Bhoja Air crash

Bhoja Air crash: Volunteerism, voyeurism; vandalism

ISLAMABAD: Spread out in long grass, with the smell of spent jet fuel hovering in the air, burning plastics and a sea of corpses covering, the similarity to the Air Blue crash was eerie.

Millions worth of cellphones, jewellery and other luggage

items were strewn across the bloodied, burning field.

A plane wheel (C) lies amongst debris at the scene of a plane

crash as Pakistani rescue workers search for victims in 

the outskirts of Islamabad on April 20, 2012.

With 127 feared dead and village houses covered with smoldering remains, the traffic jams en route to the disaster site were unimaginable.

Thousands of people had dropped everything they were doing, rushed out of their homes and rushed to the crash site to help save the survivors of Bhoja Air flight 213.

They saved thousands.

Just not people.

Not a single person was alive by the time the ill-fated aircraft came to a stand in Hussainabad village. But there were survivors.

Just not the human kind.

Millions worth of cell phones, jewelry and other luggage items were strewn across the bloodied, burning field. While most were damaged, there was still money to be made by the unscrupulous, and we are blessed with more than our fair share of those.

Before rescue services could even get to the tiny hamlet, villagers started sifting through the debris in a futile search for survivors. Help soon arrived, or so they thought. Unfortunately, it was the kind they and the victims’ families could do without.

At the site, a crowd of gawking voyeurs had collected, seeing the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of the crash site or pose with the wreckage. They were squealing with laughter and joking around. When our news team was stuck in traffic – mostly other gawkers – along the narrow road to the site, one twenty-something gent returning from there, laughing like he was leaving the cinema after watching a comedy, advised us to turn around because the scene was “boring”.

He then stopped in the middle of the road, got off his bike, went and stood in front of an ambulance and had his friend take pictures. It wasn’t until a soldier got to the site and ordered him to return to the rock he crawled out from under that traffic got moving.

Once the army moved in and started organizing things, gawkers were told to turn around and traffic flow improved. Unfortunately, with nowhere else to embarrass themselves, they converged on the media assembled at the nearby gas station-cum-temporary relief organizing area. Here, while some volunteers attempted to help the traffic police, arguing with the voyeur crowd, dozens of cars, bikes, vans, pedestrians and even a tractor kept trying to get to the site, creating havoc.

Somewhere along the line a scuffle broke out among the spectators – one group was talking so loud it was apparently drowning out the other’s shameful ‘jokes’. All the while, a small group of victims’ relatives standing nearby was trying to stay composed.

It wasn’t until the classic laathi-charge threat that the jokers left.

Still, many ‘tamashais’ who made it to the site managed to pick up stray cellphones and jewellery. One such group left in a luxury sedan.

All this while our dear interior minister raced into action to get to the hospitals and then the crash site. Fortunately, army men, remembering Malik’s inability to tell apples from bananas, decided it would be better if he did not help them look for human remains in the mud. Malik’s dozen-car motorcade raced back, cutting off ambulances and other emergency vehicles as it did on the way to the scene. A bunch of local political leaders also showed up and left without even getting their shoes dirty.

Death is not supposed to be a joke. But in a poverty and hunger-stricken land where words like tsunami inspire hope, atomic weapons are a source of pride, and soldiers are sent to die in frozen wastelands, what is wrong will always be right.

Siachen tragedy (Part2)

Siachen tragedy: Is a glacier worth their lives?

The death of so many young men was indeed a tragedy

beyond all measures, but could it have been avoided?

This is not only true for Pakistan, but also for Indians;

there is an equal possibility that the tragedy could have

taken place on the Indian side of the border.

Over 1,300 Pakistani soldiers died in Siachen between

1984 and 1999. Almost all of the casualties on both

sides have been due to extreme weather conditions.

Once again, we are lamenting the death of soldiers; the brave sons of the soil who were tragically killed at the highest battlefield in the world, while we slept comfortable and warm in our cozy beds.

It is indeed a great tragedy to hear that such young men have been crushed under tones of snow – men who could have done so much for their country and for their families. What a painful way to die, and what an unjust way to reward all that they have done for us.

They, of all people did not deserve this. Yes, the casualties may be 135 (124 soldiers and 11 civilians) but the loss is so much greater than this number as each amongst them was undoubtedly a son, a father, a husband, or even a lover.

