A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Today is September 11, 2019. It is the 18th Anniversary of al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on the United States of America in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, PA (the site where United 93 crashed when its passengers, aware of the other attacks by three hijacked airliners against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, fought back against the al Qaeda hijackers and forced the plane to crash before it reached its intended target, which was either the White House or the Capitol in Washington, DC.) Over 3,000 Americans, as well as the 19 hijackers, were killed in the worst terrorist incident in U.S. history. September 11 is a date that will, like 12/7/1941, live in infamy. The attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden and other radical adherents of Islam. They were carried out by young men who were radicalized into believing the tenets of a religion that some "imams" and "religious thinkers" have twisted into something that most Muslims do n...

Why do people think Osama bin Laden still lives? It depends on who is saying that Osama bin Laden is still alive. Basically, no one in Al-Qaeda even remotely clings to this fantasy. Days after bin Laden was killed and given a burial at sea courtesy of the U.S. Navy in May of 2011, the terrorist organization issued a communique that said their “Sheikh” was dead and that  Ayman al-Zawahiri,  bin Laden’s Egyptian second-in-command, was now in charge. In the Muslim world, there are some conspiracy theorists who claim bin Laden was not dead, but that he was hiding somewhere out of reach of the Americans. However, since bin Laden has not issued any proclamations via recordings or videos as he used to do before SEAL Team Six deep-sixed the man in Operation Neptune Spear, this just seems to be either idiocy or wishful thinking on the “bin Laden is alive” camp’s part. As for  Americans  who say bin Laden is not dead? Well, either they are misinformed conspiracy t...

Is Osama bin Laden really dead, and if so, what proof shows it? He hasn’t made any videos or recorded statements since May 2011. As the charismatic leader of a large terrorist organization which uses propaganda and psychological warfare, bin Laden’s silence (which has gone on for over seven and a half years and is not going to break any time soon) is a dead giveaway. Al-Qaeda, the group of radical Islamists Osama bin Laden led for more than 20 years, named a successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on June 16, 2011. The terrorists themselves said their “Sheikh” was dead. The CIA, the Special Operations Command, and the U.S. Navy SEALs, as well as then-President Barack Obama, confirmed Osama bin Laden was dead. 

(C) 2012 Columbia Pictures Zero Dark Thirty,  director Kathryn Bigelow’s controversial 2012 thriller, is a riveting account of the 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden and the May 1, 2011 raid that killed him. Because the outcome of SEAL Team Six’s mission is well-known,  Zero Dark Thirty  isn’t a typical spy tale where the ending is kept under wraps. Instead, it’s a tribute to the intelligence agents and military personnel who spent a decade tracking Al Qaeda’s elusive leader.     Zero Dark Thirty  is also a good example of what happens when a script begins to tell one story and, by twists of fate, ends up telling a different one. In the case of  Zero Dark Thirty,  screenwriter/producer Mark Boal was working on a script about bin Laden’s escape from U.S. and allied forces after the Battle of Tora Bora. Boal and Bigelow (who had collaborated on 2009’s  The Hurt Locker ) intended to make a movie about the CIA’s  failure  to...