http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/31/76...or-US-till-9-11

Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11 

by lukery 

Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11 
Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 05:01:42 AM PDT

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).
The following is a partial transcript from an interview Sibel gave to Brad Friedman, guest-hosting the Mike Malloy show (audio). (All errors are mine, etc)
Caller: ... What are Sibel's thoughts about 9/11 possibly being an inside job?

Sibel Edmonds: As I have done for the past 7 or 8 years, I have basically stuck with what I know, first-hand, directly, my own knowledge, based on my own experience, based on what I obtained, which is not a lot, but it is extremely important.

And to answer a question like "Was it an inside job?" would be, first of all, preposterous for me to make that call. But what I can tell you is, based on what we know already - and these are the confirmed cases, like Colleen Rowley - look at her and her case - and look at the Phoenix Memo with the other FBI agents in the Phoenix field office, and then look at FBI agent Wright in Chicago, look at that case...

And if you read James Bamford's latest book, what the NSA obtained from Yemen before September 11, because we were following two of these hijackers in Yemen... Well, if you put all those things, all this information that has come from various agencies, in one place, and you look at it, and you say "Wow!"

You know, it is very easy to write off things when you have one or two slip-ups, and you attribute certain things to bureaucratic bungling - but it goes beyond that... Now, what is that? As I said, I wont be able to answer the question, but what I can answer is, yes, we had this 911 Commission that was formed (laughs) and first we had Henry Kissinger appointed to be the Chairman, this tells you what kind of Commission they had in mind, which was going to be cosmetic. It was pretty obvious. Then we had the final Commission, with a bunch of people with conflicts of interest, and we didn't get anything.

As you see, people have been gagged, a lot of things have been classified... And you think 'Why would they go so far to cover up bureaucratic bungling?' Again, that doesn't mean that this was an inside job, but what it tells you is that there are a lot of things that we don't know, there are a lot of things that our government doesn’t want us to know.

I mean, the recent thing just came out a few days ago with the case against Saudi Arabia, with the 9/11 family members. Well yesterday it made it to the front page of the New York Times with Eric Lichtblau, OK. So now the Justice Department under Obama is saying 'No you can't get this information because we want to protect Saudi Arabia.' Well, protect them against what? So those are the questions that have not been answered. And those questions that have been answered, nothing has been done about it, and no explanation has been given to us. So we have all these issues, and there is no simple answer, but one simple answer is that, yes, we are facing a lot of cover-up. And I want to know why, and I'm sure you want to know why too.

Brad Friedman: Nah, I don't want to know (laughs). So it's fair to say in your case then that you don't necessarily have information that you haven’t been able to disclose that reveals that 9/11 was an inside job, you just have, like I do, concerns about the information that we have, the bad information that we have...

Sibel Edmonds: (interrupts) I have to jump in here and say that I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.

I know you are going to say 'Oh my God, we went there and bombed the medical factory in the 1990s during Clinton, we declared him Most Wanted' and what I'm telling you is, with those groups, we had operations in Central Asia, and that relationship - using them as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict - we used them all the way until September 11.

Brad Friedman: Are you able to speak in more detail about that material that was classified?

Sibel Edmonds: People have written about it, based on the interviews conducted, and based on other people talking about it. And you know what, it's not very difficult to put two and two together on this. There is so much information that of course our Mainstream Media has not reported, but there have been some good books written on the topic, and that is: What we have been doing, what we were doing in those years, all the way, all the way until that day of September 11, in Central Asia, in what they call East Turkistan where we are talking about the Uighurs, and with Bin Laden, via Turkey.

And these are the Turkish actors because Central Asian countries are Turkic-speaking, they have the same heritage as the Republic of Turkey, the share the same language, the same culture. And we, as a country, the United States, used Turkey, along with actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to carry out a lot of operations.

The Russians have talked about it, because they have been screaming about it, again those things have not been reported, but what we have on that has been classified. They have been using 'sensitive diplomatic relations,' protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia...

Well, that does not say that 9/11 was an inside job, but that tells people, it would tell people, the information that they have gagged, they have classified, a lot of things that would maybe bring us closer to the answer, and why our government has been lying about it.
In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."
These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

lukery's diary :: ::

