Monday, May 2


By now most of us have heard the big news of Osama bin Laden’s death, in fact if you are just finding out from reading my blog of all things you should prolly seek psychological help. I am a psychologist just FYI. But anyways, Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday May 1st (most likely), (also ironically the communist holiday). Something else you might not have known is that Twitter was the first to break the story of bin Laden’s death, soon after it was full of fake photos that are still all over the web. Crazy how much things can spread in today’s technology inclined society. Another interesting side note is that within two hours of the announcement that bin Laden was dead, more than 145,000 people had joined a Facebook group called "Osama bin Laden is dead 5/1/11."




I would also like to point out that it was roughly 20 -25 trained U.S. Navy SEALs who took him out in under 40 minutes. U.S. Navy Sea, Air and Land Teams, commonly known as SEAL Teams, are the best of the best. Their creed is to be "a special breed of warrior ready to answer our nation's call." God Bless our SEALS!!! In Obama’s words, "We may not always know their names, we may not always know their stories, but they are there every day on the front lines of freedom and we are truly blessed."

I have to give props to Obama’s speech, and his efforts to drawn the American people together, it was excellent and quite moving at times. Today, I hope that we can move forward. So much money has been squandered, lives taken unjustly. One of my friends said it perfectly: “The froth of news reporting with the hysterical crowd scenes are indicative of a deeper problem; years of many lives wasted and finances depleted that could have been pressed to the service of our society. All beg to address the yearning cry of our democracy's greatest need: civic stewardship.”


Now that Osama is officially no more, we need not go run out and start celebrating like all our problems are over, in fact this may likely mark only the begging of what is to come as a result. Barack Obama, in his pitch-perfect address informing the nation that bin Laden is as dead as communism — never mind the cadaverous Cuban and North Korean regimes — rightly stressed that this is “the most significant achievement to date” against al-Qaeda, but that it “does not mark the end of” our effort to defeat that amorphous entity. There remains much more to al-Qaeda than bin Laden, and there are many more tentacles to the terrorism threat than al-Qaeda and its affiliates. So “the long war” must go on. However we can rejoice in knowing that some justice has been served.

Although ought we really be rejoicing over someone’s death? Even someone who has brought about so much death and evil in his life time; I mean we are marking the life of a man being sentenced to an everlasting life in hell one that we all deserve. Something for us to be thinking about, I suppose. I cannot comfortable celebrate the death of a human being no matter how corrupt they might be but I do rejoice in the lives that may have been saved from Osama’s future plots and rejoice in the hope for an end of the destruction brought on from al-Qaeda in our country as this marks a significant step towards their defeat.

Now for some thought provoking, Osama Bin Laden is dead or is he? After all there has been 8 other major announcements made by the head-of-state or high-ranking governmental official to have announced bin Laden’s death in the last 10 years. How do we really know who to believe? As experts have been saying for a while, Bin Laden’s heath and kidney problems would have likely killed him years ago. I have a lot of faith in our government but do we really know that the body they barred in the ocean less than 12 hours following his supposed death was in fact Bin Laden?

I am sure they have visual evidence and the body, for one. But to be certain it's not a look-a-like, the government has taken steps above and beyond to make sure they've got who they think they have: DNA analysis. Now, I'm not entirely sure what DNA analysis has been done, but I can say this for certain - whatever method they used could be completed in a matter of hours given a lab ready to go and focused solely on this. Using commonplace PCR methods Bin Laden could easily be ID'd faster than you'd think. So you don’t have to freak so quickly that they destroyed the evidence before having confirmation, but it is defiantly something to think about.

Of course, to ID Bin Laden in this way, they would have to have some Bin Laden DNA lying around to compare it to. I don't know if they had some from some inside source, or not. What they do have is brain tissue from Bin Laden's sister, who died in the US. They can compare his genetic signature to hers and determine if they are related - which is as close as you can get to guaranteeing it's Bin Laden without a sample of his actual DNA from prior to his death. So it is definitely possible that they could have obtained the proof, but did they? Or might this be one of the biggest publicity stunts in our history….dun dun don

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