However, as a country we have become more or less indifferent to such tragedies. When a bomb explodes, all we ask for is the death toll; we feel a bit of remorse, discuss it, and that more or less sums up our debate. Whatever this may be, a gift or curse of humanity – we forget all with time and move on to another day. But today, this time around, I am not going to just forget.

Why were our soldiers there in the first place?

Why do we continue to invest so heavily in protecting a block of snow, with no human inhabitation, except the soldiers who so precariously guard it against foreign intruders?

This is not only true for Pakistan, but also for Indians; there is an equal possibility that the tragedy could have taken place on the Indian side of the border. Both the Indian and Pakistani army units could have been buried in the snow.

Why are we just standing here, dedicating our BBM and Facebook statuses to the soldiers who died? Why aren’t we demanding the reason behind why they were stationed there?

According to careful estimates by defense analysts, Pakistan spends approximately Rs15 million a day to maintain three battalions at the Siachen Glacier. This translates in to Rs450 million a month, and Rs5.4 billion a year. On the other hand, the deployment of seven battalions at the glacier costs India Rs50 million a day, Rs1.5 billion a month, and Rs30 billion a year.

According to an Indian expert:

The economic cost of maintaining an infantry brigade group at Siachen to guard the desolate, super-high altitude, mountain passes and approaches leading to it from the Saltoro Range to its west, has been estimated to range between Rs3 crore to 3.5 crore per day – Rs1,000 to 1,200 crore annually.

All this expenditure is incurred despite the ostentatious amounts of poverty stricken people living in each country – people who don’t even have enough money to afford one meal a day.

According to unofficial figures, over 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives on the blood-laced Siachen Glacier between April 1984 and April 2012. Over 5,000 Indian casualties have also been documented. At one point, one Pakistani soldier was killed every fourth day, while one Indian soldier was killed every other day.

Over 1,300 Pakistani soldiers died in Siachen between 1984 and 1999. Almost all of the casualties on both sides have been due to extreme weather conditions.

Many of us will remember the seminal drama “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie” which clearly depicted the hopelessness of those fighting in such a woe-begotten territory. The drama depicted the glory and honor of a soldier standing proud on a mountain peak, holding the country’s flag staff, standing on the heaps of his fallen enemies. What it also depicted was the gory triviality of it all, when the same hero had to have his limbs cut-off due to constant exposure to inhumane conditions.

The question that one should really ask is, is Siachen really worth all this fuss? Why do our soldiers continue to stand eye-to-eye defending hopeless territory? Many of them will actually never return to see their sons, wives, daughters or beloved. And the others who will be fortunate enough to return may be handicapped or suffer permanent mental damage.

The death of so many young men was indeed a calamity beyond all measures, but could it have been avoided?

This tragedy also gives us a chance for introspection and to question the real need for Siachen. Maybe the time has now come for the two leaderships to de-militarize Siachen, and take it back to the pre-1984 times when both armies refrained from coming to the area. By doing so, the Indian and Pakistani Army may lose out on some strategic gains, but the question to be asked is whether all this strategy is more important than human lives.

Siachen Tragedy

Siachen tragedy - day 5 : Bad weather dogs avalanche search efforts

Search for people buried under avalanche will last at least

another 24 hours, senior meteorological official says.

ISLAMABAD: Harsh weather conditions hampering the search for 138 people buried under a huge avalanche at Pakistan Army camp will last at least another 24 hours, a senior meteorological official said Wednesday.

A huge wall of snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier base high in the mountains in disputed Kashmir early on Saturday morning, smothering an area of one square kilometer (a third of a square mile).

As more than 450 rescuers worked in sub-zero temperatures, experts said there was little chance of finding any survivors at the site, which is at an altitude of around 4,000 meters (13,000 feet).

The site of the Gayari camp has been hit by heavy snow in recent days and Arif Mahmood, the head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department said the bad weather was likely to last another day.

“The harsh weather conditions in Gayari will begin to improve from midday Thursday,” Mahmood told AFP in Islamabad.

“However, it will remain overcast today with thunderstorms and snowfall in Gayari and its surrounding areas.”

Rescuers have been using mechanical diggers and shovels to dig through the vast expanse of snow, rock and ice dumped by the avalanche, but efforts to fly in more heavy equipment have been hindered by the weather.

Mahmood said flight operations to Gilgit and Skardu – the two nearest towns – should be able to resume late on Thursday or early on Friday.

