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Twenty-three years ago this month the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon shook the United States and horrified the world. Almost three thousand Americans died. The US launched attacks across the Muslim world in what the media called ‘the War on Terror.’ The repercussions of these events continue today. Washington quickly blamed... Read More
Osama bin Laden may be in Hell, but he could be having the last laugh. TikTokers recently discovered Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” which was written in 2002 and residing online in plain sight. The letter, allegedly written by bin Laden’s #2, the late Ayman al-Zawahiri, was al-Qaeda’s justification for attacking America on 11... Read More
Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” — especially a version published at The Guardian since 2002 — recently became wildly popular on TikTok. According to the New York Times, #lettertoamerica had 14.2 million views. You can’t check that hashtag now, because TikTok banned it. The Guardian also removed the letter itself, because it was being... Read More
We built a Love Train. Then we decided to completely remove the braking system. This train is bound for freedom. Osama bin Laden just hopped on board. We’re picking up Adolf Hitler at the next stop. RT: Other users reacted similarly to the recently redisc
al-zawahiri
What exactly did Ayman al-Zawahiri do?
I often complain that Washington’s heavily lopsided relationship with Israel is an arrangement that brings absolutely no benefit to the American people, and even less to our national security as it has involved the US in an endless series of completely avoidable conflicts. But there is one exception to that generalization, though one hesitates to... Read More
It is unsettling to see a democratic government like the United States beating its chest over the high-tech murder of a retired jihadist, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 71-year-old al-Zawahiri succeeded the assassinated Osama bin Laden as chief of the anti-US underground group, al-Qaeda. The mild-mannered, Egyptian had been a local doctor in Cairo, when the... Read More
“...the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”
I was fortunate enough to be in Afghanistan in November of 1978, six months after a progressive socialist government came to power. I travelled from the city of Peshawar in Pakistan through the Khyber Pass to Kabul. I then spent a couple of weeks in the city and the surrounding rural area. At that time... Read More
netanyahu-and-congress
All it takes is a government conspiracy
The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 has motivated some critics of the standard narrative to explore alternative explanations for what took place on that fatal day. To be sure, there has been considerable focus through the years on exactly what happened, analyzing the technical aspects of what made the twin towers and nearby Building 7, which... Read More
Twenty years ago tonight, on September 11, 2001, many Americans felt that they had just seen Francis Fukuyama’s End of History revoked in the most brutal and dramatic way possible. The sense of rage, shock—and, somehow, pride—is impossible to recapture. It almost seems like it didn’t happen, or that it happened to someone else. That’s... Read More
9/11: A U.S. DEEP STATE INSIDER SPEAKS Old school. Top clearance. Extremely discreet. Attended secret Deep State meetings on 9-11. Tired of all the lies. The following is what’s fit to print without being redacted. Part 1 THE PHONE CALL. Up next. “An emergency phone conference was held in the early afternoon of 9/11 based... Read More
When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that first 9/11, the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary for al-Qaida. Today, the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to al-Qaida. What then did our longest war accomplish? The Afghan army and... Read More
Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi governments to neutralise it as a live political issue. The Saudi Arabia embassy in Washington this week issued a statement detailing its anti-terrorist activities and ongoing hostility to Al-Qaeda. This was briskly... Read More
Massoud leaving Bazarak in the Panjshir after our interview in August 2001, roughly three weeks before his assassination. Photo: Pepe Escobar
It’s impossible not to start with the latest tremor in a series of stunning geopolitical earthquakes. Exactly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the Taliban will hold a ceremony in Kabul to celebrate their victory in that misguided Forever War. Four key exponents of Eurasia integration... Read More
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It’s just really amazing that after fighting a war for 20 years, the US military was incapable of planning an exit wherein everyone came out of the country. RT: That soldier who got fired for asking questions asked how it was possible to not plan to get everyone out. We still don’t have an answer... Read More
The American People Live In a World of False Narratives
A decade ago today, I posted the translation reproduced below of a TV news report in Pakistan about the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden by a strike team of Navy SEALS sent in by Obama. I had previously posted a video of the news report which had subscripts explaining in English what was being... Read More
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan. Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost. And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which... Read More
The American Establishment uses the presstitute lie machine to control the narrative for most of the world by broadcasting disinformation in 59 languages. Countries and their news services rely on “news” from the US to comprehend world events. Most of the world has little alternative to American news sources except for the BBC which is... Read More
