[Anti-Bubba182]

"The U.S. Department of Defense denied reports by Iran's official IRNA news agency Saturday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been captured..."

Too bad it wasn't for real!

[F14 Pilot]

Yep, I am gonna be SAD

[TLOne]

The same thing will be said by the Rat's minions when he is captured. It was timed for Bush's election. I don't think that will cause any harm unless we did have him for some extended length of time.

Go Hogs! Beat Taliban!

[NautiNurse]

Heavy sigh from dashed hope...

[wunderkind54]

Ahhhh....rumors!

The nectar upon which the insecure among us feed.

Gets the blood racing a wee bit though, doesn't it?

Let us hope one day this ceases to be a rumor.

[White Eagle]

(Per Reuters) Washington says Bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001 suicide hijack attacks in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

I must have missed the part where it stopped being generally accepted that OBL was responsible for 911. I suppose if he is captured Reuters will refer to him by some name like John Smith, rather than his Islamic name.

[Neets]

Btt.

[Batrachian]

"Washington says Bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001 suicide hijack attacks in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people."

According to Reuters, Osama Bin Laden is guilty of nothing, and Washington says he's behind the attacks. They probably find the Bush AWOL stories more convincing.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

BUMP

[Chi-townChief]

"He said the reason U.S. officials had denied the report was so that they could time the release of the news of bin Laden's capture to help boost President Bush's chances of re-election at presidential polls in November."

Madeleine Albright reporting.

[putupjob]

BIN LADEN WILL BE CAPTURED THIS YEAR.

The Pentagon is very conservative in their statements. There are times when stories are out and the Pentagon are the last to acknowledge it. I believe the Iran story is false.

HOWEVER, a Pentagon official (I believe it was a general) had stated categorically that Bin Laden would be captured this year. In other words they have him pinned down in a narrow area and there is no way out.

It's only a matter of time (months). The Pentagon would not issue a statement like that with nothing to back it up.

In over words, repeat after me: FOUR MORE YEARS.

[capydick]

Looks like Reuters has taken the lead and allowed itself to be the outfit that set up the accusation of the U.S. holding UBL until the elections in order to boost W's re-election chances.

Dateline: October 6th, 2004:

There have been reports of Bib-Laden's capture as far back as February 28,2004 and is now just being trotted out by Karl Rove to boost the President's lagging poll number's prior to the election. It's been said that the alleged master mind of the freedom fighters who went on the offensive in the United States on September 11th has been held at a secret air base in Hellholeistan since February.

Maddy Albright has been credited with predicting this course of action by the current administration and was insensitively criticised by the right wing in the media for such conspiracy theories. As we now know - she has been proved correct,as her instincts have served the United States well again.

Tom Daschle has called for an Independent Counsel to investigate these charges and to find them to be true prior to Election Day. Further - Sen. Daschle has suggested that former Senator Robert Torricelli, who was set up and rail roaded by the VRWC would make a fine Independent Counsel and has already demanded that President Bush name him before the end of the day.

[Dark Glasses and Corncob Pipe]

Iran! All your captures are belong to US!

[WhiteGuy]

The U.S. Department of Defense denied reports by Iran's official IRNA news agency Saturday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been captured.


Right, it's far too early in the election year for this type of news...................

[SubMareener]

Nobody in the Bush Administration would have thought of it on their own, but when the RATS accused them of keeping Saddam under wraps until a politically expedient moment, the Bush folks said, "What the heck! They will accuse us of it anyway!"

Give John F-fing Kerry a couple of more weeks of saying Bush is weak on defense because we haven't caught Bin Ladin, and "Viola! The Perp is Here!" ;-)

[garyhope]

I think OBL is still spending the weekend at Bernies.

Can you capture a dead man?

[tiamat]

The only reason I find this intriguing is because the other day, Mansoor Ijaz was on Fox INSISTING that Bin Laden was in Iran.

The anchors were of the opinion that Bin Laden was being "boxed in" somewhere on the Afghan-Pak border.

[Vision]

Washington says Bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001 suicide hijack attacks in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

No lame propaganda network, Laden took credit for 9/11 in a public video tape

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Thanks, Anti-Bubba182.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, also said he had no information to suggest bin Laden had been caught.

"Things are going well, and we believe we will eventually catch all the leaders of al-Qaida, but I know nothing of that report," he said.

Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed denied the reported capture, saying it was "baseless news."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other side, from Reuters ~ and AP:

Feb 28, 8:19 AM EST

U.S. Denies Report of Bin Laden's Capture

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Pentagon and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan "a long time ago."

The claim came at a time when Pakistan's army was hunting al-Qaida suspects in a remote tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, believed to be a possible hiding place for the al-Qaida leader. The report was carried by Iran radio's external Pashtun service, which is designed for listeners in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the language is widely spoken.

Iran state radio's main news channel - the Farsi-language service for Iranian listeners - did not carry the bin Laden report. Iran state television also did not carry the report.

The director of Iran radio's Pashtun service, Asheq Hossein, said he had two sources for the report. The radio quoted its reporter as saying bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but a U.S. announcement of the capture was being withheld by President Bush until closer to the November election.

"Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," he said.

There have been reports that military forces believed they had identified bin Laden's general location and had him encircled, but Pakistani officials have denied any specific knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts.

The state radio report, quoting an unnamed source, said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.

Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman who traveled with Rumsfeld this week to Afghanistan, denied the report. "I don't have any reason to think it's true," he said Saturday.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, also said he had no information to suggest bin Laden had been caught.

"Things are going well, and we believe we will eventually catch all the leaders of al-Qaida, but I know nothing of that report," he said.

Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed denied the reported capture, saying it was "baseless news."

"We have neither arrested Osama nor we have any information about him," Ahmed told The Associated Press.

Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan also told The Associated Press that the report was not true. "That information is wrong," he said.

A Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought in the border region, although bin laden was not a specific target.

Separately, Pakistani forces killed 11 people in an exchange of fire Saturday after a minibus failed to stop at a roadblock in a tribal region where the ongoing anti-terrorism operations have been taking place, an army spokesman told the AP. The shooting occurred a day after armed men and soldiers exchanged fire at a military compound in the region.

Speaking to the AP in Tehran, Hossein identified one of the sources for the bin Laden report as Shamim Shahed, editor of the English-language Pakistani newspaper The Nation in Peshawar. Hossein said Shahed told him Friday night that bin Laden was arrested "a long time ago."

But Shahed, who is The Nation's Peshawar bureau chief and not its editor, denied telling Iranian radio that bin Laden had been captured.

"I never said this," Shahed said in a telephone interview with the AP's Islamabad bureau. "But I have for the last year been saying that he is not far away. He is within their (the Americans') reach, and they can declare him arrested any time."

Hossein said he had a second source for his report that bin Laden had been captured, but he declined to identify him except to say he was "a man with close links to intelligence services and Afghan tribal leaders."

The Iranian news agency IRNA was first to report the capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. IRNA also carried the state radio report about bin Laden's capture and said it had contacted a radio announcer at the Pashtun service who confirmed the news.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BIN_LADEN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

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Today's FR thread w/ over 600 comments. Hmmmm?....

8 Osama caught - rumors abound... ~ 2/28/04 | Gigantor

What does Gigantor know and when did he know it?     (^:

[The Raven]

>>>He said the reason U.S. officials had denied the report was so that they could time the release of the news of bin Laden's capture to help boost President Bush's chances of re-election at presidential polls in November.



I smell a Democrat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Thane_Banquo]

Seems like their source is Madeline Albright.