Paul Craig Roberts: Osama bin Laden’s Second Death

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

paul-craig-roberts

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?

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 of 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.

By Paul Craig Roberts
May 03, 2011

See also:

White House Revises Account Of Bin Laden’s Final Moments: Gun Battle Never Happened

– MSM fail: Osama Bin Laden Corpse Photo Is FAKE – Absolute Proof!

Officials: Osama Bin Laden Body To Be ‘Buried At Sea’ (No Autopsy, No DNA Tests, No Forensics?)
Flashback:

Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist or How The US Created Al Qaeda (Documentary)

Seymour Hersh: Bhutto was killed on Cheney’s orders:

The US death unit killed Bhutto because she had told Al-Jazeera TV about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Hersh said.

Bhutto Confirms that Osama Bin Laden is Dead:

President Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Surrender Osama Bin Laden (The Independent – 15 October 2001)

See also:

Former Governor Jesse Ventura on Government Cover-Ups . . . 9/11, the Reality of HAARP and Making Government Better

Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: 911 Pentagon Attack (Full Episode) (Video)

Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: 9/11 (Video)

More from Paul Craig Roberts:

Paul Craig Roberts: The Perfidy Of Government How We Lost Our Economy, The Constitution And Our Civil Liberties

Paul Craig Roberts: Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is A Tool Of Class War

Paul Craig Roberts: The Enumerated Rights Are Hanging By A Thread

Paul Craig Roberts – It’s Official: The US Is A Police State

Paul Craig Roberts: Death of the First Amendment – The Nazification of the United States

Paul Craig Roberts on Chelsea Clintons’s Wedding: ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ – Where did the money come from?

Paul Craig Roberts: A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”

Paul Craig Roberts: ‘AIPAC Owns The US Puppet Government’

Paul Craig Roberts: America – A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs

Paul Craig Roberts: Republic of Fools & The Evil Empire

Paul Craig Roberts: U.S. Is A Failed State

Paul Craig Roberts: Israel and the Goldstone Report – War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law

Paul Craig Roberts: Another War in the Works; America Is Led and Informed by Liars

Paul Craig Roberts: Hypocrisy in Pittsburgh – More Lies, More Deceptions

Paul Craig Roberts: The Economy is a Lie, too

Paul Craig Roberts: The Health Care Deceit

Paul Craig Roberts: Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Paul Craig Roberts: Tent City America; The Expiring Economy

Paul Craig Roberts: What Economy? There’s Nothing Left to Recover

Paul Craig Roberts: Who Runs America? The Impotent President

US no longer ruled by law: Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts: Criminalizing Criticism of Israel. The End of Free Speech?

Paul Craig Roberts: Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Paul Craig Roberts: The People Be Damned

Paul Craig Roberts: From One Assault On The Constitution To Another

Paul Craig Roberts: The U.S. economy is imploding; Budget deficit cannot be financed

Paul Craig Roberts: Another real estate crisis is about to hit

Paul Craig Roberts: Our Collapsing Economy

Paul Craig Roberts On The U.S. Leadership: “They Are Criminals” – The Potential Here Is Far Worse Than The Great Depression

Paul Craig Roberts: Are You Ready to Face the Facts About Israel?

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.