Osama Bin Laden is dead | Died four years ago

[MikeUpNorth]

I understand what you're saying...but Pakistan has shown with the Osama fiasco, it doesn't deserve to be trusted.

Osama under their noses for God knows how long...and they knew nothing about it? Of course that's not what happened...so we have to assume a section of the military/establishment protected him. Either way, you go back to the issue of trust, and in this case...the mistrust is justified.

Yeah, I think it confirmed everyone's fears about the Pakistan establishment when Bin Laden was found where he was.

 

[Team Brian GB]

I understand what you're saying...but Pakistan has shown with the Osama fiasco, it doesn't deserve to be trusted.

Osama under their noses for God knows how long...and they knew nothing about it? Of course that's not what happened...so we have to assume a section of the military/establishment protected him. Either way, you go back to the issue of trust, and in this case...the mistrust is justified.

If he was hiding in a house in Aldershot is there any reason the British authorities would have had a better idea where he was than if he was in Pakistan?

 

[Neutral]

If there was a compound in Aldershot that was 8 times the size of every other plot in the area....surrounded by a 6m concrete wall, with barb wire on top, and the residents burned their waste weekly instead of having the garbage collected, yeah I'd think the British Authorities would be slightly interested as to who resided in said residence.

Not to mention if the residence was a mere kilometer away from a very prestigious military academy.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

If someone thought they needed to hide they wouldn't choose to live next to a military facility.

 

[Team Brian GB]

If there was a compound in Aldershot that was 8 times the size of every other plot in the area....surrounded by a 6m concrete wall, with barb wire on top, and the residents burned their waste weekly instead of having the garbage collected, yeah I'd think the British Authorities would be slightly interested as to who resided in said residence.

Not to mention if the residence was a mere kilometer away from a very prestigious military academy.

If a credible cover story was in place it would not go beyond a few cursory discussions, if the worst thing that happens is a weekly bonfire you'd barely got the attention of environmental health officers at your local authority.

 

[VidaRed]

US cuts Pakistan aid over jailing of 'Bin Laden doctor'

A US Senate panel has cut $33m (£21m) in aid to Pakistan in response to the jailing of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has said it will cut US aid by $1m for each year of Shakil Afridi's sentence.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said his term was "unjust and unwarranted".

Dr Afridi was tried for treason under a tribal justice system for running a fake vaccination programme to gather information for US intelligence.

Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.

The move from the Senate panel follows earlier cuts to the White House's budget request for Pakistan. The cuts would be part of a bill that would send $1bn in aid to Pakistan in the next financial year.

"We need Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don't need Pakistan double-dealing and not seeing the justice in bringing Osama Bin Laden to an end," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, calling Pakistan "a schizophrenic ally".

Meanwhile Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said: "It's Alice in Wonderland at best. If this is co-operation, I'd hate like hell to see opposition."

Correspondents say the cuts reflect mounting frustration in Congress over Pakistan's role in fighting terrorism on its soil.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18201077

 

[reddevilcanada]

Pakistan support the Taliban who housed and protected Bin Laden for years. Bin Laden was found right next to the elite Pakistani military academy and Pakistan have decided to jail the person who found Bin Laden and notified the Americans. Clearly Pakistan never knew where Osama was. Only a matter of time before Pakistan's complicity with these extremists puts the nukes in the wrong hands.

 

[MrMarcello]

33m from 1b in aid... big whoop... should cut it 10m for every year... or 20m for every year. Then you'll see Pakistan reverse the decision. This reeks of political bullshit.

 

[Neutral]

Another drone attack...and the result is the death of the AQ No.2, Abu Yahya al-Libi

No extra points for guessing where he was hiding out....

Spoiler

Pakistan...Duh!

 

[Raoul]

Another drone attack...and the result is the death of the AQ No.2, Abu Yahya al-Libi

No extra points for guessing where he was hiding out....

Spoiler

Pakistan...Duh!

Are you dissing Pakistan ? I don't think there's much they can do about some of these militants living across the borders.

 

[StuCol]

In those mountainous regions the Borders are pretty much un-policeable. Most of the people who live in those regions don't recognise those Borders at any rate. It's just another set of tribal regions that often span both sides of the official borders.

 

[Neutral]

Are you dissing Pakistan ? I don't think there's much they can do about some of these militants living across the borders.

No just pointing out once again...the 'War on Terror' should have been fought in Pakistan and the semi-autonomous regions there...

 

[VidaRed]

No just pointing out once again...the 'War on Terror' should have been fought in Pakistan and the semi-autonomous regions there...

