The announcement that 9/11 mastermind and international terrorist Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. intelligence forces in a mansion outside Islamabad, Pakistan, has ignited both the world's media and its conspiracy theorists.
Even as crowds gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero to celebrate and remember lost loved ones, conspiracy-minded theorists were busy speculating in online forums as to the true nature of this announcement and the circumstances surrounding it.
Many of the commentators simply don't buy the story - because they believe bin Laden was already dead. He was killed by coalition forces in the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001. Or he succumbed to kidney failure or diabetes or lung disease or Addison's disease or Marfan syndrome or perhaps even asthma.
The idea that bin Laden was long dead was not the sole domain of conspiracy researchers. Many government officials agreed with them as well. Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said of bin Laden in 2008, "Of course he's dead." FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson thought he was "probably" dead. Former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and Boston University professor Angelo M. Codevilla went even further: "All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden." Professor David Ray Griffin, formerly of California's Claremont School of Theology, agreed with him and wrote a book in 2010 that claimed bin Laden died of kidney-related issues in 2001 while living in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, herself assassinated in 2007, believed that bin Laden had been "murdered" by fellow terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.
Many of those who believe that bin Laden has been dead for years also claim that U.S. intelligence forces have faked various recordings and videos to keep the threat alive to justify foreign adventures such as Iraq and stoke the fears of a country rapidly losing enthusiasm for a war in Afghanistan that is moving into its second decade.
Many conspiracy theorists held the opposite view - that bin Laden was alive and well and living in a variety of locations, chiefly Pakistan or Iran. And, again, several officials held similar views. 9/11 Commission member John Lehman is quoted back in 2004 as believing that bin Laden was alive and living in Northern Pakistan and that the Pentagon knew exactly where he was. Or course, statements like this added and fuel to the fire for those who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted in coordination with members of the Bush administration. Bin Laden's security and retirement home in Pakistan were simply payments for his efforts.
Bin Laden’s identity has supposedly been confirmed by DNA testing against the DNA of his sister but it’s doubtful that those who believed him to be dead for many years will be swayed by that evidence. Certain wags have already joked that bin Laden’s body has been merely “thawed out” after years in cold storage. The fact that the death announcement came eight years to the day from former-President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech is seen as the administration tacitly winking at those in the know. Many are already demanding to see the long-form death certificate.
The date, May 1, is also a day loaded with political and occult significance. May 1st is known around the world as International Worker’s Day and is celebrated widely. By releasing the news on May Day, President Obama has forced his unwitting political opponents to celebrate the same holiday as socialists, communists, and anarchists. Pretty sneaky, Mr. President
May 1 is also Beltane to the Celts and Walpurgis Night to Germanic peoples, both significant holidays on the pagan and Satanic calendars. Beltane has been described as a “festival of optimism” closely linked to fertility rituals (it is spring, after all) and the burning of bonfires in rituals of purification. Walpurgis Night is also associated with bonfires and dancing.
May 1st, 1776, is also the day Adam Weishaupt founded the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
But that's probably just a coincidence.
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