After 19 years of war, over $1 trillion in spending, 2,400 dead and a torrent of lies, the US may now be facing an end to its longest war. The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. There were three reasons: 1. to cover up the humiliation of the tough-talking Bush administration for being caught sleeping on... Read More
In the 1990s with the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the communist hardliners’ arrest of Soviet President Gorbachev and Yeltsin serving as Washington’s puppet while Americans and Israelis looted Russia, the neoconservatives called for Washington to overthrow Middle Eastern governments. The neocon scenario for remaking the Middle East was set out prior to... Read More
There is no other way to say it: It was a political assassination. Osama bin Laden was unarmed. SEALs captured him alive. Following brazenly illegal orders from Washington, they executed him. "The (Obama) administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead," The Atlantic reported on... Read More
My distrust has deepened of Seymour Hersh’s retelling of the Obama regime’s extra-judicial murder of Osama bin Laden by operating illegally inside a sovereign country. That Hersh’s story, which is of very little inherent interest, received such a large amount of attention, is almost proof of orchestration in order to substantiate the Obama regime’s claim... Read More
Seymour Hersh's sources tell a more believable story than the self-serving official White House narrative
Some might argue that knowing exactly how Osama bin Laden was killed really doesn’t matter. Some might even argue that he is still alive, which, if nothing else, would demonstrate the persistence of urban legends relating to conspiracies allegedly involving the U.S. government. JFK’s assassination has the grassy knoll and second gunman, plus Mafia, CIA,... Read More
Carolina K. Smith MD / Shutterstock.com
Since September 11, 2001, Bin Laden had been mostly an absence. His few video or audio tapes were highly suspect, and speculations about his death had often surfaced. On July 11, 2002, Amir Taheri wrote in the New York Times, "Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan... Read More
Seymour Hersh has published a long account of the homicide of Osama bin Laden: Hersh concludes that the Obama regime’s account of the killing of bin Laden is a total fabrication except for the fact that bin Laden was killed. I do not believe Hersh’s story for three reasons. One reason is that bin Laden... Read More
RT, one of my favorite news sources, has fallen for a fake story put out by the Pentagon to support the fantasy story that a SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden, who died a second time in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a decade after his first death from illness and disease. This fake story together with the... Read More
A Funeral Notice for Osama bin Laden was published on December 26, 2001, in the Egyptian newspaper al-Ward. An English translation is provided below. Anyone fluent in Arabic is invited to verify or correct the translation. This item was sent to me from a reader abroad. Also below are is a CNN interview with its... Read More
By readers’ request, this is a reposting of a translation of a Pakistani National TV interview with an eyewitness to the alleged SEAL Team Six attack that allegedly killed Osama bin Laden. I made the translation available two years ago in an article prior to the creation of this website. Before you believe “your” government’s... Read More
NEW YORK – Two years ago this week, US special forces shot and killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man. American TV is filled with chest-thumping and flag-waving about how bin Laden was hunted down and executed. For most Americans, bin Laden was the acme of evil and author of the 9/11 attacks... Read More
The interview below with Osama bin Laden was conducted by the Karachi, Pakistan, daily newspaper, Ummat and published on September 28, 2001, 17 days after the alleged, but unsubstantiated, al Qaeda attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center twin towers and Pentagon. The interview was sensational. The alleged “mastermind” of 9/11 said... Read More
A nuclear deal with Iran? An organized retreat from Afghanistan? The eurozone picking up a little bit of steam? Stable oil prices? Forget it. The crucial foreign elector recruited for Obama II at the White House is one Osama bin Laden. Call it the “Obama nails Osama” winning strategy. No wonder the winning strategy has... Read More
A nuclear deal with Iran? An organized retreat from Afghanistan? The eurozone picking up a little bit of steam? Stable oil prices? Forget it. The crucial foreign elector recruited for Obama II at the White House is one Osama bin Laden. Call it the "Obama nails Osama" winning strategy. No wonder the winning strategy has... Read More
Isolated, Delusional, Ridiculed by His Men
The story behind the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden remains a puzzle despite the torrent of documentaries and articles appearing on the anniversary of his death. An absurdly high number of American political leaders, generals, security officials and former CIA and FBI agents have given interviews claiming a central role in the... Read More
Why was I named in alleged al-Qaida letters last week as a recipient for documents about 9/11? Al-Qaida was not founded by Osama bin Laden, as many wrongly believe, but in the mid-1980’s in Peshawar, Pakistan, by a revolutionary scholar, Sheik Abdullah Azzam. I know this because I interviewed Azzam numerous times at al-Qaida HQ... Read More
The American media has again been complaining about perfidious Pakistan over the report that five men had been arrested for helping the United States kill Osama bin Laden. The complaining is ridiculous. It was inevitable that Pakistan would try to identify and arrest those Pakistanis who had been recruited by CIA and were working as... Read More
Carolina K. Smith MD / Shutterstock.com
Bin Laden is dead, but his strategy still bleeds the United States.