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.
Control of Central Asia 
The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.
The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.
Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.
In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)
Accordingto Sibel: 
This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam. 
Uighurs 
Sibel was recently askedto write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."
Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001: 
"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China." 
And also that: 
"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia." 
In a separate interview, Margolis said: 
"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.
The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this." 
Rogues Gallery 
Last year, Sibel came up with a brilliant idea to expose some of the criminal activity that she is forbidden to speak about: she publishedeighteen photos, titled "Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery," of people involved the operations that she has been trying to expose. One of those people is Anwar Yusuf Turani, the so-called 'President-in-exile' of East Turkistan (Xinjiang). This so-called 'government-in-exile' was 'established' on Capitol Hill in September, 2004, drawing a sharp rebuke from China.
Also featured in Sibel's Rogues Gallery was 'former' spook Graham Fuller, who was instrumental in the establishment of Turani's 'government-in-exile' of East Turkistan. Fuller has written extensively on Xinjiang, and his "Xinjiang Project" for Rand Corp is apparentlythe blueprint for Turani's government-in-exile. Sibel has openly statedher contempt for Mr. Fuller.
Susurluk 
The Turkish establishment has a long history of mingling matters of state with terrorism, drug trafficking and other criminal activity, best exemplified by the 1996 Susurluk incident which exposed the so-called Deep State.
Sibel states that "a few main Susurluk actors also ended up in Chicago where they centered 'certain' aspects of their operations (Especially East Turkistan-Uighurs)."
One of the main Deep State actors, Mehmet Eymur, former Chiefof Counter-Terrorism for Turkey's intelligence agency, the MIT, features in Sibel's Rogues Gallery. Eymur was given exile in the US. Another member of Sibel's gallery, Marc Grossman was Ambassador to Turkey at the time that the Susurluk incident exposed the Deep State. He was recalled shortly after, prior to the end of his assignment, as was Grossman's underling, Major Douglas Dickerson, who later tried to recruit Sibel into the spying ring.
The modus operandi of the Susurluk gang is the same as the activities that Sibel describes as taking place in Central Asia, the only difference is that this activity was exposed in Turkey a decade ago, whereas the organs of the state in the US, including the corporate media, have successfully suppressed this story.
Chechnya, Albania & Kosovo 
Central Asia is not the only place where American foreign policy makers have shared interests with Bin Laden. Consider the war in Chechnya. As I documented here, Richard Perle and Stephen Solarz (both in Sibel's gallery) joined other leading neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and Morton Abramowitz in a group called the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). For his part, Bin Laden donated$25 million to the cause, as well as numerous fighters, and technical expertise, establishing training camps.
US interests also convergedwith those of al-Qaeda in Kosovo and Albania.
Of course, it is not uncommon for circumstances to arise where 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' On the other hand, in a transparent democracy, we expect a full accounting of the circumstances leading up to a tragic event like 9/11. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to provide exactly that.
State Secrets 
Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony. In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting " 'sensitive diplomatic relations,' protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia..." This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.
As Sibel says in the interview: 
I have information about things that our government has lied to us about... those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11. 
Summary 
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.
It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.
The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.

I used to admire Sibel Edmonds as a whistle blower who wasn’t easily intimidated. I still believe most of what she said when she first came out was true. It was credible because she spoke up about it soon after the fact, it related to matters she was in a position to know and eventually was confirmed by others in positions to know. For the last few years though I’ve suspected she was fabulating.

Her most recent comments raise a few questions:

1) If true why has she been silent about this for over 7 years? When she first stated speaking out it was over more mundane matters like her department intentionally creating a backlog so as to justify a bigger budget and covering up incompetence. Even in her famous 2004 “… Open Letter to the 9/11 Panel” she never even hinted at anything like this and said 9/11 was due to a “failure” not conspiracy by US intelligence and attributed it in large part to “mid-level bureaucratic management”
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=3230

2) If true why hasn’t anyone else with direct knowledge said anything? According to her people from numerous countries were involved “we, as a country, the United States, used Turkey, along with actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to carry out a lot of operations.”

3) How would she be in a position to know this? If indeed the CIA had some super secret program to cooperate through 3rd and 4th parties with the OBL and AQ on these matters why would those responsible let a novice Iranian born Muslim civilian translator hired by the FBI after 9/11?

4) Why doesn’t she say exactly how she knows this? The closest she got was:

“I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11”

My guess is that she heard Eric Margolis make similar charges believed them and decided to bolster them. The timing is suspicious Margolis made similar claims in interviews on November 30, 2008 and April 28, 2009, then less than two months after the 2nd interview after having never said anything about this for over seven year claims to have “knowledge” of it.

Margolis seems more credible but he never explained how he came to know this or why he said nothing for so many years. His claims were more limited than Edmonds’

“[The CIA] knew what Bin Laden was doing, and they were encouraging him through third parties, probably the Saudis, but the minute 9/11 happened... well, you remember Washington was giving money to the Taliban until four months before 9/11”

He was incorrect about the 2nd point which undermines his credibility. The US in 2001 the US sent $124.2 million in humanitarian aid (mostly food) to Afghanistan which was “administered by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, and bypasses the Taliban,”

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/05/17/us.afghanistan.aid/

Edmonds was also wrong about the US having “intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban” up to “the fall of the Soviet Union” the latter is not even possible since the group was only founded in 1994 but no one (AFAIK) has been able to demonstrate that the US had anything but superficial relations with OBL or other “Arab Afghans” during the Soviet occupation.

