These people are insane.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It’s a well-known fact in Pakistan that Osama bin Laden died in 2006 and that the U.S. commando raid on his compound in May 2011 was merely a “drama” orchestrated by President Obama to help win reelection.

Of course, if that were true, Obama might have waited until after the first presidential debate of the campaign season to fake the al-Qaeda leader’s killing.

Some national newspapers and TV cable outlets routinely report that the United States is behind terrorist attacks and supports the war that the Pakistani Taliban is waging against Pakistan’s government and military. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad has to regularly churn out “Corrections for the Record” that take Pakistani media to task for carrying outrageous claims.

Now, the latest conspiracy theory to gain traction is the notion that the United States was behind the Taliban attack this month on Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani student who criticized the extremist group for denying girls access to education.

The purported purpose of the ruse: to make the Taliban look really bad and, thus, generate public sympathy for CIA drone strikes — and whip up support for a Pakistani army invasion of North Waziristan to rout Haqqani network militants based there.