I have heard one dozen times today (May 13) from media that the US killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I heard it three times from National Public Radio, twice from the BBC, and from every TV and radio station I encountered, even those stations that play the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s. The killing of bin Laden has now entered the legends of our time and, no doubt, the history books.
The US government that told us that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and “al Qaeda connections” and that Iran has nuclear missiles that require the US to ring Russia with anti-ballistic missile systems, finally told us the truth for once. Obama found Osama and had him murdered, apparently unarmed in his underwear, defended not by al Qaeda, “the best trained, most dangerous vicious killers on the planet,” but by two unarmed women.
As I offered previously, if you believe this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let you have for a cheap price.
The government has created another reality for us proles. We won again. Us white hats got the black hat, just like in the western movie. Fantasy is better than fact, and us good guys are on a roll. It makes everybody happy, even those who have lost their jobs, their houses, their pensions.
So, who’s the next black hat? The military/security complex cannot do without a bad guy, or the budget could be cut and billions of dollars in profits would go missing. Without someone for Americans to hate, the show can’t go on.
Homeland Security says the next black hat will be “domestic extremists.” The CIA says it will be the next al Qaeda leader, bin Laden’s replacement, who will terrorize us white hats for killing bin Laden. The neocon brownshirts say it is Pakistan, who hid bin Laden from us, thus protecting him from justice being done. Hillary says it is China, and as the US economy continues its collapse, more and more fingers will point at China.
Airport Security will pat down more babies, feel more genitals, and radiate more air travelers.
But without bin Laden, we will feel safer and more secure, which is counterproductive for the military/security complex. Obama has made a fundamental mistake. He has killed Emanuel Goldstein (bin Laden), the hate figure who justified the trillions of dollars we have blown trying to get him.
Once Homeland Security, the CIA, and the White House decide who the new hate figure is to be, we will be off and running again.
It took 10 years to get bin Laden. This proves that all those security experts who say that the war will last for 30 years might be underestimating the necessary commitment. If it takes 10 years each to find and murder the next two leaders, we are faced with conflict that lasts across generations.
As I wrote previously, bin Laden’s killing serves so many different agendas that even those who don’t believe the story have hooked their wagon to it. Al Qaeda itself can no longer take credit for acts of terrorism without declaring that it was to avenge bin Laden.
The bin Laden story is now set in stone, immune from fact. Global Research has provided us with bin Laden’s last known interview, which appeared in a Pakistan newspaper on September 28, 2001, and was translated and made available to the West by the BBC World Monitoring Service on September 29, 2001.
In the interview, bin Laden says: “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. . . . Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks the common American people have been killed. . . . The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which makes us surprised, but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. . . . Terror is the most dreaded weapon in the modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people.”
But who would believe a demonized bin Laden when to do so requires them to disbelieve George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Western media?
We all know, don’t we, that in America the government always has the best interest of ordinary people at heart and always tells them the truth. If you don’t believe this, you are anti-American.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.
It could drive you to despair, could it not, Mr. Roberts, in the way our monstrous public lies trample what are simple facts readily observed with the naked eye. For instance, the videos of the “collapse” World Trade Center #7 have been public knowledge for a decade, available to all. This building with the highest degree of security (it had the largest FBI and CIA offices outside of DC) melted absolutely symmetrically at freefall speed into its basements, its concrete reduced to dust. Any sane person with a room temperture IQ can perceive that it had been been demolished by explosives and that can not be set up in a few hours. This “smoking gun” alone totally trashes the government’s cock-and-bull story about the 9-11 disaster. All of this is public knowledge, but what effect does it have on public discourse? None. The bullshit goes on and on based on what clearly cannot be true, endlessly justifying murderous aggressive wars and the trashing of our Constitution and what remains of the American republic.