Bin Laden tape a fake, Swiss lab says

The Toronto Star (Canada) ^ | Nov. 28, 2002. 06:23 PM | AP

[spycatcher]

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Of course the darned tape is a fake. If this despot demented killer were alive we would be treated to video of him gloating daily. Bin Laden is blowing in the wind somewhere or smoldering moldering underground somewhere like Tora Bora. See ya Osoma! Don't let the white raisins wear you out.

[HAL9000]

Currently, the official policy of the U.S. must assume that bin Laden is alive.

[tessalu]

I do not believe that binLaden is alive either. He is buried and his grave is hidden from us.

[Angelus Errare]

Hardly.

I expect I'm gonna catch a lot of flack for this (hell, I was nearly E-lynched the last time I voiced this opinion), but my personal opinion is that we should wait and see before jumping to any hasty conclusion on this one. This was also my initial assessment when the audio was first released and all of FR promptly declared that it MUST be a fake.

My own assessment of the situation leads me to believe that bin Laden, or at the very least Ayman al-Zawahiri, is likely alive. Someone is coordinating al-Qaeda worldwide, so at the very least a solid chunk of the Shura Majlis remains intact. As a result, I would recommend that we all keep our wits about ourselves and thus wait until we actually have a corpse or a confession before we declared the great archvillain dead.

I would advise you all to recognize that the Russian media has been nowhere as restrained on the issue of the Chechen leadership (which are also al-Qaeda, but never mind that) as the American media have been. While I agree that most of the liberal establishment wants to keep bin Laden alive in order to chastize the Bush administration with it, I highly doubt that especially in the aftermath of the election (with terrorism being such a key Republican issue) that the media would be likely to maintain this front. But the American media need not become another version of the Russian media, where Barayev was "killed" 3 times before you actually have a corpse.

Having said that, one of the most idiotic notions that I've ever heard of is that "Well, we never caught Hitler, so we don't 'know' that he's dead." While I recognize that this is an attempt at reductio ad absurdium, many people really need to recognize that we had the confessions of top Nazi officials, people who saw the bodies, Hitler's servants, ect., to verify that he's dead. None of these conditions exist with al-Qaeda, and the last I heard, unless Ramzi Binalshibh and Abd Rahim al-Nashiri have been spilling the beans and nobody's telling us, there's no way for us to know that their boss is dead. So in the absence of a credible witness or a body, we should assume that this is indeed the case.

Moving on, a lot of people seem to indulge in either one-sided or extremely uninformed thinking about how the tape was verified. It was authenticated electronically by the CIA, MI6, the BBC, Mossad, and even the Japanese (I imagine that similar verifications were performed by the Chinese, French, Russian, and Indian intelligence agencies). They said they were roughly 90-95% sure that it was bin Laden. Now this is quite a credible array of sources for any type of recording. Perhaps, in the type of conspiracy-thinking that so frequently permeates these "bin Laden is dead" threads, they were all in on faking the recording to justify a war with Iraq.

After the tape was authenticated electronically, it was taken both to the al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay as well as to the top brass currently being held at Diego Garcia. The detainees stated that the recording was genuine and that it was likely a call to action, hence the recent spread of terror alerts. The fact that MI5 busted up a cyanide plot within several days of the recording being released combined with today's Kenyan fun tends to back this up.

Of course, this doesn't stop those on FR who believe that bin Laden MUST be dead. The various ways I've seen posted here as to how this forgery was supposedly done wouldn't last 5 minutes, let alone 5 days under NSA/CIA scrutiny. Of course, in the minds of FR, most of these people are either clueless (guess the string of arrests and captures of al-Qaeda brass have just been flukes), willing adherents of the Bush administration who care nothing about lying to the American people, or else actively participated in forging the tape.

Then again, we now have this whole Swiss thing. While I'm half-laughing to note that the institute that made this claim (and in doing so essentially said that Ari, Bush, Tenet, ect. are all wrong) is both located in Europe and affiliated with Berkley. Now if they had made a similar claim about Osama's "Caught on Tape" last December, I imagine that many Freepers would be livid with anger and that there'd be all kinds of angry post about European duplicity and some type of leftist babble because of the Berkley connection. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time believing that one private institution is more competent than the finest intelligence agencies on the planet that, despite their constant derailment in this forum, have netted some extremely big fish over the last several months.

