Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Your Obligitory "Looks Like I Was Wrong" Post

So woke up Monday Morning to the sound of a Bin Laden-free world.

And over the last several years yours truly here has all but insisted that Bin Laden was dead, buried under the rubble of some collapsed cave somewhere.

But apparently not.  Apparently after years of tracking Osama down by courier, The Team That Cannot Be Mentioned slipped in, took him out, and then took him OUT... to sea, where they disposed of him in a place that will be very difficult to gather 'round and build a shrine.

Of course, in this day and age of conspiracy theories, it did occurr to me that that story line would be a perfect cover for a faked assasination, and I got to thinking.... like an Escher drawing, where I suddenly saw the whole thing inside-out....

Now let me make it clear that I'm buying the story, as real conspiracies tend to get ratted out, and the bigger, the more quickly.  But before I went to bed last night, this wild conspiracy theory popped into my head.

Suppose ... suppose Bin Laden had been dead for years.  And suppose Obama was sinking in the polls.  And suppose he knew Osama had been dead for years, but nobody could prove it.  And he wanted to improve his image.  So what if he wanted to "catch" Bin Laden and give himself a bump in the polls?  But there was this "birther" conspiracy out there to which this would only add more fuel.

Suppose Oprah had a friend named Donald Trump, a man widely liked for his TV "reality" show.  Suppose they had him hint at running for president, and start pushing the birther issue, so that the birthers would rally behind him, and Obama -- after years of refusing to release that "long form" and apparently spending a substantial amount to keep it from seeing the light of day ... would give in to the "pressure" from this "right-wing nut-job", look like the victim, and produce the birth certificate (or a facimile of it).   This once and for all marginalizes the birthers to the absolute fringe, and they lose any sympathy anyone in the "middle" had for them.  Anyone who still holds to that crazy conspiracy is officially a nut-job now.

And to hold to any further conspiracy theory would bring down mounds of derision and dismissal.

Then we stage a raid by a team that "doesn't exist" where they "kill" Osama, and whisk his body off to an air-craft carrier to be dumped into the ocean for very good reasons (and reasons I agree with, for the record) ... and there's no trace of the man who was killed and nobody who was "there" that you could even ask about it, because they don't exist.

Now Obama's the guy who "got Bin Laden", his poll numbers go up, and he has a "tough guy" notch in his belt from which to help campaign.

Or, suppose it really WAS Bin Laden (which I do believe, and this is actually more plausible) ... and that we figured out this was his compound last August and a couple of months ago our intelligence agencies said we have the intel now to pinpoint his location and take him out at any time .... but that the plan was do NOT take him alive and do NOT let his body be buiried in a place around which his supporters can rally.

But there's a problem.  It'll look, pardon the pun, "fishy".  And we've already got 38% of the population who either are themselves or don't completly reject "birtherism".... and this would only add to suspicion.  So staffers say "Mr. President, we really need to lay this birther thing to rest."  But after years of refusing to release that "long form" and apparently spending a substantial amount to keep it from seeing the light of day ... it would look a little strange for the president to just suddenly release it without a reason.

So Oprah's buddy Donald is recruited to "start" a presidential campaign (which would surprise nobody, since he's made noises about it before) and as a part of his campaign, he would "pressure" Obama (bad cop) to release the birth certificate.  Obama would resist, then finally give in -- him looking like the victim, Trump eventually fading into the background, and the birthers completely marginalized and untouchable.

Which would set the stage for the raid.  And in this version of the story it's an actual real raid against the real, living Bin Laden which could now be carried out in the manner desired and in such a political climate that the number of people who would publicly question the veracity of the story would be minimized.   Which would be good all around for national and world security.

Either one would make a fun movie plot, eh?

In the end, the conspiracy theorist is right that there was covertness, but that it was carried out for the right reasons.  Which would blast a hole in the lefty worldview that all covertness is wrong.

9 comments:

philmon said...

Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that I am or was a "birther".

The only reason I can think of for your incoherent babblings about white sheets and hanging people and hate.

There's none of that here.

You should check whose house you're in before you start hurling accusations.

philmon said...

Speaking of acting like an adult, I mean ... read your own comment.

Whitehawk said...

Hey wasn't it a Hillary Clinton supported that started this whole "Birther" issue? I never thought of Hillary as racist. Or wearing a white shirt??

Where's the love??

Whitehawk said...

Regarding bin Laden; I have to confess I had the same conviction that he was buried in the caves of Tora Bora too.

There, I've said it. I was wrong.

philmon said...

Indeed it was the Clinton Campaign that first circulated the birther rumor:

An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama’s main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii.

“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy,” it said. “She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth.” Then in August 2008 Phil Berg, an ex-deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania and a renowned conspiracy theorist, filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr Obama was ineligible to be a candidate.

“Obama carries multiple citizenships and is ineligible to run for President of the United States. United States Constitution, Article II, Section 1,” it said.


This was one of the main reasons I didn't take the birther allegations too seriously. If the Clintons couldn't dig up the dirt, then it was doubtful there was any creedence to it. The newspaper announcements cinched it for me.

It wasn't until the Democrat Hawaii governor said he was going to get the document to help Obama and then couldn't that I thought "well something wierd's going on here".

But I've said all along I believed he was born in Hawaii.

The above wild conspiracy theory I came up with last night was just an example of how conspiracy theories come about.

And you know darned well if Bush had handled any such capture this way, the conspiracy theories from the left would abound, from "Unconstitutional! Geneva Convention! No due process or fair trial!!!" to "You're hiding the evidence! You made this all up as an eeeeevil RoveCheney-ChimpyBushHiltler ... HALLIBURTON plot to pour oil over little baby seals and impose your Fascist Racist Christo-theocracy!!!!!!"

Kind of like they did with "Cheney's" supposed "outing" of "Secret Agent" Plame, and it turned out it was Richard Armitage.

Much of America still thinks it was Cheney or Rove, and that it was an intentional act of retribution instead of a tongue-slip by someone who was against the war in the first place.

philmon said...

I do have to wonder if "Montana" has a clue who Frederick Douglass was. (look at the masthead of my blog... been that way for quite some time now) :-)

Cylarz said...

Good grief Philmon, I got a headache from reading that and trying to keep it all straight.

Way too convoluted to be plausible. You're giving these people way too much credit.

A big reason that I didn't buy into any of the 9-11 conspiracy theories? I simply don't believe the government is competent enough to pull of something like that...the irresponsible, sloppy buffoons would have made an "oops" somewhere, and the truth would have come out.

Never assume a conspiracy where the facts at hand can be explained by incompetence. (I might write that on a piece of paper and frame it, actually...)

jeffmon said...

Dude, nice conspiracizing! Alex Jones on line 2.

philmon said...

Never assume a conspiracy where the facts at hand can be explained by incompetence.

Tres True. Although the theories above assume the opposite of incompetence. A lot of the facts could be explained by arrogance, though. :-)

It shouldn't be too hard to wrap your head around, cylarz. Half of it is verifiable facts (very important to any decent conspiracy theory), strung together by some made up plotline exploiting a few key details. The devil is in the details I left out.

Also, keep in mind that real conspiracy theorists don't call their theories "conspiracy theories". It's just fact, man. We're all naive, see. You just don't know What's Really Going On™"

The reason I linked the Daniel Pipes book ... I bought that book when I was trying to figure out what was going on inside of a certain Alex Jones-following mutual family member of mine and jeffmon's. I actually watched one of his 9/11 conspiracy films. It hurt my head. Fortunately, there was Popular Mechanics to scrub my brain of the icky ooze I watched, and it turns out fire really can melt steel (that's how it's made, Rosie). Cylinders travelling perpendicular at high speed into an object have very high strength, while thin wafers more parallell to an object will sheer off and explode into dust if you're moving fast enough. But, I digress.

Daniel tells us that there have been many real conspiracies over the ages, but very few of them last very long, and almost none of them are successful. This is because the truth really does come out, and the more people in on the conspiracy, the higher the chance (and thus the faster) somebody will rat it out.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are much more numerous, and like the one(s) above, compeltely made up.

Click! Hello, Alex? About that job in the brainstorming/fabrication department? Did you get my resume? What's the salary range? Do I need a shortwave license?