Bring on the conspiracy theories

Although this blog is pretty much about me and stuff that happens in my life sometimes world events are of such historical importance that it is only right that I should express a point of view about them. Take for example the recent royal wedding this last weekend (see here and here for posts about it). Well not to be out done the USA has also grabbed the headlines over the last few days with the shock news that they have not only found Osama bin Laden but killed him and buried him at sea already. The news came completely out of the blue and just like the Transformers toys of 80’s it has left many people wondering if there is “more than meets the eye” about the whole thing.

Full details of what happened are still being released and are covered in far more detail on other sites than is warranted here. The basic story however goes something like this:

On May 1, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized a raid on bin Laden's suspected location (without Pakistan government knowledge) near Abbottabad, Pakistan. The operation was successfully carried out by United States Navy SEALs, with intelligence support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the 40-minute raid, bin Laden was fatally shot in the head. After intelligence searches of the compound were conducted, his body was taken into custody at which point genetic and facial recognition tests were performed. After positive identification, and within 24 hours of his death, bin Laden's body was taken out to sea for burial.

This has of course left a lot of people asking more questions that the US government cares to answer. The foremost of these naturally being; is he actually dead? Now while it would be nice to just trust America on the matter and take their word for it the US government is not exactly known for being truthful (did someone mention Kennedy?). In the last few hours the White House has stated that DNA taken from the brain of Osama bin Laden's sister following her death from brain cancer was a 99.9 per cent match to that of the terror mastermind and that CIA specialists said they compared photos of bin Laden's body with known photos of him and were 95 per cent sure that they showed the same man. They also stated that this proof would be made public soon.

Even so a few things still don’t really add up for me. Firstly it turns out that since 2005 bin Laden has been hiding out in a small complex custom built near Abbottabad, Pakistan however all the locals in the area state that for six years they had no idea he was there. Even stranger is the fact that the world’s most wanted man decided to set up home less than a mile from one of Pakistan’s top military training bases. Hardly discrete is it? The biggest questions have of course been raised about the rather prompt burial of the body at sea. The US government has stated that this is because they didn’t want a grave for the body where terrorists could target or come to as if al-Qaeda was going to hold some sort of family BBQ day out each year at the site. When they killed Saddam's sons the US happily paraded them around to prove they were dead and even if they didn’t want a grave for the body why the sudden rush to get rid of the main bit of evidence that they had?

Now of course the US states that they would have been happy to of captured bin Laden alive and brought him back to the States for trial but he would not surrender and so they were forced to shoot him. However when pressed for details as to whether he was actually armed or engaged in a fire fight at the time of his death the US government refused to comment. Bit of a major point don’t you think considering they shot him in the head twice? Personally I can’t help but think that this was a kill mission from the start. In reality could bin Laden ever really face a fair trial in the US? How could an impartial jury ever be formed? More to point could the government really offer evidence that he was directly responsible for the events of 9/11 and would they want all of their intelligence dragged before the world’s press for close scrutiny? What would have happened if he had been found not guilty? It all sounds too much like a recipe for total disaster to me to ever be allowed to occur.

So the world then finds themselves looking to the US and waiting for the “proof” to be offered up in the next few days. Why it takes a few days for them produce this proof is of course a whole other question? Still at least everyone has stopped going on about he wedding for a while.