I also have some BIG question about how US intelligence can be 95% sure that this is bin Laden and this Swiss guy can be 90% sure that it isn't. Something tells me that if there is not that much difference of opinion concerning this tape.

But what the hell, right, who cares about logic if the Europeans are saying something that we want to hear?

I say we wait until we get the White House reaction tommorrow before making hasty judgements, but hey, that's be reason, and we can't have that here.

Moving right along, there seems to be an extremely disturbing trend that I've commented on before whereby people in this forum actually believe that Bush knows that Osama is dead and that he is keeping him around as a political tool. Ignoring the fact that this displays a total lack of ethics and principles (in terms of Really Bad Things, perjury pales in comparison to lying to the American people in order to justify a continued war) for anyone, let alone an elected leader. And yet many people see no contradiction between believing this and continuing to support Bush rather than seeking a replacement who would honestly continue to prosecute the War on Terror.

Why? Well, for starters, if you really believe that Bush is keeping definitive knowledge about bin Laden's fate from the American people, that'd be the right thing to do. If you can't trust Bush to let you know when Public Enemy #1 has assumed room temperature in order to keep war going, how the hell do you trust him to be honest when he says, well, anything. If this insinuation were true, then we would be in the exact same situation that we were in with Clinton, though the irony is not to be lost that so many Freepers believe that Bush is basically doing exactly what Clinton did yet they are still enthusiastic to support him.

Personally, I like to think that the President waits until all of the facts are in before making his decisions and informing the public about them. And I think that if he believed that bin Laden was dead, he'd tell us. Because, here again, I believe Bush to be moral and principled man and I think that that would be the right thing to do.

Apparently some people here don't share that opinion, and they come up with rationalizations to support that decision. The scary thing is that they have no idea how similar Bush and Clinton would be if any of these half-baked scenarios are true.

Ultimately, we'll have to see what the White House says tomorrow about their take on the Swiss findings. And if they say that they're legit, then they're legit. And if they point out flaws in the Swiss methodology or conclusions, I'll accept that as equally legitimate.

Okay, flame on.

[rockfish59]

Dead?

[The Great Satan]

Someone is coordinating al-Qaeda worldwide, so at the very least a solid chunk of the Shura Majlis remains intact.

Nobody is coordinating al-Qaeda. Nobody was ever coordinating al-Qaeda. You have a total fantasy image of what al-Qaeda is. It ain't no IBM, whatever they would like you to think.

Here's a metaphor to help you understand. Remember this picture? It was in all the papers.

There were lots of stories about this amazing James Bond hideout. Guess what? It was a total fantasy. It never existed. As someone here put it, they did get one bit of the picture right -- that fellow on horseback in the bottom left. Apart from that, it was complete BS.

Al-Qaeda is a recruiting outfit that makes videos. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi millionaire who liked to star himself as a messiah figure in his own videos, before he kicked the bucket at Tora Bora last December. He was a sort of arabic Ziggy Stardust, and he's played his final concert. The "shock troops" of al-Qaeda are morons like the Shoe Bomber and that limo driver who shot up the El Al ticket desk at LAX. Every now and then, some of these morons score a gig with somebody competent, like Saddam Hussein, and then they can do some real damage. But al-Qaeda? It's a myth. It's just a bunch of wankers with towels on their heads. That's all.

[dennisw]

Hahhahah

[xm177e2]

Bush-haters can't make up their minds: is it better for Osama to be dead, or alive?

If he's alive, then Bush is a nitwit whose War on Terror isn't going well at all, and he should focus on Afghanistan instead of Iraq. Bush pretends Osama is dead because he doesn't want to admit he messed up.

If he's dead, then there's no need to continue the war on terror, and Bush is trying to pretend Bin Laden is alive because he wants to keep the war going.

Which is it, already?

[bonfire]

DISH towels, at that.

[stands2reason]

Man, the paranoia has been running thick since the election!

[kinghorse]

"The BIG question is, how can a low-life from a third world country affect the world this way?"

Ever hear of a guy named Sirhan Sirhan? Yasser Arafat ring a bell? We have been at war for a long time.

[kinghorse]

That kind of attitude will get you killed in Kinshasa or Bali. Al Qaeda is a myth? More like a movement.

[Cvengr]

An incredibly large movement,....as in BM.

[The Great Satan]

Al Qaeda is a myth? More like a movement.

Is it more like Disco or Punk Rock?

