Bin Laden

I remember the first time I heard bin Laden's name distinctly. It happened in rather dramatic fashion. It was 1994, and I lived in Dearborn, Michigan, which at the time had the largest Shiite Muslim population in America. I was in the car with my mom after we left a "Mediterranean cuisine" restaurant.
Mom: "We are never going to eat there again. Those Arabs who were sitting across from us were talking about Osama bin Laden."
Me: "Who is bin Laden?"
Mom: "A major terrorist. Between the words they were speaking I could make out his name 4 or 5 times, and my blood ran cold."

Four years later, in a political science class about south Asian politics and history, I made the case to my professor that since the end of the Cold War America was, in a strange way, "less safe" (I have since grown to despise the terms "safe" or "less safe" because they are used to cow the masses) since the end of the Cold War because the boundaries that defined the war no longer exist. Our fringe enemies don't care if they wage a "hot war" against us anymore because they are not beholden to either the Americans or the former Soviets anymore. He told me that he disagreed with me strongly. I told him that an attack from terrorists was probably imminent. This was 1998. Eerily enough, days later he devoted an entire hour to bin Laden and his presence in Afghanistan.

During 2001 the man who I had first heard about in 1994 and studied intensely in 1998 made his presence known to everyone who wasn't quite in the know.

The conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly tell us that his death occured many years earlier. They like to point to the fact that he was on a dialysis machine, to which I say, "big fucking deal." To reference my college days yet again, I knew a journalism professor who was older than bin Laden IN THE LATE '90s was when he was killed last week who walked into class every day with a dialysis machine. He is alive to this day. The dialysis machine argument means nothing to me.

Here is a possible conspiracy theory to which I WOULD give credence yet no one other than I and a few other people are considering it:
Remember big, bad Saddam Hussein? Oh, "HE NEEDED TO GO!" He was SUCH A MASSIVE THREAT TO EVERYTHING WE HELD DEAR-- the unarmed anti-terrorist dictator-- BECAUSE... WELL, HE JUST IS ... UH, EVIL N' STUFF. It seems like a perfectly logical excuse for a war, I guess (sarcasm), but you might have noticed that as the monkey president was waging his war against Saddam Hussein BECAUSE HE WASN'T PLAYING BALL WITH AMERICAN OIL INTERESTS he blew kisses and gave nods to Muammar Gaddafi. Well, folks, Gadaffi is everything that our dumbass government CLAIMED that Saddam Hussein is. He is a terrorist himself, and he actually HAS THE BLOOD OF AMERICANS ON HIS HANDS. Yet the monkey-man praised him the hilt during the last decade.
Why?
Because Gadaffi had THAT MUCH influence on a world stage because he was playing ball with very powerful Western oil interests.
Now, consider this: during a recent interview with Adam Carolla filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who made the documentary "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" stated that as he traveled around the Middle East and asked people where bin Laden was located they all pointed to the exact same location on his map-- 70+ random people all pointed to exactly the same spot.
How is it even possible that the CIA--- despite its utter stupidity-- wasn't aware of that location?

Now let's weave these facts together: is it any coincidence that around the same time that Gaddafi fell out of favor with Western business interests that suddenly bin Laden was FINALLY in our government's crosshairs? Is it really out of the realm of possibility that a terrorist sympathizer pulled strings to maintain bin Laden's safety for the last ten years? Evidently his location was PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE for years, yet we passed on every opportunity to kill him.
One of the major things that you learn as you study international politics is that there are devious links to everything that our government does on a world stage. Always seek those links.

And one last thing: in many cases "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is applicable, but if you want to apply "freedom fighter" to bin Laden...
Get. Fucked.
He was an evil, twisted son of a bitch who loved a rotten religion.