The Young Wife Who Defended Osama Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden's willing wife - willing to talk?

The Osama Bin Laden story is continuing. Someone told me that the Americans should just have done it and kept quiet about it. Trouble with that is it would not have stopped the rumour mill. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't when it comes to these things. It's like finding Hitler's bunker intact when the Berlin wall came down. It was covered up again, literally, pretty quickly. Just to keep tourists out and Hitler shrine makers as well.

Now the young Yemeni woman, betrothed to Bin Laden when she was a teenager, is in the limelight. She knew no better I suppose. I know some Yemenis and they have decided to leave the mind-bending existence that Yemen offers. 29-year-old Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah was only doing what she thought was her duty. I bet Osama was a cool operator and she believed his every word. Either that or she was deluded.

Osama Bin Laden will still be around this time next year, and the next. He's moved into that category that makes him worth more dead than alive. He was never much of a threat but he needed to be built up by some so they could make money from it all. What next? The books, of course!

The Obama Osama contest for truth and certainty

Osama Bin Laden is dead. If I didn't know before, I do now. Just been down to the corner shop where the Daily Mail, The Sun et al scream out about the death. "Obama watched Bin Laden die on live video" declares the Mail. It then delicately asks the question in smaller print above the headline "Now the question Is the world any safer today?".

I think the finding of Bin Laden is just the beginning of the next phase. It hasn't done much to change the hearts and minds of those Muslims already at loggerheads with America. President Obama says Osama got a proper Muslim burial. Dumped at sea with the ship's cook saying a few choice Arabic sayings doesn't quite cut the mustard with the Muslims today. A lot of them are up in arms about it all. Hopefully it will die down and we can get back to discussing the real problems in the world.

It is quite marked how the "wife" of Bin Laden was sacrificed in this. She was probably either some deluded female follower or an innocent victim placed under his spell. What hasn't been said by the Islamic world is that it was a disgrace he used her as a shield. The weeping woman went to her death as an accessory to the killing. If the White House watched all that it must have been a grisly ordeal. I imagine one of the navy seals obligingly offered to be cameraman for the day. What Obama does not want is for that video to get out. On YouTube it would be the sensation of the century.

Now comes the dual contest between the conspiracy theorists and the Islamic radicals. Each side will have a vested interest in stoking the myths and the fictions. However, I can't help thinking that the Americans missed a trick here. By capturing him alive and holding him for trial, they could have unearthed far more support from those Muslims, the vast majority, who have no desire for al-Qaeda moralising. How is it Islamic to kill fellow Muslims? Bin Laden never apologised for their deaths in his atrocities. Instead, he is killed and dispatched in a way that smacks of US triumphalism. It was as if revenge comes before due process of law.

President Obama now has to fend off the Osama supporters who even now have started to question things. So it appears the White House, Pentagon and other institutions are considering releasing videos and pictures to prove the point. This is hardly edifying. Either leave well alone or let the ravening wolves feed from it all.

I think Obama should just say yesterday was yesterday and move on. No videos - no pictures - period!

Cameron backs Pakistan's bin Laden myopia!

Gripping viewing as Osama bin Laden is "taken out"

David Cameron is saying sweet things this morning about the Pakistani Government. He said it would be wrong to "throw up our hands in despair and walk away" and not engage with Pakistan. Well, that may be true in part but it does not absolve President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan of being singularly slack in detecting the whereabouts of a man they kept saying was not in Pakistan. David Cameron goes on to say we should support the "democratic forces" of Pakistan. There is virtually nothing democratic about the country. If I'm to believe that's a democracy then I say Barbara Cartland never dressed in pink!

How can we support democratic forces that constantly cause Christians and other minorities grief and misery? That kill opposition leaders? That rig elections? Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician bemoaned the lack of democratic decency in the country. Perhaps he should have a chat with Cameron?

Last year David Cameron was accusing Pakistan of looking "both ways" on terrorism. Most people murmured in agreement on hearing that. There will be muttering today rather than murmuring. He told the BBC's Today programme, "Of course there will be lots of questions about what sort of support system did Bin Laden have in Pakistan - and we need those questions answered - but as we stand today we simply don't know the answers.

"If we turn away from them and give up on them and say 'this is all too difficult and complicated because we don't always get what we want', you are left with a nuclear power in danger of massive extremism and massive instability."

So what are we to do? Go into Pakistan and run the show for them? That is not possible. However, 60 odd years of running things their way has not achieved much for most Pakistanis. It can't be a toss-up between a nuclear bomb and a group of nutters on one side and a nuclear bomb and a group of heavy-handed autocrats on the other. I doubt if we will ever get answers to the sort of support system Bin Laden had in Pakistan. That he got his groceries delivered is blindingly obvious. He had satellite TV, so he was watching something to keep his mind occupied. I mean, right next door to the military academy! "Keep it under your hats, fellas, but bin Laden's moved in next door!"

And Cameron's still linking the Taliban with al-Qaeda. The two may have links on occasions but are no better than hyenas grappling for morsels. One has to wonder who our enemies really are. It is said that the bin Laden family is made up of almost 800 kinsfolk. Osama bin Laden's father was a prolific breeder of humanity. Osama was his 17th child out of 54. And other bin Laden men contributed to the number. The Saudi Binladen Group manages all the cash that swirls around. It is a global oil and equity management conglomerate grossing $5 billion U.S. dollars annually, and one of the largest construction firms in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva. According to an American diplomat, the bin Laden family owns part of Microsoft and Boeing among other companies. So what do we really know? Was Osama the only black sheep of this extended family?

Politics can get very murky indeed. According to this and several other websites "The Bush Administration gave the Taliban $43 million in May of 2001 for their destruction of Afghan opium crops in February. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand. Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of opium/heroin, claiming close to 70% of the world's total production. The amount of drug cash flowing into Wall Street and U.S. banks was estimated to be around $250-$300 billion a year. The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. The U.S., directly or indirectly, helped to fund the WTC attacks. George Bush, Sr. was in charge of all U.S. intelligence and narcotics operations from 1981 through 1989. It was Bush (the elder) who directly nourished and nurtured bin Laden's evolution."

But aren't the poppy crops still flourishing? Aren't the banks still flushing drug money through the system? Until the right questions are asked the wrong answers will be given to us! David Cameron needs a set of pithily pointed questions that give proper answers. We deserve no less.