his poll numbers tanked would make it impossible for him to think of using independent analysts to verify bin Laden's identity. Then again, it's also convenient that the military got bin Laden right after Democrats were wiped out in an election and Obama's poll numbers had tanked.

"The Islamic tradition of a quick burial was the subject of intense debate in Iraq in 2003 when U.S. forces embalmed the bodies of Saddam Hussein's two sons after they were killed in a firefight. Their bodies were later shown to media."

Exactly. As was Saddam Hussein's. All were buried in the ground. Only bin Laden's was kept secret and buried at sea. Then again, Obama is president now.

"Prominent Egyptian Islamic analyst and lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said bin Laden's sea burial was designed to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine. But an option was an unmarked grave."

Exactly. They could have easily buried him someplace secret. It's interesting Obama did this right after he had his great "trust me" moment with his birth certificate. Maybe that's the real reason he released it. Here's a good point: now that bin Laden is dead, we get even higher security, not less. Reminder that in 2001 the news reported bin Laden died of lung problems. What would be the motive to lie about this?

"As Americans become increasingly disenchanted with governmental performance, President Obama prefaced his Sunday night remarks with these words: “Let’s bring back the sense of unity that existed on 9/11.” The next morning, CNN’s Carol Costello chirped her lines: “Americans are united again.” How about that! Wouldn’t it be nice if we just had bin Laden’s body to offer to the public as evidence supporting Obama’s claim. But, darn, someone immediately disposed of his remains, and at sea, no less, where recovery would be impossible!Perhaps Obama can find a modern equivalent of the Coroner in The Wizard of Oz who, following the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, intoned: “As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.” There must be someone at the CIA or NSA who could play the part!"

Fantastic comparison to the Wizard of Oz. Comparison to the way the government destroyed the Oklahoma City evidence so the defense couldn't examine it. Fake pictures of bin Laden dead are already surfacing. Forget what I said about government arrogance. The US government had to know this kind of stuff would happen. They purposely buried the body at sea so nobody could examine it. And it's not just Obama who gets to look good. Every politician gets to bask in the glory. This doesn't just raise Obama's stock. It raises the entire government's stock at a time with trust in the US government is at the lowest point in nearly a century. And the government knows it, so again, they dumped that body at sea to keep anybody else from examining it. Maybe now that bin Laden has been supposedly killed, we can calculate how much money was spent by our socialist government hunting him down and killing him and compare that to estimates of how much it would have taken market actors to do the same. Reuters reports that US forces were ordered to kill bin Laden, not capture him.

"The U.S. special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters."This was a kill operation," the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan."

That's very convenient too. That way nobody could examine him dead or alive. The more I read about this, the more it stinks to high heaven. Reuters editorial supports the kill order, carrying water for the government. Not only that...

"Saturday night, Obama was yukking it up at the White House Correspondents Dinner — knowing the raid was about to happen, and the situation for America was about to get either a lot better or a lot worse. The president smiled his way through the dinner (arguably the single most ridiculous aspect of contemporary Washington politics), giving no hint. That’s Academy Award acting."

That's what psychopaths do, not normal people. But it's not just Obama.

"Nobody in the White House, the Department of Defense or the intelligence community leaked anything. State Department personnel were evacuated from Peshawar in the hours before the raid, and not one of them texted or tweeted the slightest hint. America really can do something properly!"

Who says the government can't conspire to keep secrets?

"At this time, no one should think of politics. But President Obama can be forgiven for knowing that his reelection odds just skyrocketed."

Nobody should think of politics except the president's advocates in the press, apparently. And the politicians themselves of course. This guy is nearly giddy with excitement over the prospect Obama might get re-elected thanks to this. Eric Margolis might be overestimating the importance of this compared to our economic problems next November.

"The assassination of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces in Abbotabad, Pakistan will likely assure Barack Obama’s victory in the 2012 presidential race. Republican hawks will have a hard time pressing their claims that Obama is "soft on terrorism.""

I think the Republican mantra come November will be a repeat of Bill Clinton's: It's the economy, stupid. It's going to be a lot worse. As for the story:

"Details about the killing of bin Laden remain obscure. The mission, a joint operation between CIA and Special Forces, appeared to have been mounted from a US-controlled air base in Pakistan – without the advance knowledge of Pakistan’s government. US sources say Osama was shot twice in the head; his son was also killed.Bin Laden’s body was photographed and then apparently dumped into the sea from a US aircraft. Washington claims this was done to observe Muslim funeral rites calling for almost immediate burial. This sounds preposterous."

