by Paul Joseph Watson
prisonplanet.com
The myriad of inconsistencies that continue to be unearthed in light of the White House’s ever-changing account of the alleged capture and assassination of Osama Bin Laden are beginning to resemble two other war propaganda fables that were presented to the American people as heroic episodes of US military might yet turned out to be nothing less than outright deceptions used to generate contrived pro-war patriotism – the “rescue” of Jessica Lynch and the death of Pat Tillman.
First Bin Laden was armed, then he was not. First Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield then he did not. First Bin Laden was shot on sight then he was shot only after being captured first. First Bin Laden’s compound was a plush million dollar mansion then it was a dirty house with no air conditioning worth a quarter of that.
The truth behind the raid and the alleged assassination of Bin Laden is moving further away from the dramatic tale President Obama told the nation on Sunday night with each passing day. But that’s to be expected from a US military-industrial complex that has a habit of manufacturing fables to dupe the American public into accepting the delusion that is the “war on terror”.
Take for example the gargantuan psychological warfare salvo that the US government launched against its own people in the immediate aftermath of the Jessica Lynch “rescue”.
In crafting the Jessica Lynch fable, “The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies,” reported the Guardian, including Black Hawk Down director Jerry Bruckheimer, who visited the Pentagon personally on numerous occasions before the event to discuss how occupations overseas could be humanized for means of better mass consumption on behalf of the American public.
The result was a complete fabrication of the Jessica Lynch story in an attempt to turn Lynch into a patriotic pro-war icon based on lies about how she was rescued by US forces in a dramatic siege from the clutches of Iraqi soldiers who had killed nine of her comrades.
According to the scripted version of the fable, Lynch had been shot and stabbed in an ambush by Iraqi soldiers before later being tortured and mistreated in the local hospital. The fearless Lynch had single-handedly fended off her attackers with a hail of gunfire. In reality, she had hid inside the truck before being rescued by Iraqi hospital workers.
American troops then descended on the hospital in military choppers as part of a daring raid not too dissimilar to the descriptions now being parroted about the Bin Laden siege.
“It was like a Hollywood film. They cried ‘go, go, go’, with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital – action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan,” said hospital worker Dr Anmar Uday.
It took over a month for the truth to emerge, that Lynch had suffered a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle, and had been well cared for by doctors at the Iraqi hospital. Her truck had overturned, and she had not been in any kind of shootout with Iraqi troops.
When the US army launched the fable and broadcast the edited footage to the world’s media, General Vincent Brooks, US spokesman in Doha, said: “Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they’ll never leave a fallen comrade.”
And yet the Iraqi soldiers had fled the hospital the day before it was stormed by US forces, the only people inside the building when US troops stormed in and began kicking down doors and pointing guns were innocent doctors and nurses.
“Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team’s Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. “He asked: ‘Are there any Fedayeen over there?’ and I said, ‘No’.” All the same, the next day “America’s finest warriors” descended on the building,” reported the Guardian.
In addition, two days before the raid, hospital staff had tried to deliver Lynch to US soldiers but had to turn back after they were fired at.
Lynch later testified in front of a Congressional committee that the Rambo image cultivated around her circumstances was “misinformation,” “hype” and “lies”. Within 18 months of the events, four of the people involved in “rescuing” Lynch from the hospital had died, including one in a drive by shooting, another of suicide, and another who was involved in a car accident.
“The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves,” reported the BBC.
The entire story behind the rescue of Lynch was a complete fable, a scripted work of fiction, graciously swallowed up and regurgitated ad infinitum to the American people by the corporate media in an effort to generate pro-war fervor and phony patriotism, almost identical to what we’re seeing now with the Bin Laden sideshow.
The official story behind the death of Pat Tillman in April 2004 was also a complete fairytale that was carefully packaged by the mass media so as to elicit a resurgence of support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at a time when public sentiment had begun to turn against the occupations.
Tillman sacrificed the good life and a multi-million dollar football career in the belief that he was defending his country from outside enemies, and soon after 9/11 turned down a contract offer of $3.6 million over three years from the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army.
It was during Tillman’s second deployment to Afghanistan, after previously serving in Iraq, that he was killed by what the U.S. military initially claimed was a Taliban ambush. It later emerged that the ambush story had been concocted by the Pentagon in an attempt to exploit Tillman’s death for pro-war propaganda.
Subsequent investigations claimed that Tillman was killed as a result of a friendly fire accident.
However, in July 2007, the results of an Army medical report found that Tillman had been shot three times in the head with an M16 from a mere 10 yards away, clearly suggesting that the incident was a targeted assassination.
“Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime,” reported the Associated Press.
“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators. “The doctors – whose names were blacked out – said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.”
The report also states that “No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene – no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.”
The article also reveals that “Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.”
The doctor who autopsied Tillman’s body tried to pursue an investigation into the question of whether Tillman was murdered but was prevented from doing so by higher-ups at the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.
The motive for the murder would undoubtedly have been Tillman’s plans to return to the U.S. and a vocal critic of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.
The evidence points directly to it and the motivation is clear – Tillman abandoned a lucrative career in pro-football immediately after 9/11 because he felt a rampaging patriotic urge to defend his country, and became a poster child for the war on terror as a result. But when he discovered that the invasion of Iraq was based on a mountain of lies and deceit and had nothing to do with defending America, he became infuriated and was ready to return home to become an anti-war hero.
In September 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a friend of Tillman had set up a meeting with author and prominent war critic Noam Chomsky, which was scheduled to take place after Tillman’s return from Afghanistan. Chomsky confirmed that the meeting was arranged.
As far back as March 2003, immediately after the invasion of Iraq, Tillman famously told his comrade Spc. Russell Baer, “You know, this war is so fucking illegal,” and urged his entire platoon to vote against Bush in the 2004 election.
During a July 2007 appearance on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show, four star General Wesley Clark stated that “the orders came from the very top” to cover-up the nature of Tillman’s death as he was a political symbol and his opposition to the war in Iraq would have rallied the population around supporting immediate withdrawal.
Given the history of the US government manufacturing Hollywood-like scenarios to be used as propaganda for the war on terror, the Bin Laden fairytale now being crafted by the White House should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, especially considering the fact that numerous highly respected intelligence professionals and heads of state, in addition to people like Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who worked in five different US administrations, assert that Bin Laden has been dead for almost a decade.
Given the fact that they’ve been caught red-handed scripting tales of pure fiction in order to justify the war on terror, notably in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, why on earth should we believe them now?
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