Sibel interview: partial transcript -http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2009/07/sibel-edmonds-on-mike-malloy.html
Audio http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7253

Margolis interview partial transcript (and link to audio) –
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7253

Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...ar-terror.html#
By Sue Reid
Last updated at 10:59 PM on 11th September 2009


The last time we heard a squeak from him was on June 3 this year.

The world's most notorious terrorist outsmarted America by releasing a menacing message as Air Force One touched down on Saudi Arabian soil at the start of Barack Obama's first and much vaunted Middle East tour.

Even before the new President alighted at Riyadh airport to shake hands with Prince Abdullah, Bin Laden's words were being aired on TV, radio and the internet across every continent.


Genuine picture: Osama Bin Laden in October 2001

It was yet another propaganda coup for the 52-year-old Al Qaeda leader. In the audiotape delivered to the Arab news network Al Jazeera, Bin Laden said that America and her Western allies were sowing seeds of hatred in the Muslim world and deserved dire consequences.

It was the kind of rant we have heard from him before, and the response from British and U.S. intelligence services was equally predictable.

They insisted that the details on the tape, of the President's visit and other contemporary events, proved that the mastermind of 9/11, America's worst ever terrorist atrocity, was still alive - and that the hunt for him must go on.


Bin Laden has always been blamed for orchestrating the horrific attack - in which nearly 3,000 people perished - eight years ago this week. President George W. Bush made his capture a national priority, infamously promising with a Wild West flourish to take him 'dead or alive'.

The U.S. State Department offered a reward of $50million for his whereabouts. The FBI named him one of their ten 'most wanted' fugitives, telling the public to watch out for a left-handed, grey-bearded gentleman who walks with a stick.


Fake? Bin Laden two months later, when he was supposedly dead

Yet this master terrorist remains elusive. He has escaped the most extensive and expensive man-hunt in history, stretching across Waziristan, the 1,500 miles of mountainous badlands on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Undeterred, Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find him. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror.

This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. After all, there are the plethora of 'Bin Laden tapes' to prove it.

Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?

What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?

Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.

Of course, there have been any number of conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, and it could be this is just another one.

But the weight of opinion now swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is dead - and the accumulating evidence that supports it - makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of examination.

The theory first received an airing in the American Spectator magazine earlier this year when former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and senior editor Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, stated bluntly: 'All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.'


9/11: Bin Laden originally insisted in official press statements that he had played no role in the atrocity

Prof Codevilla pointed to inconsistencies in the videos and claimed there have been no reputable sightings of Bin Laden for years (for instance, all interceptions by the West of communications made by the Al Qaeda leader suddenly ceased in late 2001).

Prof Codevilla asserted: 'The video and audio tapes alleged to be Osama's never convince the impartial observer,' he asserted. 'The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between the colours and styles of his beard are small stuff.'

There are other doubters, too. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies' department and the foremost Bin Laden expert, argues that the increasingly secular language in the video and audio tapes of Osama (his earliest ones are littered with references to God and the Prophet Mohammed) are inconsistent with his strict Islamic religion, Wahhabism.

He notes that, on one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among Wahhabi followers.



Bin Laden in 1998 (l) and, allegedly, in 2002: Sceptics have pointed to a thicker nose and the ring on his right hand as proof it is an imposter

This week, still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?

Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West.

The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan.

His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom.

The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. The purpose? To stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To understand Griffin's thesis, we must remember the West's reaction to 9/11, that fateful sunny September day in 2001. Within a month, on Sunday, October 7, the U.S. and Britain launched massive retaliatory air strikes in the Tora Bora region where they said 'prime suspect' Bin Laden was living 'as a guest of Afghanistan'.

This military offensive ignored the fact that Bin Laden had already insisted four times in official Al Qaeda statements made to the Arab press that he played no role in 9/11.

Indeed, on the fourth occasion, on September 28 and a fortnight after the atrocity, he declared emphatically: 'I have already said I am not involved. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge... nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.'

Within hours of the October 7 strikes by the U.S. on Tora Bora, Bin Laden made his first ever appearance on video tape. Dressed in Army fatigues, and with an Islamic head-dress, he had an assault rifle propped behind him in a broadly lit mountain hideout. Significantly, he looked pale and gaunt.

Although he called President George W. Bush 'head of the infidels' and poured scorn on the U.S., he once again rejected responsibility for 9/11.

