Hersh, a well-known reporter, caught an immediate flow of appearances from the White House denouncing his work as fiction. That is enough to make reading this story worth the time, because we all know that any time there is a big commotion like this, there has to be something about this article that hits home. Almost anyone else would have been ignored.
If true, the story will be a lasting legacy for the White House that will not be over after the President leaves office. The main points of his story are that Pakistan knew where bin Laden was and the Saudi's paid for his upkeep until his death. Pakistan cooperated and facilitated in his killing. Other details of the operation and body disposal are disputed in his writing.
As with most stories of Special Operations, there is no truth, except possibly the one the X-Files used to portray: The Truth is Out There. Truth is an invention of governments conveyed over mass media, rationalized, and made into movies. Stephen Speilberg said making movies was immortality. In their making, some truth is immortalized forever, but it may not be what we believe really happened. Hersh, as the London Review of Books says, is working on an alternative history of the events. Since Zero Dark Thirty is already made its run through theaters, most of the American audiences already know what happened. Don't try to confuse them with alternative histories.
In Special Operations the truth is always something called a cover story. A cover story has plausible deniability and presumes what really happens will never be discovered if the cover story is reapeated often enough. A cover story also assumes the deniability will protect the country from criticism of what they may have done, or how it was managed. The Russians have theirs in the Ukraine, but all countries use them for special things they do. Whatever cover story there was was undone by a White House that talks too much. There is a quote from Robert Gates in the London Review that is telling in that regard. Gates was there, and was in his last few months in the Administration. His truth is easier to believe and more credible, but it is still just one man's truth.
Only a few people know what really happened, and they don't always tell the truth about what that was. Somebody shot Osama bin Laden but nobody will ever know who actually did it, given multiple claims to the deed. Something happened to the body, and I doubt that anyone really cares except a few extreemists who believe in certain ways of burying the dead while they blow themselves up for eternal glory. Nobody misses the irony of that. In 25 years or so, the whole thing will be declassified, and the world will discover whose truth was the right one. Until then, the truth is out there. Dennis F. Poindexter books at Amazon
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