OSAMA BIN LADEN’S KIDNEYS

[RedCountry]

I get these emails from this newsletter called "What we now know" that are usually pretty intriguing, so I thought I would share with my Husker fam. You can sign up for it here: http://www.caseyresearch.com/

 

OSAMA BIN LADEN’S KIDNEYS

 

The enigmatic Osama bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, still haunts the land like a boogeyman, held responsible by many for every major terrorist move on the planet, from the uprisings in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the bomb attack in Madrid, Spain. Fact is, though, there hasn’t been a verified new message from bin Laden since December 2001. Most experts think he may be dead; others, including some U.S. intelligence officials, are not so sure.

 

What We Now Know has been sifting through the various sources to get a closer look at the truth.

 

The last confirmed video, aired three months after the WTC attacks, shows a gaunt, gray-bearded bin Laden with hollow eyes—to all appearances, a gravely ill man. Rumors about the al-Qaeda leader suffering from a debilitating kidney disease had been out for years: in March 2000, Pakistani students of Islam supposedly offered to donate kidneys to bin Laden; eyewitnesses described him as “coughing frequently” and “easily exhausted”; various anonymous members of the intelligence community announced “This man is dying”, stating that his followers had tried to find a dialysis machine for their leader. In September 2001, Moosa Wardak, an Afghan doctor, had allegedly traveled to India to buy some medical equipment for his patient bin Laden, a rumor confirmed by another “unnamed intelligence source” who claimed that a dialysis machine had been bought earlier in 2001 and shipped to Kandahar. And New York Times writer William Safire contended that in mid-May of 2001, Saddam Husse in’s personal physician, Dr. Khayal, had visited the terminally ill Saudi.

 

Even though the Taliban, as well as bin Laden himself, claimed that his kidneys were just fine, there seemed to be too much dependable information coming from too many different, unrelated sources to regard the terrorists’ claims as anything but propagandist blather.

 

The September 11 attacks opened the floodgates to unrestrained speculation when Pakistan’s President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, asserted that Osama had surely died from kidney failure because he had been unable to get treatment for his severe condition.

 

In January 2002, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta tooted the same horn, analyzing the “frosting of the appearance”, which could be associated with kidney failure, renal failure, etc. “He’s also not moving his arms,” said Gupta. “The reason that might be important is because people who have had a stroke—and certainly people are at increased risk of stroke if they also have kidney failure—he may have had a stroke and therefore is not moving his left side.”

 

“Renal dialysis [hemodialysis] is something reserved for patients in end-stage renal failure. That means their kidneys have just completely shut down.” According to Gupta, there is no way that bin Laden could have handled the process of dialysis hiding out in a cave: “Dialysis machines require electricity,… clean water… a sterile setting—infection is a huge risk with that.” Also required would be several experts, “someone who really knows how to run that dialysis machine… someone who’s actually assessing his blood… to see what particular dialysate he would need, and to be able to change his dialysate as needed. So you’d need a kidney specialist, a technician—quite a few people around him.”

 

At the end of December ’01, the Egyptian paper al-Wafd ran an article on bin Laden’s purported funeral, reporting that “bin Laden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The [Taliban] official… stated… that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago… it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location… because according to the Wahhabi tradition, no mark is left by the grave. [The official] stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.”

 

However, tapes, messages, even emails from bin Laden have kept popping up—at least for a while—in media circles.

 

In March 2002, the London-based paper al-Quds al-Arabi claimed it had received an email from bin Laden, which condemned the “betrayal” of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s offer in the name of the Arab world to establish normal relations with Israel if it pulled out of all territories occupied in 1967. Even though the newspaper’s editor, Abdel Bari-Atwan, believed that the language and terminology matched that of former bin Laden messages, a verifiable connection could not be established.

 

“Asked if the message could have been forged by just anyone,” reported the BBC, “he replied: ‘It could be but I have a feeling that it is extremely genuine… because it was sent yesterday and we haven’t received any denial from any part of the world.’ Moreover, Mr. Bari-Atwan added, that it was ‘expected’ that bin Laden, who has been stripped of his Saudi citizenship, would dismiss the Saudi initiative as treason.”

 

After reviewing the multitude of reports and analysis on the topic, it seems to us the belief that Osama bin Laden is still alive has taken on an air not dissimilar to that of the ”Elvis lives” myth.

 

Most mysterious appearances seemed to occur in London. In May ’02, an Islamic news agency released “fresh” video footage of bin Laden that was quickly debunked by Arab network al-Jazeera, which said it had seen the same tape 3-4 months before and believed it had been recorded in October 2001. In September, al-Jazeera itself came out with a video tape allegedly containing bin Laden’s voice, although he couldn’t be seen in the video. Two months later, Swiss speech analysts dissected a newly emerged audio tape, comparing the content with 20 former, verified bin Laden recordings—and concluded that, without a doubt, the new tape was a fake. U.S. experts, however, didn’t concede; they believed it was “probably bin Laden speaking.”

 

Dead or alive? In October 2002, the London-based Arab news magazine Al Majalla claimed to have acquired bin Laden’s personal will and testament. The four-page document, supposedly dated December 14, 2001 in Afghanistan, expresses the writer’s disappointment with the Taliban’s failure (“Even amongst the students of religion, only few stood their ground and fought, and the rest either surrendered or fled”), goads on his followers to continue the good work (“Take a breather and put aside for the time being, fighting the Jews and the Crusaders, and instead devote your efforts to purifying your groups from the agents and the cowards and those impostors who claim to be scholars amongst you.”), admonishing his sons not to join al-Qaeda and his wives not to think of getting remarried. The validity of the will has not been proven.

 

What’s fact, what’s fiction? No one knows for sure… considering all the evidence, though, it seems quite likely that Osama bin Laden died in late 2001. Which leaves us with a lot of questions that may never be answered… why, for example, did bin Laden never explicitly claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks? Any die-hard Jihadist should have prided himself in having delivered such a devastating blow to Western society. It’s a lapse that seems strangely at odds with bin Laden’s previous, boastful demeanor. Chances are we will never know, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a body to prove his death.

 

Even though the evidence for the terrorist leader’s death is quite persuasive, current newspaper headlines still portray bin Laden as al-Qaeda’s wirepuller. On August 28, Ohio’s American Daily gloomily announced, “Osama bin Laden’s goal is your destruction”, and the Philippine ABS CBN News shouted on 8/11/04 “Osama bin Laden calls for attacks”.

 

Drawing again from the popular Orwellian theme, it seems like bin Laden has taken on the part of Emmanuel Goldstein, the forever elusive enemy of the state, whose name and image served in 1984 as convenient stimulus for the daily “Two Minutes Hate” of the brainwashed masses.

 

Dead or alive—it probably makes no difference. According to a senior Israeli intelligence officer talking to the World Tribune, “It doesn’t matter whether bin Laden is alive or not. The organization goes on with help from key people.”