Bin Laden tape a fake, Swiss lab says

They just had Mansoor Ijaz on Fox news about the speculations about the tape and he basically said that he's convinced that it's legitimate according to his sources and that the Swiss institute was basically just wrong. He also made a number of interesting comments stating that Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Jakarta last September and recently arrived in Bangladesh, as well as that al-Qaeda may try an attack on the poorly protected Indian nuclear power plants.

Regarding Rumsfeld, his statement that he's open-minded about the legitimacy of the tape puts him ahead of most of FR in terms of triumphalism, IMO. Note that he says "alive and healthy," which strikes me as a reference to the reports that Osama was clipped by a bomb on his way out of Tora Bora and that he was seriously injured, hence the reason for his prolonged absence from the center stage.

The statement that the US was 90% certain that the bin Laden tape was the real McCoy was made by White House spokesman Scott McClellan (who took over for Ari while he was off on his honeymoon). As I said, I see no reason to believe that Bush would have McClellan lie to the American people in this regard.

Attacking the Person
(argumentum ad hominem)

Definition:

The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the argument itself. This takes many forms. For example, the person's character, nationality or religion may be attacked. Alternatively, it may be pointed out that a person stands to gain from a favourable outcome. Or, finally, a person may be attacked by association, or by the company he keeps.

There are three major forms of Attacking the Person:

ad hominem (abusive): instead of attacking an assertion, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion.

ad hominem (circumstantial): instead of attacking an assertion the author points to the relationship between the person making the assertion and the person's circumstances.

ad hominem (tu quoque): this form of attack on the person notes that a person does not practise what he preaches.

Examples:

You may argue that God doesn't exist, but you are just following a fad. (ad hominem abusive)
We should discount what Premier Klein says about taxation because he won't be hurt by the increase. (ad hominem circumstantial)

We should disregard Share B.C.'s argument because they are being funded by the logging industry. (ad hominem circumstantial)

You say I shouldn't drink, but you haven't been sober for more than a year. (ad hominem tu quoque)

Proof: Identify the attack and show that the character or circumstances of the person has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the proposition being defended.

Are you in high school or something?

No, but I could just as soon ask you the same question.

I'm not the one relying on cheap shots and ad hominem arguments to make my point.

"Ad hominem:" that's a good word, isn't it? I can tell you absolutely love that word -- perhaps you just learned it. You keep using it mindlessly, like a high school debater: "The poverty of my interlocutor's argument is evidenced by his resort to ad hominem." Yeah, baby! High-brow, intellectual stuff!

I'm guessing you're about sixteen years old. Am I close?

If you prefer, I can use cheap shot, personal attack, ect.

Or I can use smaller words, if they're easier for you to spell.

Not even close on my age, BTW.

Not even close on my age, BTW.

Maybe not in biological years, but some people remain frozen at the high school level mentally their whole lives. Like people who use the word "ad hominem" a lot. I always feel sorry for people like that.

Moving away from these petty personal attacks. Why exactly is it you so certain Bin Laden is dead? Because French TV says so? Is that your final answer?

BTW: Please refrain from attacking me personally and stick to the facts in support of your argument.

I eat hominum grits for breakfast. I guess you could say I ad hominum to my breakfast. Is that what you are talking about? "Hominum" must be singular for "hominae", 'cuz somtimes I will a single hominum all by itself, but mostly I eat hominae in a big warm pile next to the potatoes.

Why exactly is it you so certain Bin Laden is dead?

