Much as I respect the analytical abilities of the CIA, surely I am not the only one who thinks the audio tape of ‘Osama bin Laden’ offering the hand of peace to Europe, provided Europe withdraws its troops from Muslim lands, is completely bogus.
Are we to believe that the head of that nasty global franchise called Al Qaeda cannot afford to purchase a cheap camcorder in a medina somewhere in Pakistan to reproduce the distressingly effective spectacle of Osama waving his finger at the USA and going “Nah nah, you can’t get me”? The notion he is hiding what he looks like after radical plastic surgery is, I suspect, the product of watching too many Hollywood movies.
Sorry, but I do not buy it. If I was a betting man, I would wager that Osama bin Laden died in Afghanistan years ago either when that group of people was attacked by US aircraft and ‘an unusually tall man was with them’ (can anyone point me at a link to that story?) or he was buried in a collapsed tunnel after one of a number of heavy US air attacks.
Only time will tell for sure but although Al Qaeda lives, I very much doubt Osama bin Laden does.
Both still dead
I agree wholeheartedly:
http://liverevolt.com/seldomsober/archive/000952.html
I don’t think it matters whether Osama lives anymore. He is obviously not the only one in charge of Al-Qaeda’s plans. The key would be to stop those who have been associated with bin Laden so that he is left isolated and powerless (assuming that he lives).
Re the “radical plastic surgery” you refer to, do you think he had himself made over as Mo Mowlam?
And now for one of my famous limmericks:
There once was a boy named Osama
who never respected his mamma.
He blew up the World Trade
and in now in a cave,
hiding away, like Saddam-a.
You can thank me later.
The way the CIA jumps up and says, “Sounds like Osama to us,” every time a new tape appears and without doing any sophisticated analysis makes me think he’s splattered on the side of a cave in Tora Bora like strawberry jam.
I’ll be glad to eat humble pie if this ‘Osama’ fellow ever shows his head. I wonder what he’s afraid of?
I am surprised that I am the first to make the following suggestion:
Perhaps his face has been horribly disfigured in the fighting – possibly he is blinded as well – and AQ believes that showing his injury would be harmful to their efforts. It is one thing to go to paradise and get all those juicy virgins, but another to be scortched into a crispy critter yet still be alive.
I heard he was spotted working at a Piggly Wiggly in San Antonio.
My limmerick attempt, pace Fausta:
There once was a man named bin Laden,
Whose shoes for years ain’t been trod in.
His flesh has been eaten.
And what remains of that cretin
Is now mulch some Afghans grow sod in.
Perhaps his face has been horribly disfigured in the fighting – possibly he is blinded as well – and AQ believes that showing his injury would be harmful to their efforts
Harmful how? You can have a hook for a hand like Abu Hamza or be a paraplegic like the late unlamented sheikh yassin and still be a hero to the Islamofascists.
I’m sorry but this fails the Occam’s razor test. There are way too many assumptions. A simple counterfactual ought to suffice. The propaganda value to Al-Qaeda of showing him alive no matter how injured or disfigured would be immeasurable. That they have not done this so far suggests they are not in a position to do this, i.e. because he sleeps with the dust mites.
Not to be too serious…
But I suspect Osama, if he’s alive somewhere in the wilds of Afghanistan or Pakistan, is picky about what sort of equipment he allows near him.
Recall that Al-Qaeda (or possibly the Taliban) used a fake camera to kill that nice Northern Alliance fellow Massood. It’s possible that those immediately around Osama, if he’s alive, will not allow any piece of equipment near the man that they can’t disassemble, scrutinize and verify as safe.
Maybe devices using anything heftier than two AAs are considered too risky.
Am I being silly or thinking like a paranoid?
–ME
Osama’s toast. Or more accurately, looks like something you would put on toast.
No Piggly-Wiggly in San Antonio, Verity—maybe Whole Foods. I can picture him working in the deli; he’d be the one avoiding the pork products.
Sgt Mom – I thought there were Piggly Wigglys in TX.
Maybe I meant a dog beauty parlour. Oh yeah, that was it. I heard he was working as a dog shampoo boy.
