Warns war on terror could be eternal
by Steve Watson
Infowars.net
An important news item that flew under the radar for the most part last week was the assertion from former CIA operative turned whistleblower Robert Baer that Osama Bin Laden is long dead.
The hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert told Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio show Fresh Air, “Of course he is dead, where are the DVDs? Bin Laden wouldn’t dye his hair, all these things can be manipulated.”
Baer, who has has previously publicly questioned the official story of the 9/11 attacks, continued “He hasn’t shown up, I’ve taken in the last month a poll of CIA officers who have been on his trail, and what astounded me was not a single one was sure he was alive or dead. They have no idea, I mean this man disappeared off the side of the earth.”
Baer, who’s previous book See No Evil was the basis for the film Syriana, asked “When in history has a country fought another country or another entity when the leader may be dead?” and warned that the so called war on terror could be an eternal war if the goal continues to be to capture Bin Laden. Baer also warned that the war is shifting into Pakistan, a dangerous precedent that could see the vaguely defined conflict move anywhere.
Last July it was revealed that Pakistan has an agreement to allow CIA-operated Predator drones fly over the country and strike targets in the so called “hunt” for Bin Laden. Since that time many strikes have taken place, killing civilians in the process. In addition, details of a secret Pentagon plan to send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to find Bin Laden have also emerged. The plans have reportedly not yet been implemented due to White House in fighting.
Here is voluminous evidence to suggest Bin Laden is long dead.
According to French newspaper Le Figaro, Bin Laden was on a kidney dialysis machine after he had one shipped to his base in Kandahar Afghanistan in 2000, and when the CIA personally visited him in a Dubai hospital. Other accounts suggest he was also suffering from Hepatitis C at the time and had only two years left to live.
Journalists who met Bin Laden before 9/11 later proclaimed their disbelief about the fact that he didn’t appear on video after December 2001 to brag about the fact that he had not been captured. Since that time, every single Bin Laden video tape released has contained vague non-specifi c messages and in many cases the footage is old and re-hashed.
“With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?” wrote the New York Times‘ Amir Taheri in July 2002.
A very good reason for Osama remaining silent after the end of 2001 would be the fact that he probably died on December 26 of that year, according to a report in the Pakistani Observer, which cited a Taliban official as stating that Bin Laden died due to an untreated lung complication and that he had attended his funeral.
In 2002 CNN reported on the fact that Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf believed Bin Laden to be dead: [A Bush administration offi cial] said U.S. intelligence is that bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and “it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout,”.
Others have gone on record insisting they believe Bin Laden to be dead, they include: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, FBI counter-terrorism chief Dale Watson, Israeli intelligence sources, the late former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Bin Laden expert Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program.
In addition, a leaked French secret service memo in September 2006 concluded that Bin Laden had died of typhoid poisoning the previous month. The memo cited Saudi Arabian secret service sources who were convinced that Bin Laden had died in Pakistan.
“The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs,” states the French memo.
Judging from all the available evidence, the White House knows for certain or at least strongly suspects that Bin Laden is dead and has been for many years, but they have chosen to maintain his myth for the purposes of political propaganda and as a hook on which to pin the advance of the imperial Neo-Con agenda.
