US Navy SEALs: Two Helicopters

US Navy helicopter: Abbottabad, Pakistan

Discussing the May 2nd raid by US Navy SEALs on what was said to be Osama Bin Laden's hide-away in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Paul Craig Roberts writes:

In the immediate aftermath of bin Laden’s alleged murder by [U.S. Navy] SEALs, Pakistani TV interviewed the next door neighbor to bin Laden’s alleged compound. Someone supplied the video with an English translation running at the bottom of the video. According to the translation, the next door neighbor, Mr. Bashir, said that he watched the entire operation from the roof of his house. There were three helicopters. Only one landed. About a dozen men got out and entered the house. They shortly returned and boarded the helicopter. When the helicopter lifted off it exploded, killing all aboard. Mr. Bashir reports seeing bodies and pieces of bodies all over.

the US soldiers who undertook the alleged assassination of bin Laden were members of Navy Seal Team 6.

Today, it was reported that a helicopter crash in Afghanistan killed 31 Americans, including 22 members of Navy SEALs Team 6.

Was that just a grim coincidence? Or is one report somehow related to the other?

Another witness to the US raid on Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, Sadik Aale Mohammad, who lives about a mile from the massive Pakistan Army compound in Abbottabad reported that on the night of the US raid:

the power in town went out a couple of hours before the raid, which was unusual as was the way in which unidentified troops were hustling about prior to the raid. The power was restored 15 minutes after the raid. Around midnight, they first started hearing firing and blasts, grenades. When the helicopter crashed, there was a huge bang.

Who, one wonders, was doing all that shooting, since Osama bin Laden was said to be unarmed? Was the Pakistan Army aware of the raid on their territory? It's hard to believe they were not, since the raid took place within a mile of a major Pakistani military base. And the power outage and blackout would have provided cover for Pakistani forces. So did Pakistan forces take out one of the American helicopters? If so, they are not saying.

But in any case, the two reported incidents would have resulted in a large number of dead Navy SEALs.

Or have those who may have died in the helicopter crash following the heroic assassination of an unarmed, sick old man, only now been reported killed -- supposedly, during an anti-insurgency operation in Afghanistan? Helicopters go down all the time in Afghanistan. Four Chinooks, and several other types this year already. So it would have been simple enough to conceal losses in Pakistan -- just add the names to the list of those killed in the latest crash, and return some well charred bodies for burial. Without a DNA test, the deception would be undetectable.

Who knows, but had the US lost a dozen men in a helicopter crash while infringing Pakistan's sovereignty in a mission having only propaganda value, it would surely have limited the Obama Presidency to a single term, just as the botched Tehran hostages mission, which resulted in the loss of two aircraft and the deaths of eight American servicemen, ended Jimmy Carter's hopes of a second Presidential term.

Further analysis by Aangirfan here.