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Alex99]

No just pointing out once again...the 'War on Terror' should have been fought in Pakistan and the semi-autonomous regions there...

The 'War on Terror' should never have been fought. You can't fight a war against a fecking abstract noun. Fighting a war to prevent war is fecking absurd and this idea of that only those brown people from the East can commit terrorism is just as crazy. Britain and America claim military superiority over every nation everywhere because they've got nukes, whilst simultaneously arming half of the fecking world and complaining when they want a big gun too. If one of them decides they want to play army against the wishes of the UK and US they get bombed to feck, with thousands of civillian lives lost and ruined as a result and nothing is solved other than that a country has been sent back years in terms of development.

 

[Relevated]

Pakistan should have never been how it is today, a corrupt nation in which everyone is looking out for no one except for themselves which includes politicians, police etc. Even Pakistanis can't help but laugh at the state of the country. It should never have been filled with terrorism.

 

[De Selby]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/19/pakistan-yousuf-raza-gilani

 

[De Selby]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/21/obama-blocks-drones-kill-list-release

 

[De Selby]

Interesting piece in Foreign Policy today:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/22/no_country_for_armed_men?page=0,0

 

[sglowrider]

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7421144n&tag=contentMain;contentAux

Interview of the guy who was there.... and shot OBL.

 

[forevrared]

Well he was behind the guy who killed him anyway, I reckon bin Laden was dead when he fired into him. I'm surprised he's gone on camera, even with the make-up and all - but I guess his name is out there anyway, so what more could it hurt?

Anyway, very interesting reading back through the first 20-25 pages of this thread knowing what we know now, although I suppose it would be the same for any other major event of a similar stature or significance.

 

[VidaRed]

Everything We Were Told About Osama bin Laden’s Killing Was a Lie

Bin Laden wasn’t hiding out in Abbattobad, as we’ve been told—he was effectively under house arrest, placed there under guard by Pakistan’s security services with financial help from the Saudis. We didn’t track down his address through diligent intelligence work—a Pakistani informant ratted him out to the CIA in exchange for the $25 million reward. And we didn’t kill him in a firefight—he was abandoned by his Pakistani guards and gunned down in cold blood by U.S. troops. The whole operation was supposed to remain secret, with bin Laden’s death publicly chalked up to a drone strike, but an unexpected helicopter crash at the site of the raid forced the U.S. to concoct a complex symphony of lies. According to Hersh.

The article, if you believe its almost entirely anonymous sourcing (not that there’s anything wrong with anonymous sources!), casts the Obama White House’s account of the operation as a frantic and harried cover-up designed to valorize a “homicide,” as one anonymous commando put it. Though the Hersh account is by no means new—Hersh fails to credit her, but national security writer R.J. Hillhouse wrote a blog post in 2011 that included substantially the same claims, and generated some mainstream press accounts—his stature in the spook world and track record with previous stories means his account is getting traction.

Here are the U.S. lies about the raid, as catalogued by Hersh.

Bin Laden Wasn’t Buried at Sea
Since his killing in 2011, the U.S. government has maintained (and U.S. media has reported) that bin Laden was given a perfunctory naval funeral off the deck of an aircraft carrier, to prevent any gravesite from becoming a symbol of martyrdom. According to Hersh’s lengthy account of the assassination, bin Laden’s corpse never made it to the USS Carl Vinson, because it had been torn apart by machine gun fire at point blank range before the CIA took whatever shreds were left:

Some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed.

Hersh continues, “there never was a plan, initially, to take the body to sea, and no burial of bin Laden at sea took place...the retired official said that if the Seals’ first accounts are to be believed, there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case.” This raises the possibility that the CIA remains in possession, literally, of Osama bin Laden’s head.

From Vanity Fair, November 2012:

“A navy photographer recorded the burial in full sunlight, Monday morning, May 2. One frame shows the body wrapped in a weighted shroud.”

From Hersh:

“It would be navy officers who came up with the “burial at sea” idea. Perfect. No body. Honourable burial following sharia law. Burial is made public in great detail, but Freedom of Information documents confirming the burial are denied for reasons of ‘national security’.”

There Was No Firefight, at All, During the Raid
From the New Yorker, August 2011:

“One SEAL unit had no sooner trod on the paved patio at the house’s front entrance when Abrar—a stocky, mustachioed man in a cream-colored shalwar kameez—appeared with an AK-47. He was shot in the chest and killed, as was his wife, Bushra, who was standing, unarmed, beside him.”

