Osama bin Laden was accused of murdering thousands of Americans, yet US forces who killed him found it necessary to smear him with revelations that he had a stash of pornography in his home.
(Mass Murderer and) Pervert
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I think the finding porn part is important to killing the legacy of Osama, to continue to paint his image as a fake and a hypocrite. Not only was he a rich dude living comfortably in a nice compound while pretending to be poor and live in a cave, but he was a porn addict who pretended to be ultra-religious.
It is clear that the Office of Strategic Communication has been trying to convince the Islamic world that Osama was no martyr but a hypocrite.
Sadly, their stories are so full of blatant contradictions that every Moslem with whom I’ve spoken believes none of the official US press releases, but is convinced that Osama died a great martyr fighting the great Satan.
Of course, Muslims outside the US do not vote, but the money spent on the Office of Strategic Communication seems wasted inside the US, since most commenters say that the details don’t matter, all that really matters is that Obama and the Seals killed Osama; and the money seems to have been wasted outside the US, since no one except Americans believes anything the OSC says.
We aren’t sure about how Osama died, since that is Top Secret, Need to Know Only.
The AP reported that the other three men in the compound were shot in the back of the head at point-blank range (strange way to get shot in a firefight, but we know the White House press releases were 110% true, and the AP had no reason to lie, so both must be telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, contradictory though the two stories are, but then consistency is just the hobgoblin of small minds…).
But it seems totally out of character to shoot Osama, take his body to a ship, put it on a plank, and tip it into the Arabian sea.
It would have been much more in character to have taken Osama alive to the ship, tied weights around his neck, and then to have forced him to walk that plank with a cutlass at his back.
Ethics aside, taking him alive would have had greater propaganda value.
Porn wouldn’t make Osama a hypocrite by itself. A perfectly reasonable person could indulge in one product of what he considers and over-sexualized and sinful culture without wanting to be surrounded by that culture. Its not too different from wanting to drive a car, but not wanting an oil derrick in your back yard. This seems to be an old, and obviously cheesy tactic we use against enemies. There’s ample proof Osama is a bad guy and this is just superfluous.
The OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA, commissioned a psychological profile of Hitler. Based on the available evidence, the profiler concluded that der Fuhrer had a pee pee fetish. The profile was linked to the public. As if there weren’t much more factually grounded bad things you could say about Hitler?
The very least the US of A could have done after taking out Osama, being a civilized country and all, was to show Osama’s head on a stake.
Now I don’t have anything personal against Osama but as the English say: “show me the body!”