Has Bin Laden’s Body Been On Ice?

By James Donahue

If you want to consider the ultimate conspiracy theory, consider this. Some are saying that Osama bin Laden has been dead for a very long time . . . possibly since shortly after the 9-11 attack in 2001, and that the dramatic report of his killing at this time serves a political purpose that will be known to us soon.

Internet columnist Joe Quinn helped kick off this line of thinking this week when he wrote Bin Laden Is Dead – Long Live Bin Laden! The story chronicles the death of Bin Laden “several times already” and offers a variety of images of the Al Qaeda leader, each showing a long-faced full bearded man wearing a white turban that could easily be a doppelganger of the original Bin Laden.

The Quinn story even offers images of a very dead appearing Bin Laden and shows how the image was cleverly run through Photoshop to made to look like Bin Laden. Incidentally, that same picture has been making the rounds of the Internet this week, suggesting it is a plagiarized copy of an actual military image. It isn’t.

If you study the various Bin Laden photos that appeared over the years it is easy to see unique differences in each of them. Bin Laden either went through dramatic weight changes and in one case had his nose flattened, or the images are faked. Each accompanied the video messages allegedly issued by Bin Laden since the 9-11 attacks.

There have been various rumors that Bin Laden was suffering from ill health even before our military began hunting him down. One story in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro stated that in July, 2001 that Osama bin Laden underwent surgery during a two-week stay in an American hospital in Dubai.

A Hong Kong publication, Asia Week, stated in March, 2000, that Bin Laden was suffering from a kidney and liver infection and that mobile dialysis equipment had been shipped to his hideout in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

A biography published in Egypt in 1991 noted that Bin Laden suffered from low blood pressure, an enlarged heart and diabetes and was forced to receive insulin shots and lie down for hours at a time.

If the health reports were correct, Bin Laden was a very sick and probably dying man even as he was involved in masterminding the plot to attack the United States on September 11, 2001.

After the 9-11 attack, President George W. Bush launched an all-out effort to find and capture Bin Laden. Wars were started in Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretense of fighting Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists and track down Bin Laden. The crusade to find Bin Laden was continued by President Barack Obama when he took office in 2009.

The UK Mail published a suggestion in September, 2009 that “this new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9-11 terrorist is alive. After all, there are the plethora of ‘Bin Laden tapes’ to prove it. Yet what if he isn’t? What if he has been dead for years and the British and U. S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?

“What is everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9-11 is a fake – and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?” the newspaper article asked.

“Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts,” the story continued. The writer said that “the weight of opinion now swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is dead – and the accumulating evidence that supports it – makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of examination.”

The Nation magazine this week noted that “a multitude of different inside sources . . . including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden . . . told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would be announced at the most politically expedient time.

“That time has now come with a year-old fake picture being presented as the only evidence of his alleged killing, while Bin Laden’s body has been hastily dumped into the sea to prevent anyone from finding out when he actually died,” the Nation story said.

In his story Quinn asks  the next logical question: “why should the back-room boys in Washington dig him back up now and kill him off, for good this time?”

He suggests that “Bin Laden (and the alleged hunt for him) was used to justify the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but these missions have now been ‘accomplished’ in the sense that these two nations are now US client states. A new stage in the American Imperial War of Terror is in the offing and the ‘death’ of Bin Laden provides two important ingredients for that next stage.”

Quinn said these ingredients are “a rallying of patriotism back home and among Right Wing Authoritarians the world over and public support for continued military action.” Also “a plausible reason to re-deploy troops and other resources from Iraq and Afghanistan to future theaters of colonial war.”