And from the New York Times, May 2011:

Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Osama bin Laden’s courier, opens fire from behind a door of the guesthouse. Commandos kill the courier. His wife is caught in the cross-fire and killed.

From Hersh:

“Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired.”

Pakistan Knew About, and Aided, the Operation
From the New Yorker:

“Obama decided against informing or working with Pakistan. ‘There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,’ a senior adviser to the President told me.”

From Hersh:

“The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission...Obama was anxious for reassurance that the US was going to get the right man. The proof was to come in the form of bin Laden’s DNA. The planners turned for help to Kayani and Pasha, who asked [Maj. Amir] Aziz to obtain the specimens.”

Bin Laden Was Gunned Down in a Hail of Bullets
From the New York Times, May 2011:

When the commandos reach Bin Laden’s room on the third floor, an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol are seen in arm’s reach of Bin Laden. A commando shoots Bin Laden in the left eye and chest, killing him.

From Hersh:

The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’

An Informant Ratted bin Laden Out
From the New York Times, May 2011:

After nearly a decade of hunting Osama bin Laden, a breakthrough came in August of 2010 when Bin Laden’s most trusted courier was located and identified. What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work.

From Hersh:

The CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US.

There Was No “Trove” of al-Qaeda Documents In the bin Laden Compound
From the Washington Post, July 2011:

Toward the end of his decade in hiding, Osama bin Laden was spending as much time exchanging messages about al-Qaeda’s struggles as he was plotting ways for the terrorist network to reassert its strength.

From CNN, May 2012:

U.S. officials say that the documents found in the compound — about 6,000 worth — were written between September 2006 and April 2011 and were recovered from five computers, dozens of hard drives and more than 100 storage devices. The cache has been described as the single largest batch of senior terrorist material ever obtained.

From Hersh:

These claims were fabrications: there wasn’t much activity for bin Laden to exercise command and control over. The retired intelligence official said that the CIA’s internal reporting shows that since bin Laden moved to Abbottabad in 2006 only a handful of terrorist attacks could be linked to the remnants of bin Laden’s al-Qaida....

Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’

If Hersh (and Hillhouse) are correct, then these outlets were basically republishing CIA fan fiction. Loyal Washingtonians have already begun reacting aggressively to Hersh’s story, and there will no doubt be be a series of volleys over “The Killing of Osama bin Laden”—the American presidency and its eager reporters have too much at stake to let a challenge like this go.

http://gawker.com/hersh-everything-we-were-told-about-osama-bin-laden-s-1703587387

 

[2cents]

Response:

Seymour Hersh and the 'truth' behind the Osama bin Laden raid

Spoiler

Seymour Hersh, considered by many to be a legendary investigative journalist, has been a big name in the business for more than 40 years.

But of late he's fallen far short of the commanding heights of his exposure of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, or the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in 2004. In recent years, gripping reads about elaborate conspiracies relying on unnamed "former intelligence officials" and the like have been his stock in trade – and have not been either duplicated by other journalists or ultimately confirmed. The New Yorker, which has a strong reputation for fact checking and where he remains on the masthead, has not published his investigative work in more than three years.

His latest bombshell falls within his more recent tradition. In it, he lays out an elaborate conspiracy between the Obama administration and the Pakistani military to stage the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 and lie to the world about how it happened. The piece ran in the London Review of Books, which has published his more extravagant claims in recent years.

The summary of his 9,994 word story is this: The Obama administration, the CIA, US Special Operations Command, and other parts of the US government have told a long series of lies about the death of Bin Laden. In Mr. Hersh's telling, they carried out a dangerous raid to kill bin Laden and lied that Pakistan didn't know about it, all in order to help Pakistan's military rulers avoid the public embarrassment of admitting they'd been harboring the Al Qaeda leader instead of killing and capturing him themselves.

His assertions are based largely on the claims of a person described only as by Hersh as a "retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in [the Pakistani city of] Abbottabad" and his own communications with Asad Durrani, a Pakistani intelligence general who retired in 1992. There is also a "Pakistani with close ties to the senior leadership of [military intelligence]."

His claims don't make sense given the political risks of the operation for Obama, Pakistan's then-President Asif Zardari, and Pakistani's generals themselves. And if there was a stitch-up between Obama and Pakistan, there were far easier ways to carry out the killing of bin Laden – ones not involving a crashed helicopter (which miraculously didn't lead to any loss of life), SEALs put at risk of death, and a vast number of people in on the lie. The motive for taking the more complicated and dangerous route for all concerned is not explained by Hersh.

