Dead Men Tell No Tales

When the news hit that the US had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I admit that I had doubts. After all, the US government doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to telling the truth. Plus, it didn't help that the information coming out was conflicting. First, OBL was armed and needed to be "taken down." Then he was unarmed and killed with two "taps" to the left side of his head. Well, which was it?

The official story makers must be in a tizzy. If the OBL story is he was firing back, he could be seen as a defiant martyr. If he wasn't, then he was an unarmed man murdered in cold blood. It must suck to be the US government.

So let's be perfectly clear - Osama bin Laden is dead. I don't care about the body, I don't care abou the DNA, I don't care about the photos. He's dead, and yet that is the problemm because now we are less likely to know the truth about the September 11, 2001 attacks. OBL always denied involvement, something that doesn't fit the fanatical terrorist label that we tagged him with. It's possible he had something to do with it, but it's equally possible that he just simply knew too much. We have not been told the truth about the attacks that day, and now the US has moved to put the official seal of "closed" on the file.

OBL is dead, and that was the precise purpose of the mission. It was not to arrest him, or to interrogate him. It was not about justice - it was to kill him and to silence him once and for all.

Something I noticed when viewing images of the American celebrations was that most of the crowds were just kids when the attacks occurred. They're still learning what this world is about, and were not even affected the same way that older generations were, those who worked in office buildings in NY or DC, or those travelers who flew often. The whole celebration was surreal, as if someone were attempting to replicate VE- or VJ-Day.

I knew some of the people on Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon. It does not seem any more fit to celebrate the elimination of OBL than it did to call for vengeance at their wake. The chants of USA, USA are an insult to those who died 10 years ago. It is also an insult to those who have died since.

More than 4,700 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were murdered in a war launched by the Bush regime. A war based completely on LIES. If Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, then why did so many people have to die in Iraq? Why did so many troops have to die for a LIE? Why did we not go after OBL in Afghanistan and then Pakistan?

Why must the lie continue?

Those who are not in denial know the answers. So do George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of their inner circle.

Osama bin Laden probably knew why as well. Only now he won't be telling any tales.

Now that he is dead - do we get our civil liberties back? What about our economy?