'America was hit by God in one of its softest spots. America is full of fear, from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.'

Then came a second videotape on November 3, 2001. Once again, an ailing Bin Laden lashed out at the United States. He urged true Muslims to celebrate the attacks - but did not at any time acknowledge he had been involved in the atrocity.

And then there was silence until December 13, 2001 - the date Griffin claims Bin Laden died. That very day, the U.S. Government released a new video of the terror chief. In this tape, Bin Laden contradicted all his previous denials, and suddenly admitted to his involvement in the atrocity of 9/11.

The tape had reportedly been found by U.S. troops in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, after anti-Taliban forces took over the city. A label attached to it claimed that it had been made on November 9, 2001.


Bush made Bin Laden's capture a national priority, claiming he could get his man - dead or alive

The tape shows Bin Laden talking with a visiting sheik. In it, he clearly states that he not only knew about the 9/11 atrocities in advance, but had planned every detail personally.

What manna for the Western authorities! This put the terrorist back in the frame over 9/11. The Washington Post quoted U.S. officials saying that the video 'offers the most convincing evidence of a connection between Bin Laden and the September 11 attacks'.

A euphoric President Bush added: 'For those who see this tape, they realise that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, but he has no conscience and no soul.'

In London, Downing Street said that the video was 'conclusive proof of his involvement'. The then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, added: 'There is no doubt it is the real thing. People can see Bin Laden there, making those utterly chilling words of admission about his guilt for organising the atrocities of September 11.'

Yet Professor Griffin claims this 'confessional' video provokes more questions than answers. For a start, the Bin Laden in this vital film testimony looks different.

He is a weighty man with a black beard, not a grey one. His pale skin had suddenly become darker, and he had a different shaped nose. His artistic hands with slender fingers had transformed into those of a pugilist. He looked in exceedingly good health.

Furthermore, Bin Laden can be seen writing a note with his right hand, although he is left-handed. Bizarrely, too, he makes statements about 9/11 which Griffin claims would never have come from the mouth of the real Bin Laden - a man with a civil engineering degree who had made his fortune (before moving into terrorism) from building construction in the Middle East.

For example, the Al Qaeda leader trumpets that far more people died in 9/11 than he had expected. He goes on: 'Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the explosion from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. That is all we had hoped for.' (In reality the Twin Towers' completely fell down).

The words of the true Bin Laden? No, says Griffin, because of the obvious mistakes. 'Given his experience as a contractor, he would have known the Twin Towers were framed with steel, not iron,' he says.

'He would also known that steel and iron do not begin to melt until they reach 2,800 deg F. Yet a building fire fed by jet fuel is a hydrocarbon fire, and could not have reached above 1,800 deg F.'

Griffin, in his explosive book, says this tape is fake, and he goes further.

'A reason to suspect that all of the post-2001 Bin Laden tapes are fabrications is that they often appeared at times that boosted the Bush presidency or supported a claim by its chief 'war on terror' ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

'The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign.'

Griffin suggests that Western governments used highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings of Bin Laden.

So if they are fakes, why has Al Qaeda kept quiet about it? And what exactly happened to the real Bin Laden?

The answer to the first question may be that the amorphous terrorist organisation is happy to wage its own propaganda battle in the face of waning support - and goes along with the myth that its charismatic figurehead is still alive to encourage recruitment to its cause.

As for the matter of what happened to him, hints of Bin Laden's kidney failure, or that he might be dead, first appeared on January 19, 2002, four months after 9/11.

This was when Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf told America's news show CNN: 'I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney patient. The images of him show he is extremely weak.'

In his book, Professor Griffin also endorses this theory. He says Bin Laden was treated for a urinary infection, often linked to kidney disease, at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months before 9/11. At the same time, he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to Afghanistan.

How could Bin Laden, on the run in snowy mountain caves, have used the machine that many believe was essential to keep him alive? Doctors whom Griffin cites on the subject think it would have been impossible.

He would have needed to stay in one spot with a team of medics, hygienic conditions, and a regular maintenance programme for the dialysis unit itself.

And what of the telling, small news item that broke on December 26, 2001 in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd? It said a prominent official of the Afghan Taliban had announced that Osama Bin Laden had been buried on or about December 13.

'He suffered serious complications and died a natural, quiet death. He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the grave,' said the report.

The Taliban official, who was not named, said triumphantly that he had seen Bin Laden's face in his shroud. 'He looked pale, but calm, relaxed and confident.'

It was Christmas in Washington DC and London and the report hardly got a mention. Since then, the Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him.

Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?

As to Edmond's recent claims about OBL which contradict her earlier complaints about "mid-level" problems at the FBI, she failed to repeat them when she was under oath, wonder why that was?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14757