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Prior to Dec 2001, Bin Laden couldn't keep his mug OFF video.

Not exactly.

What has changed between Dec 2001 and Jan 2004?

Obviously he has changed his appearance.

Bin Laden, and his entire AQ organization, is starting to seem ridiculous.

Yeah, no threat whatsoever. (/sarcasm)

There is zero evidence that he is dead. There is evidence aplenty, including intelligence from multiple countries, and these audio tapes that have been authenticated and refer to recent events, that point to his being alive.

Furthermore, our government has outright said he's alive, and spare me the "they're just saying that for strategic reasons" nonsense. There is zero evidence that that's how our guys handle these kind of things. Just the opposite.

"Obviously he has changed his appearance."

There is zero evidence that he has changed his appearance. Obviously? Saddam didn't change HIS appearance.

"Yeah, no threat whatsoever. (/sarcasm"

Didn't say they are no threat. I said lots of bluff and bluster and no results makes them seem ridiculous. And it does.

The point is, whether or not the audiotape is "authentic" or not is up to us, not them. If it served our purposes to say it is not authentic, we would do so. It's up to us, you see. Why would they leave that ball in our hands if they didn't have to? The fact is there is zero evidence that UBL is alive. All the "evidence" comes from our side, not theirs.

More to the point, if the US did think that he was dead we would have been told, our boys certainly weren't shy about saying when they thought they had Saddam Hussein on either the first night of the bombing or when we hit that restaurant in the al-Mansoor district of Baghdad. Chemical Ali was dead for awhile too, IIRC.

Another thing to keep in mind is that providing concrete proof of his continued existence via videotape would, as others have said, give away any changes he's made to his face over the last two years. It might well also compromise his security if he is indeed in Iran as two separate accounts have claimed over the several weeks - if we learn something from one of those tapes that positively IDs him as being there, he's lost another safe haven and the ayatollahs have probably lost a country.

Ultimately, every argument as to why bin Laden hasn't shown us a videotape yet can also be applied to Saddam Hussein. But unless that's a body double or an android that the 4th ID pulled out of that spider hole, it sure looks to me like he's alive.