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May 1-7 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com
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Flowers for bin Laden
by Ben Corbett
Twenty years ago, Tangier, Morocco-based novelist Paul Bowles published a small cluster of letters titled “In Absentia.” In a missive to one of his girlfriends, Pamela Loeffler, he wrote: “There’s no point in asking for news from here. News isn’t generally made in this part of the world, or if something occurs here which becomes news in the rest of the world, we hear about it in foreign broadcasts. And the broadcasts of course are full of talk about terrorism. For most Europeans and Americans the word terrorist is unqualifiedly pejorative; while to the people here it suggests a patriot. Thus actions some consider criminal and contemptible are to others heroic. How can the two ever see eye to eye?”
It’s a good question, and the answer is probably, “They can’t.” But the question, since there’s no reasoning or resolve, now boils down to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the symbolic heir apparent of Western/Muslim cultural misunderstandings. Whether he’s dead or alive, nobody knows, but what a weight the 51-year-old carries. And whether he did it or not matters little. Although he claimed responsibility, bin Laden has never actually been indicted by the U.S. for masterminding the 9/11 attacks. To date, no hard evidence has been presented. Yet a month after Trade Towers tragedy, he won membership in the top tier of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists club with a reward of $25 million. The words “in connection with” the Trade Center attack are used by the FBI, however, more emphasis is placed on his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Those with decent memories will recall that in 1995, when bomber Timothy McVeigh committed his heinous crime in Oklahoma City, premature headlines accused Osama bin Laden. As early as the late 1990s, Clinton gave the nod for the covert assassination of bin Laden. We’ve been chasing this guy for more than a decade. How tough is it to track down a 6-foot- 4-inch, turban-wearing Saudi, beard or no beard?
Back in August 1992, the South American country of Colombia offered a joint reward with the U.S. of $3.4 million for drug lord Pablo Escobar’s head. This later turned into $7 million following a January 1993 rash of bombings in Bogota. By September Pablito was dead. It worked. Fast forward a decade; in 2003, the Bush administration paid out $30 million to an informant for the captures of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, who died in a firefight — under the Rewards for Justice program. Because of this success (and the need to show results in the faltering Iraq war), in July 2004, the bounty for Iraq’s then-al Qaeda leader — and now dead — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was raised from $10 million to $25 million. Six months later, in January 2005, the Bush administration began mulling over doubling bin Laden’s bounty to $50 million. The decision fell to newly appointed Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, who declined the idea. Then, in late 2005, the CIA shut down its special bin Laden task force in Afghanistan altogether. In it’s place, the State Department ran a print, radio and TV media blitz campaign in the Urdu and Pashto languages in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where bin Laden was believed to be hiding.
To date, this has turned up nothing.
Last December, the 2008 U.S. Defense Spending Bill passed the House with an allowance of $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which, of course, will probably run out by September. However the reward for bin Laden was finally doubled, and $50 million was earmarked for his capture. Still no results. So the question becomes: How serious has the U.S. State Department been in apprehending the so-called “Lion Sheik”? The answer is “not very.”
How long do you think we had intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s whereabouts before the U.S. military received a tip, soon “discovering” the bearded, ragged leader hiding out in a hole in the ground in December 2003? Nothing was ever paid out on this “tip.” Why not? While I’m no conspiracy theorist, I do remember the news that week; confidence in our role in the Iraq war was slipping in the polls, along with Bush’s ratings, which bottomed out at 38 points, in good company with Nixon. Then, voila. “Saddam Captured!” Bush’s ratings soared. It’s my belief, and some agree, that Osama bin Laden was killed by one of those $150,000 bunker buster bombs during the Tora Bora battle in late 2001. Either his bones are now rotting away in some collapsed cave in Afghanistan, unrecoverable, or they have him on ice at the Pentagon, waiting for the opportune moment to thaw his corpse and drop it out of a helicopter so ground forces can “discover” him, too. Whether this will occur before of after the November election will depend solely on the political climate in the coming months. It could be Bush’s last or McCain’s first victory. We will see.
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