1/1/11

Account of Bin Laden's Killing Questionable

You can be bet that once the jubilation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden dies down skeptics will be raising questions. Why, they’ll be asking, if our government lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, should we accept at face value their claim that a DNA sample taken from the body proves that the man killed was really Osama Bin Laden? Is President Obama any more credible than George Bush was? Even if the DNA sample were made public, who but a PhD. In forensic science could make sense of it?

And why was the body disposed of so quickly? If Bin Laden was such an evil character, then he didn’t deserve a dignified burial at sea within 24 hours, as prescribed by Islamic custom, as if he were some kind of hero. Was Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s corpse accorded the same respect when our troops martyred him in Iraq?

And why does President Obama refuse to release photos of the corpse? Granted, a man just shot twice in the head does not make a pretty picture. But wasn’t the corpse bathed and clad in clean clothes in preparation for the burial? Surely pictures of the body in a decent state could have been taken and made public to help dispel doubts that we got the right man. The entrance and exit wounds would further have shown which way the man was facing or moving when shot, or whether he was putting up a fight or executed point blank. The pretext that photos of the corpse would fuel anti-American passions in the Muslim world is not at all convincing. Those who hate us couldn’t possibly hate us anymore than they already do.

Then there is the mystery of why Bin Laden was able to hole up in a conspicuous mansion-bunker for five years, 30 miles from the Afghan capital, and next door to the country’s top military academy, without being detected, not only by Pakistani authorities, but also by our own high-tech, satellite-equipped CIA.

Grist for yet another conspiracy theory.

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