you should choose your conspiracies wisely…

As noted a few days ago, I can understand why there would be conspiracy theories arguing that bin Laden is still alive with the lack of a body or photos, especially since the government decided not to release any of the images from the raid or the funeral as not to give al Qaeda yet another recruiting tool. But now we have official acknowledgments from al Qaeda itself that their leader has been killed in Pakistan while vowing revenge on all those in the West who aren’t sad to see him go and those in Pakistan they believe might have told spooks working for the U.S. where they could find bin Laden in exchange for more aid and weapons. So can we drop this deather thing now, please? An organization with all the interest in the world to keep bin Laden’s memory alive and going, and to which the longer he eluded the American military, the more mythical he became, isn’t going to suddenly go along with some sinister government plot to pretend that their leader is dead for bizarre, inscrutable reasons known only to the denizens of Prison Planet, ATS, and InfoWars. The real mystery in this case is how much Pakistan knew and how it could’ve let bin Laden live a block away from its West Point.

If there’s any conspiracy here, it’s a potential deal between the head of al Qaeda and the Pakistani ISI. It’s not very likely because it means that Osama would’ve had to somehow agree with the handover of a lot of senior and mid-level operatives in his organization to the U.S. to save his own hide. Even though human life was an extremely cheap commodity to him and his officers, this seems very out of character him. After all, by virtually all accounts, he was soft-spoken and very generous to his friends and allies. He raised millions for his jihad by wooing sheiks and emirs sympathetic to his cause with tours through the battle sites of the Afghan war at which he boasted how Islam brought a mighty atheist superpower to its knees, and bird hunting trips, one of which was said to be observed by the CIA in an attempt to assassinate him with an unmanned drone. It’s very hard to believe that someone so utterly devoted to jihad that he built a business conglomerate out of it, would sit across the table from ISI higher-ups and decide who he can and cannot afford to give out to the U.S. Again, it’s not impossible to imagine, but it certainly would seem out of character for him. Now we have to come back to the ISI and it’s checkered history with the Taliban and other militant groups and ask how and why on one in one of the most secure and armed places in Pakistan hosted bin Laden for about five or six years.

Let’s see, a giant million dollar mansion with blast walls and heavy gates, where residents burn their trash in an empty section of a compound and won’t let kids retrieve stray soccer balls sits in the middle of a town that hosts thousands of current and future military officers presumably taught how to tell that something is way off, and none of them are going to start asking any questions? None of them are going to investigate? That’s just a little odd, isn’t it? The only two choices seem to be that bin Laden had help staying in Abottadad and it’s only a question of how much help and from how high up, or that the ISI has no idea what it’s doing. Also odd from an agency known to play very complicated double games with Russia, China, and the U.S. for decades and, if we believe a number of intel accounts presented to the 9/11 Commission, capable of putting out very precise hits on whoever catches its ire and gets in the way of its big goals. Why do we even need to resort to any New World Order bunk perpetuated by paranoid souls who spend their lives thinking that they’re cunning spies in the know being perused by sinister defense and intelligent agencies helmed by evil aliens, when there’s one very real puzzle to solve here? Why do people love to gravitate to the ridiculous in their quest to stumble upon some mystery when there’s a real one right in front of them already? Could it be because this is one they will not be able to pretend they solved in their spare time, staring at the computer screens for a few hours?