Some intelligence agencies are starting to think that maybe bin Laden hasn't been alive for a long time:
Questions about Bin Laden are being raised by intelligence officials who say that without a specific time mark with a photo of Bin Laden, his presence cannot be confirmed and the most recent statements could have been put together from older audio.
Yes, and that has been true since Tora Bora. Haven't these people ever wondered, or speculated why bin Laden, who was second only to Senator Schumer when it came to being a camera hog, all of a sudden switched from video to audio about six years ago? Even if he said things that seemed to indicate knowledge of recent events, that could have been done by splicing and manipulating an audio tape, or finding someone to imitate his voice. Maybe they've been using voice prints, but I don't know how reliable they really are. I do know that it's a lot harder to fake a video, and when I consider the fact that we've heard only audios, and not seen a new video (at least one that can be shown to be from a post-2002 period) I have long thought that he's been pushing up poppies since then.
Of course, the other reason that I've long thought that he's dead is that our so-called intelligence agencies--the same ones that subverted our pressure on Iran last fall with their "intelligence" estimate that they're not building a bomb--have continued to tell me that he's alive. To me, the question is not whether or not he's alive, but why so many in the so-called intelligence community have been so determined to continue to attempt to convince us that he is for the past six years.
The only thought I can have for his continued existance is it keeps him from being a martyr. Of course if he really is dead, why doesn't the other side make him a martyr? Maybe martyrs don't work so well with Islamofacism.
Love your blog, keep up the good work.
If you say he's dead and he shows up alive you look like a fool. If you say he's alive and he shows up dead he very well might have been recently killed so you have deniability. It's all about covering your butt.
If you say he's dead and he shows up alive you look like a fool.
I don't expect them to state it categorically. I would think that they would say, "We think that, based on the evidence, he's at room temperature. We can't be certain, but that would be the way to bet."
They certainly seem eager to make fools of themselves saying that he's alive. How will they look if evidence comes to light that he died six years ago, after all these declarations otherwise?
Besides the video-to-audio switch, haven't they ever wondered why, in an age of high-fidelity digital recorders, all of those audio tapes sound like they were done on a 1970s cassette recorder?
Still, I think rjschwarz has the most likely answer: Western intel agencies continue to say he's alive because the enemy continues to indicate he's alive, and there's no firm evidence to the contrary. We, however, are not intel agents with reputations and jobs to protect, so we can look at the evidence a little more objectively. Looked at objectively, there's no reliable evidence that bin Laden survived the Tora Bora battle in December 2001.
One theory for why no video that I saw some time back is that Bin Laden is alive, but disfigured or crippled. It may be that the enemy has decided that all audio is better than showing the world how badly he is damaged.
Dont get me wrong, I believe that he has been dead a long time. I think that you might be able to date his death to the time when his "number 2" man came out and unaccountably read elegiac poetry. What was that about? BUT. He did use a video camera to assasinate the leader of the Norther Alliance the morning before 9-11. Maybe he is just careful. That aside, it has been noted by native Arab speakers that in his last tape, the image stopped moving when "he" spoke of recent events, and only moved when he issued his evergreen bromides. Of course this was attributed to the vagaries of mpeg encoding and repetitive file copies, I am not buying it.
Maybe you bought a "Big Cup Of Duuuhhhh" from a disguised bin Laden at Denny's this morning? Ever think of that? No, I didn't think so.
Langley, Va.
Of course you youngin's don't recall that for a couple decades the running line was that Adolph was alive and living in Argentina. All we had in the West was a black and white picture of someone/something at the bottom of a pit with some jerry cans scattered about that we were told were his and Eva's last repose. It wasn't till the collapse of the first Soviet Union, that evidence of the remains and the disposition came to light. The KGB fearing that his resting place could in the future become a rallying point for another generation, completed the cremation of the body and scattered the remains.
So, why would intel services keep this going? The fine art of spoofing. The gullible lemmings will still respond to calls and directions. If you keep the cattle organized you can move the most all of the herd to the rail heads and slaughterhouse. Big Brother doing a Winston Smith on them. However, that concept is too efficient for our intel services to be able to handle it.
Seems like you could flush him out with psy-ops. Insist he's dead, that the media-OBL is an imposter, force him to raise his profile.