Osama bin Laden predicted long ago he would die a martyr at the hands of U.S. forces, and so it has come to pass. Americans are rejoicing that the man credited with the monstrous crime of 9/11 has been killed after a 10-year search. Neocons and far-right Republicans claim it was all thanks to the... Read More
CounterPunch Diary
Pinko terror-symps and the “rule of law” gang may cavil and whine at the lack of legal propriety in the execution of Osama , but it’s not cutting much ice with liberal America. For long years what might be called the “progressive” segment of American voters have chafed at Republican gibes that their guy Obama... Read More
My Pakistani security intelligence sources told me five years ago that Osama bin Laden was hiding in an urban area in Pakistan. If I, a humble journalist, had a good idea where OBL was, why did it take CIA so long to find one elderly man who had brazenly set out to defeat the mighty... Read More
The tale of how the CIA found bin Laden would appear to be a lot more complicated than the media has been suggesting. That they picked up his trail due to NSA interception of a phone call made by one of his couriers is almost certainly correct. But consider what the subsequent steps would have... Read More
CounterPunch Diary
Barack Obama, who pledged to restore ethical honor to the White House after the Bush years, is now burying himself under an active volcano of lies, mostly but not exclusively concerning the assassination of Osama bin Laden. There was scarcely a sentence in the President's Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John... Read More
The assassination of bin Laden has been celebrated as a great strategic victory by the White House, the European capitals and all the major mass media outlets throughout the world. The killing has served as a major propaganda tool to enhance the standing of the US military in the eyes of the domestic public and... Read More
Show us the Navy SEALs hero who did the double-tapping on Osama bin Laden - the one-two in the head to make sure the target of a hit job is out - after a "firefight" the signs of which are virtually absent in that squalid "mansion" in Abbottabad. Show us the greatest hero of modern... Read More
The Sheikh he drove his Cadillac He went a-cruisin' down the ville The Muezzin was a-standin' On the radiator grill The Clash, Rock the Casbah It's irrelevant. It may be a rockin' Hollywood thriller - an Osama/Obama double bill (directed by Kathryn "Hurt Locker" Bigelow). But the targeted assassination - allegedly with an iconic American... Read More
From Gitmo to the Assassination of Bin Laden
What does the assassination of Osama Bin Laden have in common with Guantanamo Bay? They're both intended to send a message that the United States has sunk deeper into savagery and abandoned any commitment to conventional norms of behavior. That's the message, and we hear it "loud and clear". We don't need our Harvard-educated president... Read More
The assassination of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces in Abbotabad, Pakistan will likely assure Barack Obama's victory in the 2012 presidential race. Republican hawks will have a hard time pressing their claims that Obama is "soft on terrorism." Details about the killing of bin Laden remain obscure. The mission, a joint operation between... Read More
To better understand why Osama bin Laden is so far winning his struggle to oust the western powers from the Muslim world, let us go back to 1986, when I was covering the anti-Soviet war in then almost unknown Afghanistan. I called on the grandly titled "Afghan Information Center" in Peshawar, Pakistan. Peshawar was a... Read More
The significance of Robert Gates' comment yesterday about al-Qaeda has not been noted by the mainstream media. Gates said that "I think it has been years" since the US government has had any solid information about Usama bin Laden, adding that US intelligence believes that the fugitive terrorist might well be moving about in the... Read More
For those who harbored any doubts, the Barack Obama administration's adoption of the George W Bush framework of the "war on terror" - it does feel like a back-to-the-future "continuity" - here are two key facts on the ground. Obama has officially started his much-touted Afghanistan surge, authorizing the deployment of 17,000 US troops (8,000... Read More
The conviction is growing in intelligence circles that Usama bin Laden's days might be numbered, but his demise will likely have nothing to do with Bush Administration efforts to kill him, which continue to be inept, unfocused, and overly reliant on allies like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do the heavy lifting. Many officers within... Read More
"And among the most important items contained in [President George W] Bush's speeches since the events of the 11th [September 11, 2001] is that the Americans have no option but to continue the war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of neo-conservatives like [Vice President Dick] Cheney, [former defense secretary Donald]... Read More
"Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Each and every state that does not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its own security." - Osama bin Laden, October 30 Osama bin Laden's alleged cave in Afghanistan comes complete with room... Read More
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Bin Laden is dead, but his strategy still bleeds the United States.