Right at the front, there are significant leaps of internal logic to the piece. In the second paragraph he writes that "the most blatant lie" about the US Special Operations Forces raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad compound "was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission."

The evidence in that paragraph to back up this claim? A 2014 article by the New York Times Carlotta Gall in which an unidentified "Pakistani official" told her that Gen. Pasha was personally aware the former Al Qaeda leader was living in Abbottabad; a 2012 book by Imtiaz Gul in which he wrote that four Pakistani intelligence officers assessed that Islamabad "must have" known about the raid ahead of time; and an interview General Durrani gave to Al Jazeera earlier this year, in which he said it was "probable" that Pakistani military intelligence knew where bin Laden was and were waiting for the right moment to tell the US about it in exchange for money or other advantage.

There are a lot of problems with Mr. Hersh's use of these claims. Most glaring is that all three of these bits of "evidence" are acknowledged to be the speculation of the sources, not knowledge. And in none of them do they say that the US and Pakistan planned the bin Laden raid together. Lots of people who've followed the story, me included, find it hard to believe that bin Laden wasn't receiving some kind of protection from Pakistan's military intelligence. But the gulf between "opinion" and "knowledge" is often vast.

So why bring it up at all?

The only reason I can come up with is to bolster Hersh's scoop – which rests almost entirely on his unnamed secret source, whose motives and allegiances readers are given no hints of.

The reasoning behind this vast conspiracy? A quid pro quo:

A Pakistani with close ties to the senior leadership of the ISI told me that ‘there was a deal with your top guys. We were very reluctant, but it had to be done – not because of personal enrichment, but because all of the American aid programmes would be cut off. Your guys said we will starve you out if you don’t do it, and the okay was given while Pasha was in Washington. The deal was not only to keep the taps open, but Pasha was told there would be more goodies for us.’ The Pakistani said that Pasha’s visit also resulted in a commitment from the US to give Pakistan ‘a freer hand’ in Afghanistan as it began its military draw-down there. ‘And so our top dogs justified the deal by saying this is for our country.’

If that was the deal, Pakistan was stiffed. US military aid to Pakistan has been cut since (largely because of the understandable fury that bin Laden had lived in a major military garrison town in Pakistan for years), and US anger over Pakistani support for the Taliban in Afghanistan has grown and become far more public than it has been since the war began there in 2002.

And why carry it out that way at all? If Pakistan wanted to make a deal with the US, they could have secretly killed bin Laden and provided proof, or handed him over. Instead they preferred a US raid, that hundreds of people would have known about, that would make its military look ineffectual and the US a power that can blithely step on Pakistani sovereignty, instead? Why on earth?

It mostly gets worse from there. The alleged vast array of useful documents obtained from bin Laden's compound, and fed into the US intelligence analysis system since? They must all be fakes – since bin Laden is said to have been under complete Pakistani control since 2005. A lot of busy bees must have been at work at Langley and elsewhere to produce these forgeries – something that you'd think would offend the sensibilities of one or two patriotic spooks.

Bin Laden's body "torn to pieces" by rifle fire, the bits bagged up, and thrown like confetti by the Seals "over the Hindu Khush" as they made their helicopter escape? I've seen a fair few corpses made by rifle fire; I've yet to seen one torn to pieces.

Or the revelation of the identity of Islamabad CIA station chief Jonathan Bank in the Pakistan press, amid a lawsuit accusing him of murder in 2010 and that saw him flee the country? In Hersh's telling, Bank's tale was designed to create distance between the US and Pakistan so if the vast bin Laden conspiracy came to light, they'd have evidence of bad ties with the Americans. Evidence worse than having harbored bin Laden for years?

I can't prove the extravagant claims in Hersh's piece aren't true, of course. Perhaps someday evidence of this multinational, multi-agency conspiracy with unclear benefit to anyone involved will come to light.

But consider his other recent exposés.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Secu...and-the-truth-behind-the-Osama-bin-Laden-raid

 

[Zarlak]

"If Hersh (and Hillhouse) are correct, then these outlets were basically republishing CIA fan fiction."

Yes, and if not correct then Hersh and Hillhouse are basically publishing fan fiction.

 

[Sir Matt]

If he could verify it in any way, it would have been in the New Yorker, not the London Review of Books.

Also, if there was explicitly known complicity from the ISI, don't you think there would have been more fallout from that? I can only assume that there were tacit agreements between Pakistan and the US (likely with Musharraf) with regards to Osama and al-Zawahiri specifically, just as there likely are with drone strikes.