Another weather official, who was supervising weather forecasts for the area, told AFP that the temperature at Gayari would be around minus eight to 10 degrees Celsius.

Photographs released by the military Tuesday showed diggers and rescuers at work on an almost featureless expanse of dirty grey snow and ice, with no trace visible of the camp that had been the 6th Northern Light Infantry headquarters.

The site is surrounded by some of the world’s highest peaks and lies near the de facto border with India in the militarized region of Kashmir, which has caused two of the three wars between the two countries since independence in 1947.

The nuclear-armed rivals fought over Siachen in 1987, but guns on the glacier have largely fallen silent since a slow-moving peace process was launched in 2004.

Siachen standoff taking heavy environmental toll:

Pakistan and India’s military standoff in the frozen high mountains of Kashmir is not only costing soldiers’ lives, experts say – it is also wreaking havoc on the environment.

Environmental experts say the heavy military presence is speeding up the melting of the glacier, one of the world’s largest outside the Polar Regions, and leaching poisonous materials into the Indus river system.

Faisal Nadeem Gorchani of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad said the glacier had shrunk by 10 kilometers (six miles) in the last 35 years.

“More than half of the glacier reduction comes from the military presence,” he said.

Hydrologist and Siachen specialist Arshad Abbasi gave an even more alarming assessment of the glacier’s decline, and said that non-militarized areas had not suffered so badly.

“More than 30 percent of the glacier has melted since 1984, while most of the Karakoram glaciers on the Pakistani side expanded,” he said.

Troop movements, training exercises and building infrastructure all accelerate melting, Gorchani said.

Waste from the military camps is also a major problem, harming the local environment and threatening to pollute the water systems that millions of people across the subcontinent depend upon.

“Indian army officials have described the Siachen as ‘the world’s biggest and highest garbage dump’,” US expert Neal Kemkar said in an article for the Stanford Environmental Law Journal.

The report quoted estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature saying that on the Indian side alone, more than 900 kilos (2,000 pounds) of human waste was dropped into crevasses every day.

Kemkar said that 40 percent of the military waste was plastics and metal, and as there are no natural biodegrading agents present, “metals and plastics simply merge with the glacier as permanent pollutants, leaching toxins like cobalt, cadmium, and chromium into the ice.”

“This waste eventually reaches the Indus River, affecting drinking and irrigation water that millions of people downstream from the Siachen, both Indian and Pakistani, depend upon,” the report said.

Kemkar also warned the conflict had affected wildlife, with the habitat of animals such as the endangered snow leopard, the brown bear and the ibex — a type of wild goat — all threatened.

Accidents of Melting Siachen Ice

The tragic incident at Ghayari, Siachen, where a 25-meter high hurtling wall of snow smothered a battalion headquarters and trapped 138 officers and men of the Pakistan Army under it, has riveted the national attention on this rather ignored battle front where more casualties are the result of natural disasters than the enemy action. Deployment at 180,000 to 22,000 feet covers an area that is unnatural for human habitation and full of unpredictable and invisible dangers.

Accidents are unavoidable rather inevitable and in line with the military culture, stoically accepted as a professional hazard in line of duty. Yet, the size and scale of the recent disaster have managed to bring the Siachen issue from the periphery of national consciousness to the centrestage of public attention. A debate has been kindled as to what pressing circumstances and vital national objectives have forced a deployment that necessitates such perilous presence and why the two countries cannot dismantle this costly and painful confrontation that, to start with, is a consequence of India’s stealthy aggression.

It was in 1984 that India moved the belligerent pursuit of the Kashmir dispute to the Siachen Glacier by occupying positions along Soltoro Ridgeline in an area, which had remained demilitarised ever since the Kashmir operations in 1948. Even when the Ceasefire Line (CFL) in Kashmir [dubbed Line of Control (LoC) vide Simla Agreement - 1972] between India and Pakistan came into force following the Karachi Agreement in 1949, as a consequence of the UN supervised ceasefire, it could not be extended to the glacier due to extreme constraints of an inhospitable terrain and inaccessibility. Its delineation ended at the last mutually agreed upon point in the northern area; village of Khor on the Shyok River, which was changed to a map reference point; NJ9842 during the Tashkent Conference. From Khor onwards, the Karachi Agreement then described alignment of the CFL as going “thence north to the glaciers”, leaving the ‘Line’ north of this point yet to be defined and demarcated. Pakistan considered the onwards continuation of the CFL to Karakoram Pass, which demarcated the Siachen glacier within Pakistani territory; a position on which the Pak-China Accord of 1963 was based and which was tacitly accepted by India. Other occasions of articulating the Indian dissenting position presented themselves later as well. India had an opportunity to challenge Pakistan’s claim at the time of Tashkent Conference in 1965 where the two countries agreed to change the terminal point of CFL and, more so, at Simla in 1972 when it had the chance to dictate terms; the CFL, now dubbed LoC, still terminated at NJ9842, despite small changes made to the erstwhile alignment of the CFL.