Because he has an MO, because he is a total camera hog -- that is his raison d'être, he is nothing without that camera -- because he hasn't been seen in over a year, because he looked like a man on death's door in his last appearance, because his last known location was saturation-bombed with fuel-air explosives, because if he was communicating with his followers I think we would have heard about it by now, because his supporters are reduced to purveying "freshened up" greatest hits videos and faked audio tape (I've checked out the Swiss Institute -- they are the real deal) to substitute for the real Osama, because the excuses trotted out to explain his non-appearance, such as that he has had plastic surgery to melt into the crowd or is horribly disfigured like Mel Gibson in "The Man With No Face" are so obviously the mental gymnastics of people who are unable to integrate evidence with even a modicum of common sense, because the administration did not increase the threat level even though we are supposed to believe that Osama's messages will command his followers to attack, and because, in spite of the obvious bias towards over-caution and understatement inherent in the exigencies of the situation, the only cabinet official who has publicly opined on Osama's health status, Def. Sec. Rumsfeld, is very heavily hinting that he thinks bin Laden is dead. In other words, because Osama bin Laden's death at Tora Bora is highly consistent with the known facts, and his survival is highly inconsistent with the known facts. Is it concievable that Osama is still alive, hiding out somewhere with a new face? It's conceivable. It's also conceivable that Adolf Hitler survived World War II and had himself cloned by Josef Mengele while living on a dude ranch in Argentina. That doesn't mean that I should take either proposition seriously, however.

This might be of interest to you, as it's a more thorough description of the article. My own thoughts on this are in italics.

Swiss institute concludes latest bin Laden tape is not authentic 1 hour, 31 minutes ago

By ERICA BULMAN, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA - Tests performed on the latest audiotape statement attributed to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) showed the speaker was an impostor, though insufficient data rendered the test inconclusive, a Swiss research institute said Friday.

First of all, if the test was inconclusive (which the article seems to indicate), the headline was deceptive. Not that it'll matter to the triumphalists.

Herve Bourlard, director of Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, said he tended to agree with the outcome that the tape does not feature the voice of the long-absent terrorist leader, but that the margin of error was too great to be absolutely certain.

Here again, we're getting one guy's opinion and then the test results, followed by a caveat that there's too great a margin of error to be certain. Once again, this is not conclusive proof.

"I'd have to say the test was inconclusive but I would lean toward it being an impostor," Bourlard, a voice recognition expert, said. "If I had a gun to my head and was forced to lean one way or the other, I'd say it wasn't bin Laden. But we can't be sure. We didn't have enough data."

Too bad a lot of people in this thread don't want to concede that last point.

The review of the tape was commissioned by France-2 television, which provided the Martigny, Switzerland-based institute with two hours of videotape recordings of bin Laden, his accomplices and other Arab speakers.

The CIA (news - web sites) and National Security Agency, which conducted their own technical and linguistic analysis earlier this month, concluded the Nov. 12 recording — first aired two weeks ago on the Arab satellite television state Al-Jazeera — is what it seems: bin Laden himself, reading a statement that promises new terrorism against the United States.

And the actual facts of the article as well as the limitations of the Swiss test would seem to support this conclusion.

In Washington, a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Friday that American intelligence agencies have not changed their assessment that the recent bin Laden message is a genuine, unedited recording of the al-Qaida leader.

That's okay, according to elements of FR they probably forged the tape to begin with.

The Swiss institute first created a computerized model of bin Laden's voice based on video recordings. To verify the model's reliability, scientists then tested that model with other recordings which were from bin Laden and others which were not.

The computer made one error in 20 tests conducted, Bourlard said, mistaking bin Laden's voice as a fake.

"That's a lot," said Bourlard. "We worry because there were so few samples to create the model with and only 20 samples to test with. One mistake in 20 is not very reliable."

So we're looking at a test where the chief researcher admits that it may not be reliable, but that doesn't stop people here from taking it as gospel.

On the final test conducted with the Nov. 12 recording aired on Al-Jazeera, the computer determined the voice was not bin Laden's. He said the recording was of very poor quality.

"The CIA may be sure but no scientist in the world will tell you that you can be 100 percent sure in this area. It's not possible," Bourlard said. "Politicians will always tell you they're certain, scientists will always say there is doubt.

And, contrary to various FR claims otherwise, I think that Bush would be more than happy to tell us that bin Laden was dead, especially since keeping him alive would no longer be necessary to support the War on Terror with the Republicans in the majority in the Senate.

"We are using state-of-the-art technology and methods. There are only about 10 of us (labs) in the world capable of doing these kinds of tests reliably and we're all using the same methods. I can't see how they can be so certain."

