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What really struck me last evening as I was reading Seymour Hersh’s article exposing the bin Laden raid story as a farce, was the fact that it answered in detail so many of the questions I’ve had about the raid over the years. For example:

In 2012, I wrote the post: New Emails Say No Sailors Watched Bin Laden’s Burial at Sea

This was followed up in 2013 with: U.S. Government’s Secret Move to Hide Files on the Osama Bin Laden Raid

Then, finally in 2014: The U.S. Military Ordered Bin Laden Photos Destroyed 10 Days After Freedom of Information Act Request

Commenting on the burial aspect of this White House fairytale, I noted:

The Osama Bin Laden raid was suspect from the very beginning.  Not only were key initial descriptions of the assault completely incorrect (such as him being armed and his wife being killed), but the manner in which his body was rapidly tossed into the ocean was beyond bizarre.  I mean, Tony Soprano keeps a body longer than that.

What’s even more incredible than the latest Hersh article, is the U.S. government’s pathetic attempt to deny it. Officials are basically responding by saying things like “you’d have to believe the government would lie to you,” and “there are too many inaccuracies to respond to all of them.

For example, Politico reports that:

First from the CIA’s former top spokesperson:

“If you were to believe Sy you would have to believe this massive conspiracy that President Obama, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, and Mike Morell were all lying to you,” said Bill Harlow, the agency’s former top spokesman, referring to two recent secretaries of defense and a former acting CIA director. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

Someone on Twitter summarized the nonsensical nature of this perfectly with the following tweet:

I’ll take “People who are most likely to lie to you” for $400, Alex

The Politico story then becomes even more surreal, and embarrassing. The WhiteHouse National Security spokesman claims:

“There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one,” White House National Security spokesman Ned Price said in a statement to reporters early Monday. Later, at the daily White House briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest chimed in, saying the report was full of “inaccuracies and outright falsehoods.”

Come again? You’d think they’d be more than happy to fact check and offer proof of inaccuracies in order to restore faith in apple pie, rigged markets and overall American awesomeness.

But it wasn’t just Mr. Price who took this tactic. The Defense Department also resorted to Jedi mind tricks:

“There are too many inaccuracies to even bother going through them line by line,” Col. Steve Warren, a department spokesman, told reporters of the Hersh piece, whcih appeared in the London Review of Books. “But there should be no question that this was a unilateral action and it was conducted in accordance with all standing laws of armed conflict. The public record on the operation there is clear. The president announced it within 24 hours of completion of it, and there is nothing to add to what the president’s already said. This article appears, from where I sit, to be largely a fabrication. I’m too busy to waste my time with it.”

Think about the similarities of those two statements. These are talking points, and not very clever ones at that.

These are not the Bin Laden raid conspiracies you are looking for…

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger