382 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 27 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/20/13

Bin Laden's Obituary Notice

By       (Page 2 of 3 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   13 comments

Paul Craig Roberts
Message Paul Craig Roberts
Become a Fan
  (399 fans)

--Speculation about the whereabouts and health of Osama bin Laden picked up over the weekend when Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said he thought bin Laden had likely died of kidney failure.

CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta spoke Monday with CNN's Paula Zahn about bin Laden's appearance in recently released videotapes and the possibility that the accused terrorist leader was undergoing kidney treatment.

ZAHN: For a point of reference, I'd like for you to analyze pictures of Osama bin Laden that apparently were taken prior to September 11.

Describe to us the color and the tone of his skin, and then I want you to contrast that with pictures we know to have been taken much later.

GUPTA: You can look [at pictures from a December 2001 video] and notice that he has what some doctors refer to as sort of a frosting over of his features -- his sort of grayness of  beard, his paleness of skin, very gaunt sort of features. A lot of times people associate this with chronic illness. Doctors can certainly look at that and determine some clinical features.

But even more than that, it's sometimes possible to differentiate the specific type of disease or illness that he may be suffering from. The sort of frosting of the appearance is something that people a lot of times associate with chronic
kidney failure, renal failure, certainly someone who is requiring dialysis would have that.

He's also not moving his arms. I looked at this tape all the way through its entire length. He never moved his left arm at all. The reason that might be important is because people who have had a stroke -- and certainly people are at increased risk of stroke if they also have kidney failure -- he may have had a stroke and therefore is not moving his left side. And in the rest of the videotape, he does move his right side a little bit more than he does his left. So those are some of the things that are sort of "of note" here in this more recent videotape.

ZAHN: I think we need to remind the viewers once again that the president of Pakistan talked about [bin Laden] importing two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. Of course, no one other than the president of Pakistan right now is
confirming that [bin Laden] in fact needed dialysis.

GUPTA: That's right. And again, renal dialysis -- talking about hemodialysis -- is something that really is reserved for patients in end-stage renal failure. That means their kidneys have just completely shut down.

The most common cause of something like that would be something like diabetes and hypertension. Once that's happened, if you're separated from your dialysis machine -- and incidentally, dialysis machines require electricity,
they're going to require clean water, they're going to require a sterile setting -- infection is a huge risk with that. If you don't have all those things and a functioning dialysis machine, it's unlikely that you'd survive beyond several days or a week at the most.

ZAHN: If he had all these things you're talking about to keep the dialysis machine running, how much help does he need around him to administer the treatment?

GUPTA: You certainly need someone who really knows how to run that dialysis machine. You have to have someone who's actually assessing his blood, Osama bin Laden's blood, to see what particular dialysate he would need, and to be able to change his dialysate as needed. So you'd need a kidney specialist, a technician -- quite a few people around him.

Israeli intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, October 16, 2002

TEL AVIV - Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said.

Al Qaida terrorists have launched a new campaign of economic warfare and are targeting shipping in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Valuable 10   Supported 8   Must Read 7  
Rate It | View Ratings

Paul Craig Roberts Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His books, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter

Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Libya - The DC/NATO Agenda And The Next Great War

Pakistan TV Report Contradicts US Claim of Bin Laden's Death

A Story...The Last Whistleblower

The Road to Armageddon

American Job Loss Is Permanent

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend