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by Finian Cunningham
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
7 August, 2011

The wiping out of 30 US special forces in the Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan comes at a time when Washington’s official version of how it carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden was falling apart fromincredulity.

 Among the 38 dead in the helicopter disaster – the biggest single loss of American lives in the 10-year Afghanistan war of occupation – are believed to have been several of the 17 US Navy Seals involved in the execution of Osama bin Laden in early May. The dead also include other members of US special forces and Afghan commandos.

Early Western news media reports indicated that the Chinook may have been involved in a significant military operation against Afghan militants when it went down in Wardak Province, not far west from the capital, Kabul, early Saturday.

Taliban sources are reported to have claimed that its militants shot down the Chinook with rocket fire.

US military officials say they are investigating the cause of the crash.

However, of significance, unnamed US sources have told media outlets that they believe the helicopter was shot down. This unofficial US briefing seems a bit odd. Why would US military sources want to hand enemy combatants a stunning propaganda coup?

Perhaps, it serves US interests to divert from the real motive and cause of the helicopter crash, whether it was hit by a rocket or not.

US officials have admitted that the dead Navy Seals were part of the Team Six unit that allegedly carried out the assassination in May of the supposed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

From the outset, Washington’s account of how its special forces murdered Bin Laden in his residential compound in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan, has been riven with contradictions. Why was the liquidated Bin Laden buried hurriedly at sea? How could the world’s “No 1 Terrorist” have resided inconspicuously only miles from the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi?

Most glaringly, several informed sources are convinced that Bin Laden died from natural causes 10 years ago. Author Ralph Schoenman dismissed the alleged Navy Seal execution has “a big lie”. From investigations over several years in Pakistan, Schoenman told Global Research: “I have interviewed several members of the Pakistani intelligence services and militants, and they have all confirmed that Bin Laden died from kidney failure over 10 years.”

More recently, as Paul Craig Roberts reports [1], Pakistani locals have claimed that the Navy Seal operation in Abbottabad ended in disaster, with one of three US helicopters exploding as it took off from the ground near the compound. The other two choppers had not landed and, according to witnesses, they flew from the scene immediately after the explosion. As Roberts points out, that means there was no Bin Laden corpse to dispose off at sea, as Washington maintains.

The key people who would know the truth about Washington’s incredible Bin Laden assassination are now unavailable for comment. Case sealed.

NOTES

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25898

Finian Cunningham is a Global Research Correspondent based in Belfast.cunninghamfin@yahoo.com