Osama Bin Laden

I can hardly say I am sorry that Osama Bin Laden was shot dead very recently. The manner of the shooting can only convince us, unfortunately, that the Americans a) are a law unto themselves, and b) talk and think as though they are living in a hollywood heroic movie scenario. Or at least canny politicians are aware that if they present things in this way, the US public are more likely to accept it.

Its quite possible that those politicians are as unable to distinguish between Hollywood "right and wrong" and the real world as the public they pitch their propaganda to. That seems to always be the question with them - did Mrs Thatcher firmly believe that we had to go to war (in the Falklands and then in the 1st Iraq war) or how motivated was she by the probable electoral boost that a war win would give her and her government? It's the same as what we were saying about Argentina's General Galtieri at the time..

It is chilling to think that politicians could write away young people's lives for such a reason. Tony Blair's motives were continually in question in his time in No.10, and I wish we could know the full story of why decisions to go to war were made the way they were.

But Bin Laden was unarmed and I have a feeling that he should have been brought to trial. Were the US afraid of tortuous legal proceedings? Did this persuade them that they should quietly advise the soldiers to  shoot to kill? I'm making this up as I go along, I know, but the fact remains he was unarmed when shot, and the scenario given to the press was flimsy from the start. were they truly afraid he would blow himself and the soldiers up in a suicide attack when cornered? This doesn't have the ring of truth for me - he wasn't a suicide bomber himself - he provided money and a figurehead for such people - but showed no wish to give up his life any time soon, even for his 'jihad'.

And now the steady slew of "revelations" being fed to the press telling us that, for instance, Bin Laden was planning another 9/11 style attack on the US (yeah right! in a stoned haze he might have said something of the kind). Such reports are there to scare us into thinking that "we got there just in time" - as Reagan famously said (was it about Panama?)

Now we learn that Bin Laden "was in active control of the terror network from his compound in northern Pakistan" when doubts have been raised as to whether al Qaeda had anything but the loosest of command structures - and may have been more a network than a military style organisation.

It all sounds like government-generated BS to me, to be honest.