Osama Bin Laden’s Death and the US Presidential Elections

I just can’t trust governments.

Especially not the news of the alleged death of the most wanted fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

Succeeding reports seem to show some inconsistencies.

While I read that DNA tests confirmed that they belonged to Mr. Bin Laden, the photos circulating the cyberspace was reportedly faked according to the Washington Post.

I’m no forensic expert but DNAs can be stored for a number of years according to easy-DNA.com. The possible implication is that the death of Bin Laden may or may not have happened exactly as claimed by the US government.

Moreover, Bin Laden’s cadaver, was reportedly buried at sea, which according to IOL news, would have prevented his followers from making it into a shrine.

Perhaps. But some say the reason is to get rid of evidence.

But what if there had been no Bin Laden? Some quarters allege that Bin Laden has long been dead.

All the above seem to be anchored on the credibility of the US government and nothing more.

Yet the US Presidential election is around the corner.

Considering that President Obama’s approval rating hit an all time low in March of 2011, there’s got to be a ‘miracle’ for him to boost his chances for re-election.

And true enough, reports of the slaying of Bin Laden did give him a boost.

From Mark Perry (Enterprise Blog)

Prediction markets (intrade.com) reveal a spike in the election odds in favor of President Obama.

Yet a day after the Bin Laden was slain, reports say that the controversial birth certificate, which President Obama recently produced in reaction to the challenge of presidential aspirant Donald Trump, could be a fake.

According to the Daily Mail

Leaders of the so-called 'birther' movement have claimed that the birth certificate produced by Barack Obama is a fake.

Despite the president providing the the full long-form document last week, the 'birthers' - fronted by Donald Trump - have taken their case to a federal appeals court in Southern California.

They claim the birth certificate had been doctored; that the document's serial number was out of sequence, the typing wasn't aligned, and it was printed on green paper instead of white paper like other Hawaiian birth records of that era.

The timing or coincidence of Bin Laden’s death raises the level of my scepticism. Has President Obama been trying to preempt or divert the public’s attention on this?

I am not in the camp of the 'birthers' as mudslinging seems to be a normal tactic employed during elections. But of course what if claim of the 'birthers' are true?

I may also sound like a conspiracy theorist but that’s because of the confusing signals I get.

Even more puzzle is that reports say that the fugitive Bin Laden could have used the compound where he was allegedly slain as a safe house for 5-6 years!

The Reuters quotes White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, (bold emphasis mine)

"Well I think the latest information is that he was in this compound for the past five or six years and he had virtually no interaction with others outside that compound. But yet he seemed to be very active inside the compound," Brennan said on the CBS Early Show program.

Of course someone has to take the blame. That’s the nature of politics. So the scapegoat, according to US officials, should be Pakistan. According to The Hill,

Washington placed Pakistani officials in the rhetorical crosshairs Monday, questioning how they could be ignorant of Osama bin Laden’s hiding place just miles from Islamabad.

Now if the reports are valid that Bin Laden stayed in that compound for 5-6 years then this represents a troubling intelligence failure for the US government more than Pakistan. It’s the US who has been obsessed with Bin Laden.

On the other hand, we could also deduce that there had been no intelligence failure. Instead, the US government could have tolerated (or even harbored) Bin Laden’s presence until the political exigency for his elimination.

The US has placed the responsibility of the infamous 9-11 to Bin Laden, who initially denied involvement.

But 9-11 also was used by the US government to extend her coercive powers (Patriot Act, Homeland Defense) domestically and to engage in war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Chart from Wikipedia Federal Budget and Defense Spending Trend

Thus, Bin Laden served as one of the principal reasons for the massive expansion in US government spending on home defence and overseas wars.

In other words, the hunt for Bin Laden represented one big business for the military industrial complex. So I can’t help but piece together what may seem like a staged operation.

But one may argue that the death of Bin Laden should mean reduced expenditures for the military; not if this were part of the concessions made with President Obama. Besides, they have got Libya's Muammar Gaddafi to replace Bin Laden.

Bottom line:

Bin Laden’s death seems to produce more questions than answers.

I could be wrong, but for me, this looks a lot related to the upcoming US Presidential elections.

For President Obama, desperate times call for desperate measures.