America Has No Proof That Bin Laden was Mastermind of 9/11

To the editor:

I was disappointed that the SEAL team failed to capture Osama bin Laden alive, which would have been the proper way to handle it. First, do we actually know this occurred? Is there independent corroboration of the facts, or are reporters happy to take the word of the intelligence department, the same one that had bad information about WMD in Iraq?

The body was disposed of very quickly. Are there any photographs, DNA testing, etc., to prove that this was indeed bin Laden? We’ve been shown lots of archival footage. I want real reporting.

What really gets me about all this coverage is that with the giddy pleasure of seeing a man killed, we forget that we had no hard evidence that 1) this was in fact, Osama bin Laden and 2) he was the ‘mastermind’ behind 9/11.

Given other terrorist attacks he admitted to, perhaps he deserved to die. But he was never linked to 9/11 with hard evidence. The proper way to handle this would be through indictments and a trial.

What actually occurred is that President Bush, in his ultimate wisdom, decided that it was our right to take him out ‘dead or alive.’ Frankly, I don't trust President Bush with the most simple decisions, including whether it was best to continue to read My Pet Goat.

See this interesting article: twf.org/News/Y2006/0608-BinLaden.html

Vice President Cheney says, “We've never made the case, or argued the case, that somehow Osama bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11.”

According to the FBI "Wanted" page (fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden): "Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.”

When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on the FBI’s web page, Rex Tomb, the FBI’s chief of investigative publicity, is reported to have said, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

In fact,  Bin Laden, in a Sept. 28, 2001, interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummat, is reported to have said:

“I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.”

The video supposedly documenting admission was an obvious contrivance and has been dismissed by investigators as reliable evidence. According to the FBI, bin Laden was only a suspect.

Would you not need some form of evidence before you kill the man?

Apparently not in this country, where we lose all sense of due process if the man is a Muslim who likes to express his manhood by holding an AK-47.

But let's say all this is wrong, and bin Laden, according to widely held belief (without hard evidence), was the ‘mastermind’ of 9/11. Then it certainly points out that had Bush focused on Afghanistan instead of getting distracted on false information about weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq, we may have found this huge bunker only a short distance from the border of Pakistan long ago and likely reduced the growth of al Qaeda in Iraq and other areas of the world.

With 20/20 hindsight, we have to conclude that Iraq was clearly the biggest military blunder in all recorded history.

I find it interesting that the bunker was finally found and the operation commenced just prior to the move of Leon Panetta from CIA director to defense secretary, which was just announced last week. Panetta was credited with being behind the operation.

Why is it that the CIA is now in charge of military operations, and SEAL teams report to the CIA director?

A lot of questions are still unanswered about this, and unfortunately I doubt that the news media will do a thorough job of investigating and reporting. What is clear is that we still have a long way to go before we can recover from these military blunders. We have to live with these mistakes.

This should, however, help us reduce the $8 billion per month we are spending in Afghanistan significantly, and finally depart from Iraq, including the vast number of Blackwater-style mercenary contractors still there.

Ray Lutz, Citizens Oversight Projects

Editor's note: This originally was a response to a La Mesa Patch inquiry.