Preposterous is a good word.

"It is most unfortunate that bin Laden was literally rubbed out. If he could have been taken alive, the co-founder of al-Qaida should have been brought to the United States to stand trial in New York City, or, failing that, on a military base – but with lawyers and a civilian jury under full US law."

Unfortunate is not a good word. This wasn't allowed to happen by design.

"A big question now is what justification will Washington come up with to keep 150,000 Western troops in Afghanistan?Hunting down bin Laden was, remember, the primary reason for sending US troops to that remote nation. No doubt Taliban and its leader Mullah Omar will be morphed by the US media machine into a bin Laden stand-ins.
What of al-Qaida? This extremist group, as I have been writing since 1999, was tiny. Never more than 300 men in 2001. Today, the core al-Qaida in Pakistan consists of a handful of hunted men. CIA chief Leon Panetta asserted that there were something less than 50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. There may be a hundred in Pakistan – all on the run."

Supposedly over this we destroyed two countries and are bombing and radicalizing several more. Here's the real motives:

"The specter of al-Qaida provided a handy pretext to invade Afghanistan to secure strategic territory next to Central Asian oil, keep China out of that region, and double spending on arms. The invasion of oil-rich Iraq was also justified by patently false White House claims Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden over 9/11."

I never saw the White House claim Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden. I wish somebody would reference the quotes to back this claim up because I never read it or heard it.

"Al-Qaida "affiliates" in North Africa, Arabia, and south Asia are simply small groups of local militants who have taken the al-Qaida brand name without having any organic or communications links to the remnants of the core al-Qaida in Pakistan. They are more a dangerous nuisance than a deadly threat."

The politicians and the mainstream media never report that. But here's the legacy we suffer:

"The Saudi revolutionary leaves another legacy. He repeatedly stated that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing the United States into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt it. The United States under President George W. Bush and then Barack Obama rushed right into bin Laden’s carefully laid trap.Today, the nearly bankrupt United States is spending hundreds of billions annually waging small wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and the Sahara. Grotesquely overblown military spending and debt addiction are crippling United States. That is why the ghost of bin Laden may be smiling."

Bin Laden was a godsend to the US ruling class, enabling them to loot and oppress us ever more extravagantly so they could get richer faster then escape with their loot before the country collapsed. We've almost reached that endgame. Here's another important point of skepticism: how did they do DNA tests so fast? Did they have a DNA lab set up in Pakistan specifically for this? Did they commandeer one? Did they send the sample to Quantico? Some other lab? I'm sure they can do such a high priority test fast, but you can't get around the logistics. Here's another interesting theory:

"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 bogeyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security complex."

Wishful thinking. Every politician joined hands to tell us that the danger from al Qaeda increased with bin Laden's death, not decreased. FBI wanted poster for bin Laden revised in November 2001 fails to mention 9/11. That seems odd. Isn't it funny how our intelligence obsessed government would chose not to question bin Laden? They didn't want to ask him about what other plots were being planned. They didn't want to get the names and locations of al Qaeda cells. They didn't want to learn how he funded and funneled his funds between his sources and projects. Nope. They weren't interested in any of that. They suddenly weren't interested in saving lives, just killing him. Comparison to a gangland execution. You can't help but wonder if George Bush had given the same execution order instead of trying to capture, interrogate then prosecute bin Laden, if liberals Democrats wouldn't have gone nuts. Also you have to wonder at the lawlessness of it. Obama considers us at war with al Qaeda, but liberals certainly didn't while Bush was in office and the legal aspects haven't changed. Probably the scariest thing about the stories I'm reading is the lack of skepticism. Adding to my skepticism is the belief that Obama would have benefited by keeping bin Laden alive and in the news until the next election. I find it hard to believe Obama would have failed to take advantage of that if he really found bin Laden.

Man unknowingly tweets the bin Laden raid while it happened.

Watch for this girl - Victoria Marshman - to burst upon the scene, if you know what I mean.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Will the US invade Pakistan after making it the evil supporter of bin Laden and more?