BRATTLEBORO — Osama bin Laden is finally dead more than nine years after 9/11. Fantastically, it turns out that he was holed up for the past six years or so in a three-story reinforced house in an elite suburb a few hours outside the Pakistani capital, with an entourage of almost 30, including his many wives and kids.
Obviously, for this to have been so, there must have been scandalous, probably criminal complicity of many interested parties, including his influential Saudi family, elements of the U.S., Pakistani, and Afghanistan governments and military, and players in the corporate and international monetary system, to say nothing of large segments of the local population who consider us to be invaders and the main cause of their woes.
Here are some questions that need to be answered, but probably won't be.
Where did the money come from to finance his relatively luxurious way of life? Who was the builder of his stronghold? Who was the architect? How was the money transferred to pay for the ongoing, substantial upkeep?
The first place some enterprising journalist should look is his enormously wealthy Saudi family. Why are they not mentioned by the U.S. government or our many talking heads on television? Why was Bush actually holding hands with the Saudi king some years ago? Why did he boast that bin Laden was no longer an important target and was “living in a cave"? Did he already know better?
Why were members of the Saudi royal family given immediate free passage out of the U.S. the day after 9/11? More important, how did bin Laden pay for his terrorist group and its activities?
Why were he, his family, and his enablers able to survive undetected for so long in a relatively affluent town that housed the Pakistani Army headquarters and several of its military bases? Did elements of Pakistani intelligence, long suspected of double dealing the U.S. by accepting billions of our aid money while at the same time supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, establish and protect bin Laden? Did they accept bribes from the Saudis?
President Obama was, for the most part, very brave and careful when ordering the Navy Seals into bin Laden's hideout in the heart of Pakistan. But why did the operation more closely resemble a Mafia vendetta than a deliberate, objective military operation? Why was the order given beforehand to kill bin Laden, who surely could have been the best source of valuable intelligence? Why was his body consigned to “sleep with the fishes"? Why are pictures of his body being withheld?
In sum, why is there apparently no irrefutable chain of evidence that bin Laden is actually dead?
Why are we are once again being told, “Trust us"?