By Patrick Robinson, May 2nd 2011

The recent assassination of Osama bin Laden, perhaps the greatest criminal mind since Adolf Hitler, is mired by obfuscation, and downright deviousness. If the Navy SEALs fought their way into bin Laden’s “palace” and mowed down four of the most dangerous terrorists in Pakistan, I obviously salute them. However, whether or not they shot the mastermind behind 9-11 remains highly suspect.

Navy SEALs are used when you want somebody taken alive. There is absolutely no advantage to risking the lives of some our best trained warriors to simply shoot them, drag the bodies off to a nearby American base, then haul them out to the Arabian Sea and feed them to the sharks. If that’s your goal as mission commander, why not just blow up the “palace” and to hell with the bodies. The excuse of having to abide by Muslim Law and ensuring the bodies are buried within 24 hours is plainly absurd. I just can’t see any advantage to risking the lives of American troops with a ground attack force when a couple of cruise missiles would have achieved precisely the same effect. Saddam Hussein’s sons were treated that way, as was al-Zakhari, and yet bin Laden somehow warranted much more risk for the American troops. And there remains no hard evidence it was even his body.

I have been deeply suspicious about bin Laden’s existence for almost a decade. How long can a man last on a dialysis, which requires modern medical equipment to replace the functions of both kidneys, who is not only on the run, hiding in desperate locations, but has a price tag of $25 million on his head, in a country where loyalty to one another has rarely been their long suit. And if he was still alive, why has there been a continuous stream of fake video tapes being produced to bamboozle the American press? Why not film him?

And what, may I ask, is going on in Washington, where we suddenly have a social worker from Chicago claiming to command the military, making statements to the press at midnight about military timing and strategies, and how the SEALs operated under his command? It was as if he was George Patton addressing the 3rd Army. Presidents, by the way, do not command the military. They simply allow them to fight.

This was a definite triumph orchestrated for President Obama. He needed a victory like this to mark himself as a President that had accomplished something of international importance. Bin Laden had become politically convenient, to make the war in Afghanistan more palatable for the American public, and to somehow demonstrate to the Middle East that America, despite all their flaws, were achieving great things out there. Of course, I support the war. Anytime we think we can take our foot from the windpipes of the Islamic fundamentalists we will surely be proven wrong. They will cut your throat as soon as look at you, and this war on terrorism, sadly, is not over.

But this episode was geared for publicity. The CIA may have just found irrefutable evidence bin Laden’s been dead for the last 10 years, and this was a perfect moment to save face, and to make Obama look like a major figure sitting in the Oval Office. But until I see hard evidence it was bin Laden’s body that was dropped into the Arabian Sea yesterday, I will never be convinced he died on May 1st, 2011. In my view, bin Laden became a memory in December, 2001 when Tora Bora was bombed so relentlessly by the Americans, the actual geography of the Himalayas was altered forever.