"Death By Water", Or The Start Of A Fresh Flood Of bin Laden Conspiracy Theories?

Submitted by Tyler Durden
05/02/2011 16:13 -0400
190 comments

Phlebas the Phoenician may not be Osama bin Laden, http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html but the circumstances of his untimely end are oddly comparable to those surrounding the expiration of the Al Qaeda leader. Yet is there more than meets the eye. Once again, it is Politico sounding the alarm horn on a issue that is sure to inflame the "conspiratorial" bent of the population. As Politico notes in its latest must read analysis of the Osama endspiel, "while the watery grave may help diminish bin Laden’s status as a martyr to his followers, it was already fueling conspiracy theories; as the administration resisted releasing even photographs of the slain terrorist leader on Monday, a predictable haze of myth and rumor had already, inevitably, began to rise around him." Yet even the most grounded can not help by ask: why not at least present his body briefly to the "free world" and then shoot him into outer space if necessary (for all those who buy the "no shrine" theory). Although at the end of the day, the mission is more than successful: the population has a brand new and truly enveloping distraction to keep its preoccupied with largely irrelevant, although very emotionally charged, issues for a long time.

From Politico: Conspiracies say bin Laden lives http://www.politico.com/news/stories/05 ... Page2.html

The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert deadly force but also to achieve maximum effect in the propaganda war: the White House was careful to say bin Laden’s body had been treated according to Islamic tradition, but also to deny his followers a shrine.

But while the watery grave may help diminish bin Laden’s status as a martyr to his followers, it was already fueling conspiracy theories; as the administration resisted releasing even photographs of the slain terrorist leader on Monday, a predictable haze of myth and rumor had already, inevitably, began to rise around him.

The White House said Monday morning that it is running DNA tests on some element of Bin Laden’s remains, and that it’s debating releasing a photograph taken of him after the lethal U.S. raid on his Pakistani compound.

“The United States Government has not yet been made a decision on whether there will be a photo release,â€