Edit:

NBC: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakistanis-knew-where-bin-laden-was-say-us-sources-n357306

So, it the "walk-in" narrative makes sense if it were an asset that was used from within the ISI that it would burn him if they found out and create more difficulties if it were immediately obvious in the aftermath. Also, this says that CIA knew that the ISIS knew where he was. Then again, everyone knew that already. It's just whether or not they could verify it. Many people reasonably suspect that Ayman Al-Zawahiri is or was living in some safehouse in Karachi or elsewhere in Pakistan.

However, it doesn't make sense that the US would tell the ISI if they knew that it was protecting him.

 

[adexkola]

Looks like an excerpt out of "Conspiracy Weekly"

 

[ThierryHenry]

Next you'll be telling us Aaron Ramsey didn't actually bump him off.

 

[PedroMendez]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/04/osama-bin-laden-killing-us-story-change

 

[JustAFan]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/04/osama-bin-laden-killing-us-story-change

Meh most of that is more details that can easily be miscommunicated then straightened out as the actual events are reviewed.

 

[JustAFan]

Have to wait and see how much of this new story can be confirmed. Read one report that the supposed source for this new story is claiming to have only presented it as a possibility

 

[Raoul]

Sounds like BS to me.

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden

 

[ATXRedDevil]

Who cares? The worthless scum is dead.

 

[Sir Matt]

Have to wait and see how much of this new story can be confirmed. Read one report that the supposed source for this new story is claiming to have only presented it as a possibility

From Raoul's story, it seems he's been pitching this to the New Yorker for years but they would never print it. So it's unlikely that anything substantial will be confirmed.

 

[The Man Himself]

Either which way, if you US guys can do same to Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and to Dawood Ibrahim, both in Pakistan currently, it will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Sultan]

I'm pretty confident Pakistani officials knew about the operation. The reasons US/Pakistan are saying they were not is due to high risk of unpleasant consequences in the country if Pakistani officials involvement was leaked.

 

[Edgar Allan Pillow]

I'm pretty confident Pakistani officials knew about the operation. The reasons US/Pakistan are saying they were not is due to high risk of unpleasant consequences in the country if Pakistani officials involvement was leaked.

Makes sense.

Pakistan claims outrage on US not informing them. US claims benefit on 'investigative tracking'. Win. Win.

Osama by that time was a nuisance to both countries and it would not be a big stretch for a few mutually beneficial tip-off's.

 

[Raoul]

Sounds like a steaming pile of nonsense. They could've simply handed him over.

 

[Sultan]

Sounds like a steaming pile of nonsense. They could've simply handed him over.

Not good for either country. Would have been a circus/nightmare trying to convict him in US courts. Pakistan Taliban would have created untold misery for Pakistan had they handed him over.

 

[Sultan]

I don't know the truth. However, believing everything our governments say is naivety in the extreme. What do they say? Truth is the first casualty of war.

 

[rcoobc]

It seems to me that that part of the reason the details have varied is because the US did not have permission to perform a military operation on Pakistani soil as doing so could presumably start a war. I could be wrong though but... (Everything in quotes following will be from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Operation_Neptune_Spear)

Squadron[65] of the Joint Special Operations Command's U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU). For legal reasons (namely that the U.S. was not at war with Pakistan), the military personnel assigned to the mission were temporarily transferred to the control of the civilian Central Intelligence Agency

The CIA/Commandos also couldn't be given permission to kill Bin Laden if he was trying to surrender:

The Associated Press cited two U.S. officials as stating the operation was "a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender", but that "it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering".[59] White House counterterrorism advisor John O. Brennan said after the raid: "If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that."[60] CIA Director Leon Panetta said on PBS NewsHour: "The authority here was to kill bin Laden ... Obviously under the rules of engagement, if he in fact had thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But, they had full authority to kill him."[61]

A U.S. national security official, who was not named, told Reuters that "'this was a kill operation', making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan".[62] Another source referencing a kill (rather than capture) order stated, "Officials described the reaction of the special operators when they were told a number of weeks ago that they had been chosen to train for the mission. 'They were told, "We think we found Osama bin Laden, and your job is to kill him"', an official recalled. The SEALs started to cheer."[63]

 

[Raoul]

I don't know the truth. However, believing everything our governments say is naivety in the extreme. What do they say? Truth is the first casualty of war.

Meh....unfortunately, weaving a conspiratorial fairy tale out of thin air isn't very satisfying. I'll stick with Rob O'Neill's version of things until proven otherwise.