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Pepe Says Report of Osama’s Death Rocks the Casbah; Vincent Bugliosi Tackles the “God Question”

Global Correspondent Pepe Escobar returns to talk about the multiple accounts of the US raid that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden on May 1; he adds a new account from Pakistan’s GEO TV, and we added Rachel Maddow’s recap of the story, which keeps changing.  Prosecutor turned best-selling author Vincent Bugliosi hammers theists and atheists in his new book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question. Escobar, the colorful journalist for Asia Times, discusses his article on the bin Laden assasination, set to The Clash song, Rock the Casbah. Escobar reveals that he loves The Clash, and is skeptical of the conflicting accounts from the White House, CIA, Pentagon and national security adviser John Brennan.  After the interview, Rachel Maddow did a great report on MSNBC about the shifting versions of the saga, and we inserted that as an update right before we get to Escobar’s interview.  He reports on the news accounts in other countries, especially Pakistan, where they get a very different angle, and we speculate that Saudi Arabia may have delivered Osama in exchange for Obama softening his support for Arab uprisings in Syria, Bahrain and um, Saudi Arabia.  If you want to get even more confused, watch this PBS Newshour interview of CIA Director Panetta by Jim Lehrer, who asks some tough questions, but does not get the full story (like how many people were involved in the “firefights” and how many of them died) and does not resolve all of the inconsistencies. At 50 minutes into the podcast, Vincent Bugliosi returns.  He gets a little cranky when asked about the legality of the assassination of bin Laden and my emphasis on torture as a Bush era war crime–because Bugliosi feels that his case for trying Bush for the murder of US servicemen sent to Iraq on Bush’s lies is more significant.  From there, we talk about his new book, which presents a strong and well-argued case for agnostics.  He is critical of people of faith and those who call themselves atheists–because both camps claim firm knowledge of things that Bugliosi argues are not knowable by humans.  He asks how an omniscient God can permit war and other human-caused events to occur, dismisses prayer as meaningless, and uses Bible quotes to disprove beliefs based on the Bible.  I’d especially like to hear feedback from listeners who are believers or atheists.