I’ve been keenly following the many articles that have appeared across the web reporting details on the death of Osama Bin Laden, but I’m just not getting it. Now, I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but there are so many holes in the official story released so far, that I had to confirm my suspicions. So I turned to Debka.
Debka is a Jerusalem-based English and Hebrew language website that reports on military intelligence and security issues around the world, with a focus on the Middle East. Launched in 2000 by journalists Giora Shamis and Diane Shalem, Debka is unabashedly right wing and alarmist – any rumor regarding a threat against Israel or the West is reported in screaming headlines. Which makes it utterly compelling. Even if I don’t believe half of what I read, whenever a topic involving terrorism starts to trend, I open up Debka to get the inside scoop.
I turned to Debka this time because it seemed unfathomable that a three-story heavily fortified luxury villa could be built 100 meters from a Pakistani military academy in a small town that also houses a full military base, without the Pakistani authorities having any idea what was going on. It also makes no sense that the U.S. could operate for 11 hours at the Bin Laden mansion, much of it in full daylight, without the Pakistani military taking any action whatsoever. Didn’t a U.S. helicopter have to be blown up? Did Pakistan take no notice of a large explosion right under its collective nose? Either the Pakistanis are a sloppy amalgamation of amateurs (with nuclear weapons), or there’s more to the story (aiding and abetting the enemy springs to mind).
As I was pontificating on my speculations around the dinner table the other night, Debka was reporting these same questions…and more. The official U.S. report, for example, said that none of the computers in the house were connected to the Internet and there wasn’t even a phone inside. Debka claims that photos released show both a satellite dish on the roof as well as “cables and wires snaking along the outer and inner walls.”
Debka reported in 2007 a readership of 1.3 million and that 80% of its reports turn out to be true. Yediot Achronot reporter Ronen Bergman, on the other hand, said that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10% of the site’s content to be reliable.
Call me a conspiracist, but a lot of readers rely on Debka for their daily dose of inflammatory analysis, including me at times. I wonder what they have to say about the ongoing Obama “birther” controversy?