[arielb]

there was just a simultaneous attack in Kenya. I believe the airplane missile attempt is just the beginning of a new kind of terror and will be followed up just like the 93 WTC was followed up with the successful 9/11 attack. Once Al Qaeda refines their missile strategy, none of the air marshals and armed pilots will be able to defend against such an attack.

[Angelus Errare]

"Nobody is coordinating al-Qaeda. Nobody was ever coordinating al-Qaeda. You have a total fantasy image of what al-Qaeda is. It ain't no IBM, whatever they would like you to think."

Uh-huh.

Gee, that's funny, cause if you read the Southeast Asian press, you can learn all about how there's a very clear chain of command between the cell that carried out the Bali bombings, the Indonesian leadership of Jemaah Islamiyyah, and the al-Qaeda commander for Southeast Asia.

Somebody does the recruiting, produces the videotapes, buys the guns, explosives, and (evidently) missiles, manages the WMD research, has contacts with rogue states, indoctrinates the suicide bombers, runs the training camps outside of Afghanistan, manages the cash, ad infinitum.

If you sincerely believe that there is no central hierarchy behind al-Qaeda after everything that's widely known to date ... I honestly don't know what to say. Just look at the way their shock troops operate in the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, Southeast Asia, North and East Africa, ect. I wouldn't say that they're as bad as the Comintern, but they aren't exactly living in the Stone Age (though that's where they'd like to return most of the planet to).

Your description of Tora Bora is also somewhat inaccurate. No, it wasn't the fortress of some James Bond villain with huge TVs and a holographic map of the world, but the place held out for around two weeks against some of the heaviest bombing since World War 2. That says quite a lot for the place as an operational headquarters and basically puts to lie your triumphalist rhetoric about al-Qaeda being completely overblown.

"The 'shock troops' of al-Qaeda are morons like the Shoe Bomber and that limo driver who shot up the El Al ticket desk at LAX."

First of all, from what I can understand Richard Reid's attack was mainly a quick run with their new toys, and as such he was the suicide bomber who was best in a position to act at the time. Hesham Mohammed Hadayet's July 4 attack was thwarted only because El Al security is so good, not because he wasn't planning on killing large numbers of people. If he had opened up at the American Airlines ticket counter instead, there would have been 10-15 people dead in a couple of minutes and the FBI wouldn't be debating about whether or not it was terrorism.

"Every now and then, some of these morons score a gig with somebody competent, like Saddam Hussein, and then they can do some real damage."

Uh-huh. Tell that to the Russians, Algerians, Filippinos, Christian Sudanese, Indians, East Timorese, and Serbs, all of whom have had their nations savaged by these fanatics. So do you belong to the "Al-Qaeda is a pawn of Iraq" school of thought?

"But al-Qaeda? It's a myth. It's just a bunch of wankers with towels on their heads. That's all."

So al-Qaeda is a worthless organization (or is it an organization, you don't really say), but they can still come up with a tape good enough to fool every intelligence agency on the planet until a private Swiss researcher can prove 'em wrong? I don't exactly think that you're arguing for logical consistency here, but okay ...

While I don't over-estimate the threat of al-Qaeda, I don't under-estimate it either. 19 of these towel-headed wankers haved killed over 3,000 Americans and God knows how many other innocent people ever since 9/11. And at this point, under-estimating them (which, if you read Mark Riebling, is exactly what the FBI is currently doing) is just as bad as over-blowing the threat.

[arielb]

a lot of people here want to believe Osama is dead but the fact is we let al qaeda escape Tora Bora. We have the technology needed to authenticate the tape. If it was fake then we'd know right away (at the same time there was a report by Asian Times about all these secret nukes in the US-that was deemed fake and was taken off the website)

[The Great Satan]

Sorry, but implying that every atrocity perpetrated worldwide by the one-billion odd members of the Religion of Peace is being secretly controlled by a deceased Saudi amateur video producer does nothing for the credibility of your case. It merely tells us that you are a victim of the myth of Al-Qaeda. In other words, that you're a gullible fool with the mentality of a supermarket tabloid reader.

Your description of Tora Bora is also somewhat inaccurate. No, it wasn't the fortress of some James Bond villain with huge TVs and a holographic map of the world, but the place held out for around two weeks against some of the heaviest bombing since World War 2. That says quite a lot for the place as an operational headquarters and basically puts to lie your triumphalist rhetoric about al-Qaeda being completely overblown.

Go tell the Spartans. Your hero is dead. Deal with it.