Following Simla, Pakistan continued to exercise administrative control over the Siachen glacier and opened it for international mountaineering expeditions in the mid-seventies. Various international atlases also reflected the Siachen glacier as part of Pakistan by showing the LoC as proceeding north eastwards towards the Karakorum Pass. However, the threat of an Indian aggression was surreptitiously taking shape in the manner of earlier occupation of the Kashmir valley by military aggression in October 1948; an Indian brigade strength force was landed on the northern end of the Siachen glacier in April 1984 to initiate another bleeding wound in the saga of Kashmir tragedy. Pakistan rushed in its troops to contain the Indian aggression and so began a senseless and costly conflict, shorn of any worthwhile strategic or military considerations that could justify the loss of life and heavy expenditure involved in maintaining troops in an area that is regarded as the highest battle ground in the world.

An extension of Indian hegemonic designs, the Indian occupation of the Siachen glacier remains an act of blatant aggression. It is a gross violation of not only the Karachi Agreement of 1949 but also Simla Agreement whose Para 4(2) stipulates: “In Jammu and Kashmir, the line of control resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971, shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side. Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of the mutual differences and legal interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this line.”

Heavy intermittent clashes ensued in the following years without affecting any significant change in the ground situation. Artillery duels continued to take place, even as the two sides refrained from introducing air power to further expand the zone of conflict. A modicum of rationality prevailed after five years when after an initial meeting of the military commanders the Indian and Pakistani delegations began talks for resolving the dispute in July 1989; a process that after 13 rounds of talks has yielded no tangible progress even as the earlier rounds were marked by anticipation that the area would be returned to a status quo ante, returning troops to a deployment prevailing in the area prior to the Indian aggression in 1984.

Notwithstanding the considerable common ground that should facilitate movement on Siachen, the Indian posturing has not been very encouraging; in fact, the later rounds of talks have indicated a marked degree of inflexibility in the Indian stance. Instead of rolling back aggression from Siachen, the Indians have insisted upon verifying the existing positions of opposing forces stationed at the glacier; introducing; in addition to international boundary, working boundary, LoC, and CFL, a new term in the lexicon on Kashmir called the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL). For Pakistan, these demands are unacceptable because once this line is acknowledged it would be tantamount to validating the Indian aggression in Siachen and by extension in Kashmir as well. While it is desirable that sufficient flexibility be exhibited by Pakistan in resolving the Siachen dispute by making concessions that would prevent costly loss of life, it is another matter to agree to mark an Indian dictated line in Siachen and for good reasons.

India’s aggression in Siachen is a military blunder, which needs to be retracted to avert the senseless loss of life and stop the haemorrhaging of resources. There is a dire need to demilitarise this conflict zone. In such a scenario, a major role can be played by the UNMOGIP (UN Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan) observers in demilitarising the treacherous landscape. These observers, who are mandated by the UN under the authority of a UNSC resolution to monitor the CFL, are present on ground and can perform a positive and active role in overseeing demilitarisation of the Siachen glacier and assuming a post evacuation supervisory role. Perhaps, this is the only way of melting the glacial ice of frigid Indian hostility in Siachen.

India and Pakistan agree to hold more talks:

As predicted, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed during a meeting in Bhutan that their countries should hold further talks to try to repair relations strained since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.  Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters at a regional summit in Thimphu that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani had decided their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries (the top diplomats) should meet as soon as possible.

In agreeing to hold more talks, India and Pakistan have overcome the first major obstacle in the way of better ties – the question of what form their dialogue should take. Pakistan had been insisting on a resumption of the formal peace process, or Composite Dialogue, broken off by India after the attack on Mumbai which it blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. India had been seeking a way back into talks which stopped short of a full resumption of the composite dialogue.