Of course, CIA & State are too busy undermining policy they disagree with to launch such an op.
The intelligence agencies are not just protecting their jobs. If you remember the war between Batista vs. Castro, Castro managed to turn nineteen soldiers and Batista's stubborn insistence that Castro was dead, into the charnel house Cuba is today. I don't think we want bin Laden to do the same to Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan.
Two thoughts.
First, didn't he have a video released in 2004, just before the election?
Second, to the people who say "if he dies, he might become a martyr..." yeah, i could see that happening. i could also see his death showing that america can get anyone and bringing down on the arabs the certainty of doom, while his continued life would be a sign that Allah favors him.
That's not to say either argument is right. That's just it--both views are based on subjective assessments, and either side could be right. So when that kind of subjective argument doesn't work, try the objective argument: if he is dead, HE won't be involved in any more terrorism. When the subjective arguments are a wash, but the objective arguments weigh on one side, i say go with the objective argument.
What do YOU know? You're just a blogger with an agenda. Our esteemed intelligence analysts, on the other hand, are objective, smart and. . .oh wait. . .
You're smarter than the lot of 'em.
Rand Simberg wrote:
They certainly seem eager to make fools of themselves saying that he's alive. How will they look if evidence comes to light that he died six years ago, after all these declarations otherwise?
After saying in 2005 that Iran was pursuing the bomb, they certainly seemed comfortable in 2007 saying the program ended in 2003.
Bin Laden is probably alive and driving a cab in New York.
I've been assuming for a while that the intelligence community knows (or is, like, 99% sure) OBL is dead, but has some strategic reason for wanting to make people think he's still alive. (Or to make others think that *we* think he's still alive?)
I can't quite figure out what the angle would be there, though, but I also can't figure out what's up with there always being an unidentified CIA source to *instantly* say they're sure the voice is OBL, even when the tape is rather transparently bogus. There must be some psy ops angle we're playing here.
I could also see us just being ultra-cautious (i.e., 99% sure he's dead, but if we say that and OBL shows up dancing a jig with Michael Moore, we look like fools.) But if THAT is the case, why the rush to leak out "Yes, we're sure it's OBL on the tape" comments to the press?
It's Bush's fault. They can't say OBL's dead and not credit Bush for getting him killed. "They", I mean the so-called intelligence agencies. Without OBL being dead, the leftists can still blame Bush's wrong headed policies for all the ills in the world.
The Soviet Union disintegrated after Reagan left office. Bush, however, can claim quite a few victories before he left office. E.g. his stand against killing embryos for stem cells, his scuttle of Koyoto (won't the MSM and the Dems be ridicuing him now during our deep freeze?), his success in Iraq. They can't let him claim credits for killing OBL too, can they?
How will they look if evidence comes to light that he died six years ago, after all these declarations otherwise?
After their failure to predict the collapse of communism, I wonder how the intelligence agencies have any credibility on anything.
After their failure to predict the collapse of communism, I wonder how the intelligence agencies have any credibility on anything.
I remember a cartoon back in 1979, during the collapse of the Shah's regime, of two CIA guys in trenchcoats. One of them whispers to the other, "Pssssttt...I think that the Shah's in trouble." The other one says, "Quick! Call President Truman!"
"Without OBL being dead, the leftists can still blame Bush's wrong headed policies for all the ills in the world."
Yeah, I could see CIA or State going with the "OBL is alive, no, really" line as part of a general effort to win the War on Bush at all costs. But the problem I have with that theory is, why would the Pentagon go along with it? It seems like at least the majority of the Defense Department wants to win the war, and they wouldn't be wholly reliant on CIA/State sources for anything.
>Bin Laden is probably alive and driving a cab in New York.
chsw10605 -- about a year ago, I was in a cab and the driver was (according to the hack license) Yassir Arafat.
al Qaeda announces the "martyrdom" of even the most insignificant fleaspeck working for the organization. I doubt they wouldn't trumpet his death all over the Internet to aid in their recruiting drives.
He's the terrorist version of Howard Hughs. Too weak and feeble to run the day-to-day operations of the movement and surrounded by fanatically loyal followers who won't let him be "retired" so a younger, more vigorous leader can take charge. When he finally kicks off it will be obvious because his lieutenants will start jockeying to take over.