IIRC Piggly Wiggley was taken over by Handy Andy, and then HEB ran them and Albertsons out of town…
Dog shampoo boy…. eeewwwww!
I think, for reasons stated above, that Osama is dead. What I want to know is why the CIA so quickly says “yes this tape seems authentic.” Why is it in the US’s interest to have Osama be alive? Is it really true about what the conspiricy theorists believe, that GW is holding him for an October surprise? Is it that the CIA believes more people will rally to our cause if they think Osama is alive?
I can’t think of a good explanation.
On the other hand, I thought that Saddam would also be releasing inspirational videos to his followers and figured HE was dead for that reason too. So, hmmm…
I always figured that the reason the CIA (or USgov in general) hasn’t admitted that they think he’s dead is because they have no proof.
Of course, I’ve also thought, if they wanted proof they could claim he’s dead and he’d be sure to buy that vidcam if he could.
CBK
So why are the CIA and others not dismissing these tapes as bogus ? If he is still alive, this would be a challenge for the man to show himself or provide more clues of his existence. But if he did, it would then make the CIA and the US government look stupid, and result in yet another “intelligence failure” scandal.
So we don’t know. And it looks like the CIA doesn’t either.
I can think of one reason for the CIA to support the belief that bin Laden is still alive – it confuses all the right people. If he is dead, then for the US to continue to pretend it thinks he is alive plants false information in our enemy’s minds. It may lull them into believing we don’t have near as much info as they think we do. It may induce confusion into parts of a loose terror network that resembles a crime family more than anything else.
I think he is dead as a door knob for the reasons set forth above. I doubt a paranoid fear of video cameras keeps him under wraps – he is surrounded by men with guns, for crying out loud, and a small video camera can easily be confirmed to be nothing more than a small video camera, and operated by someone he trusts to carry a gun in his vicinity.
Nope. Dead, but no way to confirm it, so spin out the disinformation.
My instinct, based partly on the fact that Al Qaeda has still been showing tactical skill, is that he is still alive. I think that Osama ‘coming down from the mountains’ at the precise right moment (don’t ask me when) will be his ultimate propaganda weapon. I think that the CIA should do as Sylvain hinted, and call his bluff by publicly questioning his status. If the CIA knew he was dead, why all the fuss about hunting him down on the Pakistani border? Why all the lost Pakistani military lives? Most arab organisations are top down; if Osama was dead then the crucial spiritual inspiration for al Qaeda would dissipate. That’s why the Israelis killed Yassin- and that’s been working so far.
One of the chief proponents of the Osama is dead thesis is Mark Steyn- but on crucial areas of judgement (the end of insurgency in Iraq; the US election of 2000), despite my great and indestructible admiration of him, Steyn has been found to be wrong.
If we think of Saddam Hussein (on whose situation post-Iraq invasion, incidentally, Steyn was eerily accurate), there was a meme going around for years that Saddam was seriously ill. That was wishful thinking; so might this be. After all, some think he’s dead because of a bombing; others because he has a kidney problem. They can’t both be right on that, so it’s just wishful hearsay as far as I’m concerned.
A statement by the CIA declaring bin Laden dead would also be an admission that al Qaeda can function without him and still has an operational chain of command.
I have a $50 bet, where I maintain that Osama died before Oct 31, 2002.
The one reason I refuse to pay is that there hasn’t been a video of Osama mentioning anything about recent events.
I completely agree that he would get a video camera, if he were alive. How else could he better rally the troops?
http://www.kirigin.com
I am appaled.
How dare Perry disseminate such lies: the King LIVES!
Osama only turned up after Elvis”died”.Odd they were never seen together.
Ohmigod, Peter Bocking! You are right! And they have never both appeared in the same photograph!
Yes and his vocal group was the Jordonaires and his lead guitarist Scotty Moore.
I reckon it is very probable he has changed his appearance to avoid detection. I think it is also probable that he learnt a lesson from the Afghanistan tapes: they were used to locate his hideyhole area with the help of geologists who had prospected the region.
The only factor suggesting he may be dead is the sudden elevation of Zarqawi to a starring role by western intelligence.