Victory  at what cost? [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

The arrogant fashion in which questions about details of the killing of Osama bin Laden are being swept aside by the U.S. Government and many journalists is disturbing. Assertion replaces evidence, no material is presented to back up the assertion, and if you still ask questions, you are a labelled a conspiracy theorist.

Actually it is true that there is no need for the U.S to release video or photographic evidence, recover the body, or prove they killed bin Laden. All the evidence is still in-situ at the scene of the assassination. The compound is covered in the blood and brains of bin Laden, and his fingerprints must be all over the building. Therefore any team of forensic scientists could gather the evidence and use it to make detailed tests on DNA and fingerprints. This would leave no room for doubt. It is quite astounding that conducting such a simple investigation, at the scene of the compound in Abbottabad, has apparently not crossed the mind of anyone in the White House. For a nation suckled on forensic crime shows this is an astounding oversight!

Perhaps there is a pattern to the concealment of facts and interests that is so ingrained in the behaviour of U.S. leaders that they are captives of their own arrogance?

A correspondence of interests between Washington and Islamic terrorism blossomed in the 1980s when the war against the Afghan communists saw Osama bin Laden hailed as a "freedom fighter". A brutal and bloody trail of such unsavoury friendships and alliances is presently unravelling all over North Africa and the Middle East.

The characteristic behaviour of the United States can be assessed by its actions on the ground in many locations. A cursory examination of a few examples should suffice to illustrate patterns evident over recent decades; the war on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on Libya, the bombings of Sudan and Yugoslavia, the occupations of Haiti, Panama and Grenada. Each separate event was explained plausibly, requiring no serious justification to the U.S. public beyond the assertion of "national interests" and the defence of "human rights".