MY RESPONSE TO LA TIMES ARTICLE WHICH PRESUPPOSES OSAMA BIN LADEN IS ALIVE

This article was the cover story in a LA Times Opinion section.
How can an intelligent person cite the Afghanistan video?
A friend of mine suggested Coll is a CIA asset.
Google his name and check out the organization he started.
In discussing OBL with people who accuse him of doing 9/11,
I say "Don't you know you should not speak ill of the dead?"
.............Here is my letter to the editor. (I am of an age where
I fit the British cliche of an old gentleman "writing a letter to the
Times.")
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(Regarding “Target: Bin Laden” by Steve Coll
in the Opinion section of the LA Times for 4/13/08)

In this article I am told that prospects are brightening
for capturing Osama Bin Laden. In reality, catching
OBL is as unlikely as Oceania capturing Emmanuel
Goldstein, the eternal bogey man in the novel “1984.”
Oceania needed Goldstein to focus the populace’s
hatred on an external enemy. In the same way, our
government needs OBL to do the same thing.

Anyone informed about OBL knows that he is undoubtedly
deceased. The communiqués allegedly emanating from
him are pitiful frauds, stock footage that freezes when
“he” speaks of contemporaneous events.

Mr. Coll loses all credibility when he cites the November
2001 video allegedly showing OBL confessing to 9/11.
This video has been completely discredited. The man
in the video looks nothing like OBL.The man in the
video is right handed while OBL is left handed.

It is shameful for a journalist to swallow crude
government propaganda. It is more shameful for
the Los Angeles Times to regurgitate it.

Was it published?

Was it published?

"My Response..."

Zan Overall
I have not been checking the papers. In the form you use when you submit
a letter to the editor they tell you that you will be informed if your letter is
going to be published. I sent copies of my letter to the author at his
organization. If you want to check out that organization, google his
name Steve Croll.

I don't have much hope of the letter being published. I sent another
"winner" about a month ago on a similar subject. Some columnist
had written a story saying baldly that OBL sent four planes etc.etc.
I wrote asking if journalism prodedures have changed. Don't you
have to say "alleged" when someone has been accused of a crime
but not convicted? Not published. Sent it to the author.

Thanks for the inquiry, Joe.