Bin Laden's money trail
Follow the money, they say, and you’ll solve the crime.
But in the case of Osama bin Laden, the late and unlamented al-Qaeda terrorist leader, the money trail actually leads in a very embarrassing direction for the people who killed him: the US government.
This is no wild conspiracy theory: sadly, it’s just documented fact.
In the 1980s Bin Laden’s mujahedeen group fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan was just one of dozens that received hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars from the CIA (and funds from the Saudi regime). The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI – a faction of which is widely suspected of harbouring Bin Laden over the last few years – received (and still receives) even more.
After the US posted troops on Saudi Arabian soil in the first Gulf War, Bin Laden became a “Frankenstein’s Monster” who turned on his former paymasters.
And since the terror attacks on the United States on 9/11, the money trail now leads in the same direction: the “War on Terror” has been responsible for an explosion in US spending on wars, weapons, security and personnel – at the expense of public services, health, education and social security.
As CNN detailed in a report this week after Bin Laden’s killing, the so-called “War on Terror” has led the US government to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars with the aim of making Americans feel safer”.
Since 9/11, the US Department of Homeland Security has spent $424 billion, according to CNN, while the budget of the Defence Department for 2010 alone was close to $700 billion.
Today, the US federal budget deficit stands at $14 trillion and rising, due in big part to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and bailing out Wall Street since the 2008 crisis, of course).
So if we ask “Cui bono?” from al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, the most obvious answer is the US security services and military-industrial complex – who, er, bankrolled him in the first place.
In this light, Bin Laden’s killing takes on a different meaning. Perhaps Barack Obama and his advisers took the view that the “War on Terror” inherited from Bush is costing way too much, and the project needs to be finally shut down – before it bankrupts America (and the rest of the world).