The prime ministers, who last met in Egypt last July, appear to have sidestepped that problem by agreeing to hold dialogue on all issues, without specifically labeling this as the Composite Dialogue (which incidentally is meant to cover all issues.)

Having dealt with the form of their talks, the hard parts – issues of substance – now lie ahead.

Any easing of tension between the two countries is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan have been rivals for influence for decades. Pakistan had already moved significant numbers of troops last year from its Indian border in the east to fight Pakistani Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan during a brief thaw between the two nuclear-armed countries last summer. According to a Pentagon report released this week, it may have redeployed as many as 100,000 troops from east to west. But that means it is unlikely to redeploy any more right now, particularly given its concerns at what it sees as an Indian military build-up on its eastern boarder.

But the talks between India and Pakistan could ultimately pave the way for a scaling down of the proxy war which the two countries’ intelligence services have been accused of waging in Afghanistan. Over time, that will have a major impact on Pakistan’s willingness to tackle the Afghan Taliban and force them to the negotiating table. (Pakistan’s fight against militants so far has been concentrated on tackling the Pakistani Taliban on its border with Afghanistan rather then those fighting U.S. led forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials complain that India is using its presence in Afghanistan – which grew substantially after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban government in 2001 – to destabilize Pakistan.  They say India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is giving money and weapons to Baluch separatists in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. They also argue that R&AW agents are indirectly destabilizing Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border by providing funding to militants via Afghan’s NDS intelligence service. India denies the accusations and has so far refused Pakistani demands that it close down its consulates in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad near the Pakistan border.

Afghanistan has been a haven for years for proxy wars between rival intelligence agencies, often working with little real oversight from national capitals, so it is hard to work out exactly what is going on.  What is clear, however, is that whenever you ask a Pakistani official or diplomat about Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan, they will invariably tell you that they expect in return that the country's security interests vis-a-vis India are met.

With its arrest of Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Pakistan has demonstrated it is in a uniquely powerful position to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table – making it for now the favored ally of the United States over India. Crucial to watch, therefore, in the months ahead will be whether Pakistan makes headway in its demands for a scaling back of India’s presence in Afghanistan, as the price for its cooperation on bringing the Afghan Taliban to heel. India in turn is unlikely to give much ground on Afghanistan unless it believes it will win concessions elsewhere, either from Pakistan itself or from the United States.

But the battle over Afghanistan, for all its complexities, is the easiest of the issues for the two countries to resolve. In theory, both have a mutual interest in a stable and neutral Afghanistan which neither threatens Pakistan nor is used as a haven for militant groups targeting India.  On paper, both countries have an opportunity to narrow their differences. And while the huge trust deficit between the two usually makes any progress on any subject extremely difficult, their row over Afghanistan is pragmatic rather then existential.

Where it becomes much more emotional between India and Pakistan is the dispute over Kashmir, which goes to the heart of both countries’ identities.  As an Islamic country, Pakistan has always considered Muslim Kashmir should have naturally been part of its territory after partition in 1947; as a secular country, India will not tolerate any territorial changes based on religion. And while India and Pakistan made progress in resolving their dispute over Kashmir in 2007,  you can find plenty of people who are cynical about whether a deal worked out between Indian Prime Minister Singh and former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would ever have worked.  And significantly, the civilian government which took over from musharraf has virtually disowned it.

Adding fuel to the fire is a row over the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which according to those I spoke to in Pakistan, is unlikely to be disarmed any time soon. Officials say Pakistan cannot risk taking on the Punjab-based militant group while its army is fighting the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas. Those who do not speak for the government or the security services give both that reason and another – why should Pakistan disarm a group which is fighting for what many Pakistan see as the liberation of Kashmir?

Last, but not least, is a dispute over dwindling, and erratic, water supplies as the Himalayan glaciers which feed rivers in both countries melt, and growing populations in both countries use up more and more water for irrigation.  This is perhaps the most troubling row since it is the one that both countries have least control over. Yet both will be more inclined to blame the other rather than the force of nature or global warming. (For a reality check, do get hold of a copy of this report published in 2005, which predicted that water would become an issue in 2010.)

Compared to the power of the Himalayan and Karakoram rivers; or indeed to the bitter identity-driven debate over Kashmir, the battle for influence between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan looks comparatively simple. If the Thimphu thaw between India and Pakistan leads anywhere, I’d probably expect to see it in Afghanistan first.

