Osama Bin Laden puzzle

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The world has changed considerably since 2001 and US enemies are no longer terrorists but real countries with governments and armies, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden have outlived their usefulness as symbolic villains, if the 9/11 events were essential to turn around public opinion on foreign intervention and to obtain enforcement of authocratic laws, the time is approaching for major events to be unleashed in which Al Qaeda and Jihadist from all over the world have no place to be, they could still find their usefulness here and there when some major attack will be staged to rally the population into war but they are no longer the key actors, the conflict is back to the large scale scenario of warring countries and armies and the death of Osama Bin Laden could well be the prelude to the end of the era of terror.

What is surprising of all this story as in a classical slapstick comedy is the return of a long forgotten character  on the scene and the sudden commotion for someone who was forgotten and missing for almost 10 years. Even more interesting is the dumping of his body into the sea, quite an unusual treatment for the biggest villain in American history I would actually have considered to bring him as a trophy in the United States and run him all over for propaganda purpouses well unless the body was for some reason unpresentable to the public.
It has always been surprising how Bin Laden has had the ability to appear always at the eve of a major election or event to provide the american media and their spectators with a convenient scapegoat.
Even more suprising is how many persons talked publicly during this decade of how he was supposed to be dead, I just picked some of the most influential:


- On December 26, 2001, Fox News, citing a Pakistan Observer story, reported that the Afghan Taliban had pronounced Bin Laden dead and buried him in an unmarked grave.

- On January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”
- On July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials that “I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore.”
- In October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.

- On November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.

- In May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”
Musharraf, the President of Pakistan said by accident three months ago that bin Laden was dead. 


On a different note though in 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.
And if former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the nerve to tell us this on public television well we would better to start figuring out what is the real reason and why now.