There’s Always That 0.1%…
link News from The Associated Press.
This is what happens when we are consistently fed stories which are distorted, exaggerated or outright faked. The more people get used to hearing stories of unmasked lies, the less they believe anything at all. The big consequence of distortions fed to the public is rampant cynicism.
Even in this particular case, the details of what happened when the U.S. Navy Seals dispatched Osama to his 72 virgins are already muddy. It’s debatable whether there will ever be an accurate version of what went down. Discount the fact that it was a military operation, so of course some details will be blurred out. Even if presented with the same set of visual evidence, people will come to different convictions as to what transpired. It doesn’t help that there are already variant official versions. He was armed. Then he wasn’t. He was using women as a shield. Then they were in the next room. It’s not that these tidbits are germane to the result, but the question is, why have any variant versions at all?
Apparently, they will issue official photos of our hero, post meeting with the Seals, in the hopes of confirming his demise. Good enough for me. The Seals aren’t in the bs business. But with the sophistication of photo manipulation these days, who knows? It could just be a mildly doctored pic of Charlie Sheen after a bender. There will always be doubters and conspiracy theorists conjuring up possible scenarios. Is it just natural for people to be skeptical? Or is it conditioning from the constant stream of propaganda and skew that comes from politicians and the media? Maybe the former, but over the years, it has become more and more evident that opinions are framed by the media as much as by the facts themselves. Is it just to sell newspapers? Or are there darker agendas?
The greatest irony of our times is that despite the sheer amount of information that’s available and accessible to all, it’s maddeningly difficult to determine what is fact and what is flotsam. Who knows, in the next while, we could get a release of tape coming from someone who purports to be Bin Laden, claiming that the guy shot was actually a twin brother as if in some preposterous John Woo movie.
For now, I’ll believe the Seals.