Legerdemain

Most everyone says that Osama was killed in Abbottabad and most everyone believes it. The Pakistani governments and US say it, most media say it, wiseacres say it and those who wouldn’t displease America say it. ‘Proof’: Al-Qaeda has confirmed that Osama is dead.

I’m not saying he’s not dead. All I’m asking is, “when, where and how?” Which Al-Qaeda? That franchise in Yemen led by the American Awlaki? Hadn’t America told us that Osama had become just a symbol? That Al-Qaeda had splintered with no single head to the animal? That only about 80 of them are left in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Now, suddenly, Osama’s ‘haven’ in Abbottabad has become Al-Qaeda’s ‘command and control centre’ and he was its ‘CEO’. Was it perhaps listed on the New York Stock Exchange under a pseudonym that guerillas and terrorists usually have? Who were the shareholders of this corporation called ‘Al-Qaeda Inc’, specialists in terror made in the USA? The CIA, perhaps? Is it not possible to make a website in anyone’s name and spread disinformation, or hack into one? Are not host servers all in the West that give IP addresses to all websites? Easy then for the CIA to become hackers and make fake websites. But if pre-Abbottabad America is to be believed, which Al-Qaeda are they looking for the denial from? This is classic strategic communications and perception management at its best, and a credulous, gullible people fall for it: subtly make people believe what you want them to believe without their realising that you have made them believe it. The media plays a crucial role: often journalists too are victims of perception management, which is predicated on the old axiom that if you say something loud enough and often enough, people will come to believe it; if you repeat a lie endlessly and loudly, regularly lampooning those who don’t fall for it, the lie becomes the truth. What were morons made for, after all?

I’m waiting to be convinced that Osama was killed in Abbottabad. I’m dying to be convinced so that I can get on with it. All I ask is two things:

1. Provide incontrovertible proof that will stand in a US court of law that Osama bin Laden was indeed killed on the night between May 1 and 2, 2011 in Abbottabad. I will be satisfied and hold my peace. I’m not hopeful because they still haven’t provided incontrovertible proof that the 9/11 attacks were the handiwork of Al-Qaeda.

2. Why doesn’t the Pakistani government not take samples of blood (or hair or scalp skin or finger nails) from that decrepit Abbottabad ‘mansion’ and try to do a DNA match with Osama’s daughter, who they say they have? That’s shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

Is this too much to ask? Once we get the proof we can get on with life. Without proof one doesn’t quite know whom to accuse of what.

Instead, all we are getting are half-truths, utter lies and diversion, leaving people agog. Officialdom contradicts itself, a natural outcome of dissembling. There is one story one day, another the next. Once your first lie has woven a “complex web” around you, the only defense left is to start accusing others, diverting attention from the essential. Those asking questions are called nuts. When rationality ends, profanity begins. If you don’t doubt and ask questions, you are no analyst.

Last week, I told you that Dr. Steve Pieczenik, former US Deputy Secretary of State, said on The Alex Jones Show two days after the Abbottabad raid that Osama had died in late 2001 of Marfan disease and that 9/11 was a US “false flag” operation. Instead of focusing on what he said, some people tried to trash it by calling Jones “an idiot” because he talks to Lt Gen Hameed Gul! Had these guys been lawyers they would have lost every case. Even if Alex Jones is an idiot, why ignore Dr Pieczenik’s message?

Now how can I ignore what Michael C. Ruppert, well know US author (9/11: Synthetic Terror) – his detractors call him a “conspiracy theorist” – says in his article Osama and the Ghosts of September 11: Proof that Obama is Lying. “The most obvious proof that the Obama administration is lying… comes from a world-class microbiologist… the simple proof of his accuracy is to just ask any microbiologist experienced in DNA sequencing about his statement.” The microbiologist he asked says: “I have run one of the world’s largest and most productive DNA genotyping facilities and am now helping to build the global market for clinical whole human genome sequencing for the world’s largest human genome sequencing facility. I have worked with the best genome scientists from the military, academia, medicine, and industry from around the world. I know DNA. And the one thing I know about DNA is that you cannot take a tissue sample from a shot-in-the-noggin-dead-guy in a north central Pakistan special forces op, extract the DNA, prepare the DNA for assay, test the DNA, curate the raw DNA sequence data, assemble the reads or QC the genotype, compare the tested DNA to a reference, and make a positive identity determination… all in 12 hours, let alone transport the tissue samples all the places they’d need to have gone in order to get this done. Some might try to argue that ruggedised, field-ready kits could test a DNA sample – which is true if one is attempting to determine the CLASS of a bacteria. It is not true if one is trying to determine the specific identity of an individual. Any way you slice it, the real work would require days, and I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that an aircraft carrier would have a laboratory outfitted for this kind of work… it is not the Starship Enterprise out there…there is no way they had any genetic proof of it by the time they dumped the body over the side. What is it that we are not supposed to see with all this distraction? I think the French call it ‘legerdemain’ – Legerdemain, amongst other things, means ‘Sleight of hand’.

Any wonder that ‘conspiracy theorising’ is galore? How can the world believe anything America says after its big lie that Saddam had WMDs just so it could attack and occupy Iraq? And send America’s youth to die there just as callously as Osama did his and ours?

The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected]