I have been seeing conspiracy theories that Benazir Bhutto "revealed" that Osama bin Laden has been killed or "knew too much." In this interview, she refers to Omar Sheikh as the man who murdered Osama bin Laden:
However, she clearly makes a Freudian slip. Omar Sheikh is infamous for murdering Daniel Pearl. Furthermore, her train of thought rules out the possibility that she was really discussing Osama bin Laden. Bhutto discusses links between Pakistani security officers having links to terrorist organizations that were involved in the murder of Western tourists and journalists. Her comment about Omar Sheikh makes much more sense if we understand it to be a comment about Daniel Pearl. Had she been criticizing a Pakistani official for having links to someone who killed bin Laden, I don't see how the audience would have been expected to see the link as an indication of a problem. In other words, she points out the Sheikh-connection as a criticism. If Sheikh had killed bin Laden, any ties between Sheikh and Pakistani officials would have been a *good* thing in the mind of most Westerners.
I am posting this because I really want people to stop claiming that Benazir Bhutto knew of bin Laden's death and was telling us about it. People who claim that she did so are relying on a sole slip-of-the-tongue that not even the interviewer thought was worthy of correction. Nothing independent of this Freudian slip suggests that Bhutto believed that bin Laden was dead or that Sheikh has been implicated in the death of bin Laden.
RedBstrd
Riverside, CA
April 2004
DEC 31, 2007 03:47 AM