Bin Laden Report Denied
The report in a provincial French newspaper that Usamah bin Laden had a tropical disease that killed him in August makes no sense. It said that his disease led to paralysis of the legs. It would have to be polio! Unlikely except in East Africa.
This report appears to be based on a single source. Single sources are famously unreliable.
The report was denied by Saudi Intelligence, which said that UBL was alive and well. It was also denied by Pakistani intelligence. US intelligence said that it didn't have any such information.
In other reasons, there is no reason to believe this report whatsoever, as Peter Bergen on CNN also concluded.
I don't think al-Qaeda woud disappear if UBL did. But it would be weakened for a while, and would lose a compelling symbol. Both would be all to the good.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/24/2006 12:29:00 AM
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Wouldn't our neocons also "lose a compelling symbol" if OBL's death became confirmed?
UBL not dead?
Huge sigh of relief in the White House.
I think such reports, if false, are designed to elicit a response from the "dead" party - thereby increasing the chance for intel agencies to nab or kill the allegedly "dead" party... Comparable to whistling at a small animal to make it raise its head for the kill shot...
Regarding UBL's leadership of Al Qaida - I agree that his death would have little effect on the propagation of the Al Qaida ideas, primarily because Al Qaida is not directly involved with many of the recent foreign operations, which have developed their own local leadership and find raising capabilities. In death, UBL might well become a martyr figure, open to any and all interpretation... His organization will then probably lose all control of upstart groups - thereby leading to an increase in the kind of violence Zarqawi organized in Iraq.
BUY THE BOOK : “Asked where Osama was, [Karzai] smiled and replied: “If I said he was in Pakistan, President Musharraf would be mad at me. And if I said he was in Afghanistan, it would not be true.”
Everyone knows where Osama bin Laden is: he's in Wikipedia, and he's on television; his voice is recorded and his words are history; he's part of “the conversation” that is our culture. To find Osama bin Laden, all you have to do is Google him...
...and he/his will be summoned.
Aye, that's the rub. That's the problem when you have a Genie in a Bottle ~ you can't rub him out.
The Arab peoples have a history of dealing with jinnis ~ they out-smart them. It's all in their history books, and in the conversation that is their culture. Oh, yeah ~ they know how to summon a jinni and they know how to outsmart him: with words.
Genies in the West, these Stalin/Hitler characters and African despots and South American dictators ~ generally, you can rub them out. We're good at that, when we want to be. We know how to have a successful revolution against a Monarchy and a Colonial Empire and live well, and live to tell the tale.
It looks to me like the Arabians and the AngloAmericans have a lot of history to share, and learn about dealing with scary-bad Jinnis and Generals.
So the question isn't, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" but where is he not? And the answer is: he's not in IRAQ; and you can't rub him out.
Paralysis can be caused by a variety of infections, guillian barret syndrome, botulism, dysentary, malaria, tuberculosis, and a dozen other diseases.
If UBL died, it would weaken Al Qaeda somewhat. If he died on his own, Bush and America wouldn't be able to claim a victory, and it would likely keep us feeling a tad safer superficially (imagine if Bush announced he killed Bin Laden, wouldn't they have to or choose to raise the terror alert?)
I remember when Ho Chi Minh died. He actually ran a real government which had a really good and experienced army. After he died, many Americans thought the Vietnamese would quit and give up their decades-long struggle for national unification and independence. They didn't.
Osama bin Laden runs no government and has no army. He controls virtually nothing but what the paranoid American imagination -- stoked shamelessly by the Republican Party's desperate campaign proganda aparatus -- wants to believe he does. All men die; but legitimate resistance movements against imperial military domination do not die with them.
If some infidel foreign soldiers dressed up like men from Mars kicked down my front door and arrested me, my father, and my brothers for the "crime" of "being of military age" leaving my mother and sisters alone and defenseless agaist robbery and rape -- well, I wouldn't need to wonder what some self-absorbed Saudi Arabian in a Pakistani cave somewhere thinks I ought to feel about things or what I should do about them. I could figure that out for myself in about a millisecond.
Anyway, I have to agree with the person who posted elsewhere -- with brutal, remorseless logic -- that (1) either the American government means to do what it says it wants to do in Iraq, but has only failed due to unimaginable incompetence; or (2) the American government means to do something else entirely, and has suceeded at it with stunning efficiency. Giving the American government credit for veracity and competence simply stretches credulity past the breaking point, which would seem to rule out both cases of the dichotomy. Yet if one chooses to adopt the view that no matter what America says it wants to do; that it will in the end do anyway whatever Israel wants it to do; then breaking up the unified Iraqi state and setting Muslim factions tearing at each others' throats does appear competently accomplished even though the American people and their own national interests seem hardly to have entered the picture.
I have to conclude now what I only suspected late in 2002, that the right wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did indeed (as General Brent Scowcroft said) "have George W. Bush wrapped around his little finger" and that Douglas Feith (as Secretary of State Colin Powell said) "was a card carrying member of the Likud Party" and that America's unwarranted, belligerent lurch into invading and occupying Iraq would serve only Israeli interests and not those of either Iraq or America. I must admit that I didn't see Iran coming out of all this as well as it has, but then Iran didn't have any of its lobbyists and moles planted deep in our government working assiduously for the purposes of some other national interest other than our own.
America doesn't have an honest, competent government, but then Israel doesn't wish for it to have one. Hapless compliance will do very nicely, thank you.
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