I highly suspect that the CIA and NSA have facilities that match those of a private institute. And he tells us a little further down how they'd be so certain.

Bourlard said to increase reliability, more samples would be needed both to create the model as well as test it.

"There are rumors that bin Laden used to work for the CIA so maybe they have a lot more voice samples," Bourlard said. "If the CIA had 2,000 samples, then it might be more reliable."

Rumors aside, the CIA and NSA have literally gigabytes worth of intercepted satellite phone conversations between bin Laden and his cronies between 1994 and 1998. Most of the texts of these calls are still classified, but if you examine the court documents for the trials of the 1998 Embassy bombers and the Millennium Plot you'll see just how much of this stuff exists. Here again we can see that the researcher is hardly claiming infallibility (which doesn't keep some Freepers from attributing it to him) on his test results, which he admits are at best inconclusive.

In the tape, the speaker refers to recent terrorist strikes U.S. officials believe are connected to bin Laden's al-Qaida network. If fully verified, it would provide the first evidence in a year that bin Laden survived U.S. bombing in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

Which there is more than enough evidence to believe that it is.

"...We didn't have enough data."

Too bad a lot of people in this thread don't want to concede that last point.

Here is plenty of data supporting Bin Laden's death...

Footage showing December 11, 2001, F-14 airstrike in a wooded area in the Tora Bora cave complex area. Visible through the thermal imaging of the video are people.

The four videos shown here are of airstrikes in the Tora Bora area conducted over the previous weekend. The strikes were on caves and bunkers and were conducted by Navy F-14s and F/A-18s.

Footage showing F-14 airstrike on a cave complex in the Tora Bora area.

Footage showing Navy F/A-18 airstrike during which two JDAMs were used. According to DoD, it was later discovered that during this particular attack, several al Qaeda forces were killed, and the cave heavily damaged.

Evidence of his burial...

Here is a look inside the Tora Bora caves. you can see it stuffed full of ammunition. Large secondary explosions were noted after some of the air strikes. No one in a cave like this would survive.

I didn't make those images of the Zhawar Kili cave complex clickable.

Here they are in large format.
Pre-strike image.
Post-strike image.

Thanks go to Global Security for the images and video.

Ya know, we never did find hitler's body.

Not surprisingly, since we were not the ones to take Berlin and occupy the grounds of the former Reichskanzlei

The Russians did.

-archy-/-

Thanks for your contributions to competent and informed debate. I certainly would like to see fewer ad hominem attacks on FR.

The CIA will have to try harder if they want to fool the Swiss...

The attack on Tora Bora began on November 27 (when Tora Bora was first bombed by US forces). The last confirmed sighting of bin Laden was also on November 27, when he and his entourage were seen on horseback.

The ground phase of the operation began on December 3, when Northern Alliance commanders Hazrat Ali and Mohammed Zaman began their attack.

The actual ground fighting lasted from December 3 to December 17 (roughly two weeks), despite Tora Bora being under some of the heaviest aerial bombard of any target in Afghanistan. This indicates that despite the heavy bombardment, al-Qaeda fighters were able to hold out for well over two weeks.

The initial intelligence estimates were than there were between 1,000 to 2,000 al-Qaeda holed up inside Tora Bora and I see no reason to dispute this figure. The remains of roughly 500 have been discovered and the US took around 60 prisoners. However, even using the lowest number of possible al-Qaeda fighters, this means that ~440 escaped into Pakistan. Of the 60 captives taken, several were members of bin Laden's personal bodyguard, though the commander of his bodyguard, Amin al-Haq, was not accounted for. Amin al-Haq's continued survival is one of several reasons why I question whether or not bin Laden was killed in the attack

Bin Laden's voice was reported as being heard over the shortwave radio at Tora Bora "within the last week" on December 15. Assuming that this was him (and this is one of the few sticking points needed for proving that he was even at Tora Bora to begin with), it would mean that he survived most of the bombing, including that which your satellite photos show as taking place on December 11.

