Show Us The Shooter

By Pepe Escobar
May 5, 2011
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

Show us the Navy SEALs hero who did the double-tapping on Osama bin Laden - the one-two in the head to make sure the target of a hit job is out - after a "firefight" the signs of which are virtually absent in that squalid "mansion" in Abbottabad.

Show us the greatest hero of modern American history, the man who shot America's public enemy number one, the most evil terrorist in the history of the Universe who masterminded the most spectacular attack of all time against the US.

Parade him on Ground Zero and in downtown Manhattan, give him a row of Purple and rainbow-colored Hearts, make him a partner of Goldman Sachs, get him on Oprah, Rush and Anderson Cooper, induct him into the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame.

If you're Republican, make him run for president; unlike Donald "that fox on his head" Trump or Sarah "I can see Pakistan from my house" Palin, he would actually turn President Barack Obama into collateral damage. Or at least crown him secretary of defense - supreme purveyor of the targeted assassination as the paramount tool of international diplomacy.

Take Two

Rewind to the cliffhanger scene in all its Hi-Def glory - broadcast live to the situation room in Washington.

The hero, fully equipped, pumped up, is face to face with the real Osama bin Laden, unarmed, just out of bed, trapped in a drab room. There's no possible escape; the whole compound is "secured". This is it - the moment America has been dreaming about since September 11, 2001.

The rehearsal took place hundreds of times before during the everlasting "war on terror". The procedure was to immobilize the suspect, put a bag over his head, transfer him to a helicopter (there were three outside, one had already crashed), then to a military base, and then, in an orange jumpsuit, straight to Gitmo.

Now the hero is face to face with the man who caused the "war on terror" itself to exist. And what does he do? Not a shot in the arm, leg or knee. Not even a casually tossed stun grenade. No extraordinary rendition - what is this good for anyway if it does not apply to public enemy number one?

The hero double-taps the fugitive - codename "Geronimo" (a native who defied the Empire; talk about defiling native-Americans once again). This is the way the biggest, costliest manhunt ever ends; not with a prolonged bang, but with two golden bullets. Good guy snuffs bad guy. Dirty Harry snuffs the punk.

So no one in the world will ever know. How "Geronimo" became a Central Intelligence Agency asset - and how the "friendship" developed during the 1980s. How he escaped from Tora Bora - or how the Pentagon let him escape. How he lived in Pakistan all these years, undisturbed. Why did he "hate us".

And most of all how he "masterminded" 9/11. Which branch - or branches, or individuals - of the US intelligence network knew about it in advance, and let it happen. How a bunch of Arabs with box-cutters and crappy flying skills turned jets into missiles and destroyed the Twin Towers (plus building 7) and a chunk of the mighty Pentagon.

Who in the world would dare not to be glued for months to the most stirring trial of all time?

There are reasons to believe the entities - the system - that arranged the hit would not be very pleased. So the verdict is guilty as (not) charged - and termination by a bullet in the head. It's never been so easy to create a wasteland and call it "justice".

As for the rest of us, we'll spend the rest of our lives in the dark.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). 

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

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