Well, call me pollyanna, but the "intelligence community's assertions that OBL is alive" all come filtered through the media, which even on topics where they are not biased is basically incompetent on getting any story straight.
Pay attention to what statements are the actual direct quotes, which are probably taken out of context even when they aren't just mangled by journalists who miss some of the bigger words, as opposed to the "paraphrases" which are even more removed from the actual statements. And which ones are journalists interviewing other journalists, either because they are lazy, or because dumb people like talking to other dumb people, because talking to smart people makes them feel stupid.
When you try to read between the lines, it appears that the intelligence community is saying something like: We can't say for sure he's dead without a body. We can't say for sure he's alive without some evidence. Our focus is on the terrorists actively trying to kill us -- ALL of them, not just the ones with great PR machines.
The obsession with OBL personally is a characteristic of the magical-thinking crowd. You know, the ones who believe that everything that happens in the world is under the control of the US government, and if anything happened that they are unhappy with, it was the fault of the US government. In this magical world, Islamofascism is not a robust sophisticated theological system which our enemies actually believe, rather OBL is some magical wizard who was given magical powers by the CIA back in the 80's, and he holds these terrorists under his evil magical spell. If we can just kill OBL, then the terrorists will instantly be freed from their magical enslavement and the world can go back to the fat, happy, "end of history" where we can safely ignore the silly thought that there are people out there who want to destroy our culture and civilization and replace it with what they believe God wants.
I happen to believe that OBL is dead, or has dementia secondary to kidney failure, or somesuch, and has been operationally not part of al Qaeda or global Islamofascism, approximately since Tora Bora. In that time, the Islamofascists have killed thousands of people, and achieved several important strategic victories. All things considered, my advice is to stop mooning over OBL and worry about the people who are still alive who are trying to attack us.
One of the most unintentionally comical things I've ever seen is when our intelligence agencies "confirm" that that the voice on one of those Bin Laden tapes is authentic. You can just picture a bunch of guys sitting around saying, "well it sort of sounds like him."
Top Ten reasons we haven't read Osama's obit: Here's how it would go down--
President Bush: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
The Press:
(1) You're lying.
(2) It's true and it just happened, but the fact that it took this long only proves how incompetent you are and how overstretched the military is.
(3) It's true, but it happened a long time ago and you're only announcing it now to boost your poll numbers.
(4) It happened a long time ago, but you wanted to prolong the oil money grab and Halliburton contracts, and no one would have supported the war this long if they'd known he was dead.
(5) Musharraf killed him because the Bush military couldn't manage it.
(6) He died of kidney failure in an American hospital because of he was one of the 47 million uninsured.
(7) He killed himself out of shame when he heard about the Islamophobic panties at Abu Ghraib and the Koran in the Gitmo toilet.
(8) He killed himself out of disappointment when he heard that Iran gave up nukes.
(9) He drowned in New Orleans toxic soup during Katrina.
(10) We know it's true but Bush thinks it isn't, so he thinks he's lying to throw us off, but he's really telling the truth without knowing it because he always lies and even when he tells the truth he's lying, and that's the truth.
It doesn't matter if it happened or didn't, and it won't matter when it finally happens if it hasn't already -- Bush can't win no matter what he says or when he says it. I think the guy's "bin laid-en to rest" as Mark Steyn said it, a long time ago. But the announcement would be used to bury Bush no matter when it came -- and once you've sat on the news, there becomes less and less opportunity for a sensible time to announce it.
The best way to deal with this situation is not to announce his death. Produce a fake tape recorded message asking the terror movement to surrender or attack Iran.
Al-Qaeda has to:
1) Produce him on video
2) Continue with tapes and have confusion
3) Admit he's dead
4) Have a number 2 guy come out and comment which is the right tape, which exposes him...or floats the question why Bin isn't doing it
While "winefred" is clearly psychotic, I think he's right in one point that the reason this hasn't been announced in entirely political. Here's the most likely scenario:
Bush: Bin Laden? Probably dead. Heh heh heh heh.
Public: Really? Cool. Let's stop wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign dirt holes. And while we're at it, stop those sweetheart no-bid contracts for Republican war profiteers.
Obama/Clinton (simultaneously): We'll do that for you.