Here's where things get complicated.

Between December 12 and 13, Hazrat Ali agreed to a truce with al-Qaeda in order to discuss surrender talks. The US finally said "no deal," after it was proven that they were just stalling for time and resumed the assault, but the fact remains that between December 12 and December 13, anybody who wanted to flee Tora Bora was more than able to do so if they wanted to escape into Pakistan. The Pakistanis failed to take even the most rudimentary border security precautions until December 17, and shortly afterwards most of the Afghan border troops were shifted to Azad Kashmir following the attack on the Indian parliament. What this means is that al-Qaeda had a clear way into Pakistan on any day in December up until the 17th, and even then all they had to do was wait a couple of days for the troops to be shifted around.

Even if you believe that bin Laden died at Tora Bora, I would contend that this is where such notables as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Amin al-Haq, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed likely made good on their escape. Other members of the group's leadership like Saif al-Adel and Abd Rahim al-Nashiri had already escaped to Iran by this point.

There have been various reports stating that bin Laden was clipped by bomb shrapnel while making his escape and I would hold that this makes perfect sense as far where he's been for the last several months. It seems to me that the most logical scenario would be that after he was wounded and escaped into Pakistan (let's say he arrived in Pakistan on December 13 or 14), where he would likely have been taken to his old stomping grounds of Peshawar, where he lived for quite awhile during the 1980s.

In Peshawar, he could receive rudimentary treatment for his injuries and then get to a safer location for more extensive treatment, like in Iran or Iraq. There were a number of reports of bin Laden being in Peshawar in January and ever since then he's basically just disappeared. If he's been receiving treatment at a black ops hospital in Tehran or Baghdad for the last several months, this could easily explain his absence but the fact that his network has shown no signs of disruption due to his death.

Needless to say, the reports of him dying of kidney failure on December 6 seem to have been nothing more than an urban legend.

I would also point out that there was quite a bit more credible evidence for Ayman al-Zawahiri being killed in Afghanistan than bin Laden (including a decapitated head that an Afghan man tried to scam the US with for reward money and obituaries of his wife and children being published in the Egyptian press), yet all of that was pretty much shot to hell when he released an audiotape (which, I would note, seems to be the favored mode of communication for the al-Qaeda leadership, given that Suleiman Abu Ghaith and Ayman al-Zawahiri have relied upon it to communicate since being routed from Afghanistan) that shot that train of thought straight to hell.

I'm actually fairly interested to here your thoughts on this one.

"...Al Qaeda is a myth? More like a movement."
A bowel movement.

I have always felt that Bin Laden was dead.

I concur. Bin Laden is dead. As much as I love the Bush Administration, the fact is that they're milking Bin Laden for political purposes. And you can be pretty damn well sure in 2004 that they'll be saying, "Reelect us: You don't change a horse mid-stream."

I also always hoped that we would never come to that conclusion, as long as we have to convince Liberals and their allies that we need to be serious about the War on Terror.

This is the actual reason that Bush needs to keep the country focused on the war on terror: Bush wants to boost military spending and he has a weaker argument if the focus turns solely to domestic issues. Americans have a short memory. 9/11 is a big deal now ... but in 2 years, maybe not so much.

If there is another attack on the US, we dont need everyone thinking that we have to start from scratch with a new villain. We are better off no knowing.

They're all faces from the same rogue's gallery, whether it's Hezobollah, Al-Quaeda, the PLO, etc. Expect the feds to start selling the idea that all of these organizations have banded together; that is, we now face a unified but distributed enemy. They're so predictable.

It would not surprise me if the Government knows that he's dead, but wont pass on that information. We need to justify defense spending, the missile shield, the F-22, and a bunch of other programs. Having a bad-guy around is fine with me if it keeps Liberal mouths shut.

Agreed. If Bush were to announce that Bin Laden is dead, the liberals would be coming out of the wordwork to demand that we cut military spending and boost the minimum wage and unemployment benefits ... because the "chillllllllldren are suffering." Rove knows this. They're simply taking away an arrow from their enemy's quiver.