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Bin Laden Bombshell

2015-05-18 (월)
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The killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 instantly became an iconic moment in history, being forever imprinted in the minds of not just citizens of America, but of people throughout the world. It was a marked victory, a tangible win, and the fruition of years of military involvement in the “war on terror”. It came as a surprise to many then when Seymour Hersh, a well-known reporter in the field of investigative journalism, stated in a London Review of Books article “…The White House’s story (about the 2011 U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden) might have been written by Lewis Carroll.”Relying on the assertions of a single, unnamed retired senior U.S. intelligence officer, Hersh’s main argument is that rather than being the dangerous firefight the Obama administration claimed the SEALs underwent, the entire operation was a setup in which Pakistan’s military, who had been holding Bin Laden for years, simply made him available to the SEALs on the night of the raid. Were it not for the byline of Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was the first to expose the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the story would have been quickly dismissed. However, the theory does begin to hold plausibility in light of the contradicting statements and misleading evidence immediately following the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The White House was quick to respond to such allegations, dismissing the report as being comprised of “baseless assertions.”So ultimately, the question becomes, why the cover up? For starters, in a recent news interview with CNN,Hersh emphasizes that Obama was not supposed to go public with any information regarding the capture until further notice. Instead, he alleges that the Obama administration may have utilized the death and the “cover-up” for political purposes. Few are taking such unsupported claims as truth, and this is not the first time Hersh has been under heavy criticism for the use of unnamed sources. Until more evidence surfaces, it will be difficult to be able to take Seymour Hersh’s conspiracy with veracity, no matter how acclaimed a journalist he is.


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