McCain/Bush: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Face facts, the GOP needs to trump up every threat it sees, because that's the only thing the public still trusts them on (largely because they confuse "24" with reality).
While "winefred" is clearly psychotic...
[snip]
...Face facts, the GOP needs to trump up every threat it sees, because that's the only thing the public still trusts them on (largely because they confuse "24" with reality).
I think that someone lacks a sense of irony...
You forgot the video in 2004... And other audio tapes since then that intelligence agencies are pretty sure is him.
My preferred theory about Bin Laden's post-2001 tapes is that one of his sons provides the audio; there is evidence of one or more of his children active in the field with (without?) him or spotted in Iran. I've had my voice confused with my Dad's several times growing up, for example when I answered the phone.
The CIA et al aren't competent enough to know the difference between close sound-alikes on poorly produced audio/video(s), especially if they don't really want to know in the first place.
I agree with the post's premise. He's dead, Jim.
Mrs. Bhutto, before she was assassinated, indicated in an interview that bin Laden was dead and that the people who killed him were making threats on her life.
No, Osama-lama-ding-dong's not dead, he rang up my Zionistic coffee and infidel donuts this morning at the 7-11.
He looked downtrodden and defeated so I told him to keep the change and he seemed to perk up a little, he smiled when he called me an 'evil, unholy Western pig'. I guess waging a "holy" war can take a lot out of ya.
If AQ's leaders - whose power derives from their appointment by OBL - were to admit he's dead, they would lose credibility and might be replaced.
If the US were to admit they killed him, they'd create a martyr.
Stalemate.
No Autopsy, No Confirmed Kill...
My preferred theory about Bin Laden's post-2001 tapes is that one of his sons provides the audio; there is evidence of one or more of his children active in the field with (without?) him or spotted in Iran. I've had my voice confused with my Dad's several times growing up, for example when I answered the phone.
The CIA et al aren't competent enough to know the difference between close sound-alikes on poorly produced audio/video(s), especially if they don't really want to know in the first place.
I agree with the post's premise. He's dead, Jim.
yeah!
what cathyf said...
Republicans confuse 24 with reality?
Wow, if the source of my beliefs was 24, then I'd live in deadly fear of scandinavians smuggling nuclear weapons into the country, mexicans with access to super-deadly bio-weapons, and a world in which you can always spot who's about to stage a coup against the White House and take over the Presidency through wilfully killing off thousands of Americans by determining who is most white, Christian, male and, if you want to find his accomplices, balding.
You know, that last part almost sounds like a De... nah, couldn't be.
But don't worry, I'll let you make it even. I'll say that Democrats have confused reality with the X-Files, you can say "Nonsense, we don't believe in aliens (except for Kucinich and Carter"), I'll agree and you can go on thinking that what distinguishes the X-Files is aliens and not the completely psychotic conspiracy mongering that Democrats have filled the atmosphere with for the last decade.
Qwinn
Bhutto said that Bin Laden was dead, and was very matter-of-fact about it, before she died. She said he had been killed, and even named the person who killed him. The video of her saying it is on youtube.
Orion wrote:
al Qaeda announces the "martyrdom" of even the most insignificant fleaspeck working for the organization. I doubt they wouldn't trumpet his death all over the Internet to aid in their recruiting drives.
But that's what fleaspecks are for. If they make OBL a martyr, people might begin to expect that of the other leaders, too. Can't have that, now, can we?
Remember back last summer, the MSM was agog at the latest still shots of OBL and wondered with amazement at his beautiful black beard.
"Wasn't it fully gray last time we saw him?
Wonder why he would dye it black?"
And Chris Matthews, without a bit of irony says, "Looks good though!"
Perhaps the savages decided not to use his death as a recruiting tool because "If the Americans can get to the big shot, they can certainly smear the cannon-fodder over the landscape."
There are very real political fears of openly declaring OBL dead.
1) If they aren't completely sure, the offending administration would have a lot of explaining to do if the geek showed up one fine day.
2) The dems are just itching for a reason to declare the WOT over and done with, a dead OBL would have them dancing in the streets and demanding the immediate reduction of our military forces and intelligence agencies, ala the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR.
I'm with bubarooni: what cathyf said. And (10) from Winefred with bonus points to Qwinn for the twist at the end (so many great posts!).
I'll believe that POS is dead when I see his head on a stick.