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| Osama bin Laden |
A top journalist has claimed that Barack Obama lied over
Osama bin Laden’s death to make himself look better.
Pulitzer prize-winning Seymour Hersh said that the facts
surrounding the Taliban leader’s death were actually glorified to help Obama
win a second term.
He suggests that the Pakistani government actually held bin
Laden in the Abbottabad compound for years.
It is widely believed that tracking of couriers led to the
discovery of the compound, but Hersh writes in the London Review of Books, that
it was actually ‘a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed
the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the U.S.’
He does not dispute the fact that Obama ordered the raid,
but adds that ‘many other aspects of the administration’s account were false’.
Hersh published the allegations this weekend and he quotes
an unnamed source, saying that there was actually no firefight. The only
gunshots were those that killed bin Laden.
His article also says that he was buried in Afghanistan and
not at sea.
Hersh wrote that the ‘most blatant lie’ was the involvement
of the Pakistani military. The White House says the most senior military
leaders were never informed, Hersh disputes this.
He also says that bin Laden was actually being used as a
bargaining chip against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s intelligence
service had held him since 2006.
Hersh wrote: ‘The White House had to give the impression
that bin Laden was still operationally important. Otherwise, why kill him?
‘A cover story was created – that there was a network of
couriers coming and going with memory sticks and instructions. All to show that
bin Laden remained important.
‘The SEALS should have expected the political grandstanding.
It’s irresistible to a politician. Bin Laden became a working asset’
