stop for a second.

what are the historical parallels to a character such as osama bin laden? i've compared castro to mithridates eupator, but the pontic rebel is only one in a long line of roman hostis publicus - many of whom modern historians claim never actually existed, or were otherwise so dramatically exaggerated by the roman propaganda that they might as well have never actually existed.

sorting through propaganda, and validating or invalidating it, is a major part of a historian's job description. it is a substantial part of what a historian actually does.

so, i want you to contemplate a very real possibility - that future historians may actually argue that there never was anybody named osama bin laden. and, given the evidence they have before them, it may be the most reasonable deduction.

i will reiterate: this discussion is not currently in the realm of discourse, because the dearth of evidence is so staggering. i would like to be able to have a discussion and/or debate about who was responsible, but i need the government to release it's evidence before i can do that. all any of us can do is speculate, one way or another. the difference between my position and the mainstream position is simply that i am pointing out that the entire accepted narrative is purely speculative, and deductively equivalent to any conspiracy theory. but, then i'm taking a step back and saying "we can't do this. we don't have the basic facts.".

so, i will at least stand with the conspiracy theorists in requesting that the government finally release it's dossier, if for historical documentation rather than anything else. i mean, you don't think that historians 300 years from now are going to think that oswald acted alone, do you? there's enough time now, from that event, to understand that what we are told, and what so many of us continue to believe, is not what history will record.

but, i will lay something down fairly assertively: it is hard for me to understand how this happened without the aid of some kind of state actor, whether it was inside the country or outside of it.