This is the truth of how Osama Bin Laden was killed

This is the truth of how Osama Bin Laden was killed. The secret Illuminati connection.

Osama Bin Laden's Compound. If these walls could talk!

Reference to the earlier attempt on the life of Osama Bin Laden.

On May 2nd 2011 in the Pakistani city of Abbott Abad Osama Bin Laden died. The story that was officially released by The Obama Administration is that he was shot dead in a mission conducted by American navy seals, and that, after facial recognition techniques were used to establish his identity, the body of Osama Bin Laden was given a burial at sea, in accordance with American understanding of Islamic rites.

Of course, already there are those who are saying that this is a big hoax. Some people believe that Osama Bin Laden has been dead for many years. The range and the longevity of the conspiracies that will arise covering the events of May 2nd 2011, can only be stopped one way. That way is for The American Government to be as absolutely truthful as it is possible to be, (something unlikely); and for them to release the photographs that were taken of the dead Bin Laden.

This latter is something that will never happen, and not for the reasons given out by Barack Obama.

If you want to find out the real reason why the photos must be kept hidden, and the truth of what really happened in Abbott Abad that night read on.

The truth is definitely stranger than fiction in the story of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

To establish the reality of what happened that night, I have first to remind you that I am The President of The Ancient Society of Secret Historians, and that my knowledge of the secrets of the statesmen/women knows no bounds.

I then need to draw your attention to a Hub I published in August of last year, in which I stated that Bin Laden was living in a town in Pakistan; and my account then of the assassination attempt that was made on him in 2002.

Because of certain failings in intelligence, this operation was aborted. But it was decided to try again in 2011.

The leader of the mission to eliminate Bin Laden this year, was the same intrepid hero who was involved in 2002. I speak, of course, of The Cheshire Cat.

The Cheshire Cat has given great service to The United States over a period of many years. He is a shape shifting alien, who was originally captured in the bedroom of the late Director of The FBI, J Edgar Hoover. He is currently resident in a rather plush prison in Area 51 in Nevada. He has given his parole to the US government, and will not try to escape as long as his many kittens are looked after by the state.

As well as the earlier attempt on the life of Osama Bin Laden, he has given other services to America. He almost succeeded in killing Fidel Castro during the nineteen sixties, and he also succeeded in assassinating Lenin in the nineteen twenties.

He is also the maternal grandfather of the current President of The United States, Barack Obama.

The Cat who killed Osama Bin Ladin.

Hilary Clinton was the first to realize it had all gone horribly wrong.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden, and what went wrong.

Much of what you have been told about what happened the night Bin Laden met his end is not true. The fact that the government had to change the story is enough to raise suspicions. Something so unexpected did happen that all arrangements were thrown into chaos, and it is only due to some quick thinking on the part of The Cheshire Cat, that great embarrassment wasn’t caused to the Obama administration.

What you were told about a raid by navy seals is only partially correct. When they told you that Osama Bin Laden got shot dead, you were being lied to. He was actually killed by cyanide poisoning. It was administered by The Cheshire Cat.

There was a raid on the compound by the navy seals. They were not there, however, either to kill or capture Osama.

They were only there to clear the way for the entrance of The Cheshire Cat. They were further directed to search the compound for any useful intelligence. But that was only after the brave feline had done the dirty deed.

Everything went really smoothly at first. The crash landing of one of the helicopters was a slight hitch. The navy seals engaged in a diversionary gunfight with Bin Laden's courier, who lived in a small guesthouse close to the main house. The courier and his wife got killed.

This gave a chance for The Cheshire Cat to sneak upstairs in the main house to where Osama Bin Laden was watching.

Osama bin Laden watches himself on TV

Mr Bin Laden was addicted to watching "schoolgirl" movies. In fact it was this obsession that almost got him killed in 2002.

This time The Cheshire Cat had not shape shifted. He stayed in his feline form. The plan was for him to gain access to the room where Osama sat drooling at girls in gymslips, and then to jump on his neck, and scratch him with claws well laced with cyanide. Not dissimilar to how he dispatched Lenin, only this time death was to come almost instantaneously.

Of course the entire Obama cabinet was watching this enfold in real time through film relayed from a small camera affixed to the cat's forehead.

Of course, something had to go wrong. The problem arose after the killing. That part went really smoothly.