Just a puppet.

Damn! He shaved!

Apparently he has shaved:

'Gone is the straggly, unkempt beard that was heavily flecked with grey.

Instead, his beard appears dark, thick and trimmed, although analysts have suggested that rather than being dyed, it may be actually false, and that to help avoid detection he is clean-shaven these days.' news.bbc.co.uk

It should be a scandal that all you can do is throw taunts at him. BIn Laden should have been arrested and tried long since.

If Kerry had been in office on 9/11, and Bin Laden was still at large years later, making videos, wouldn't you be howling for the President's resignation, impeachment or something?

It's not even as if you can say that Bush has been doing his best to catch the guy. Bush bumbled off and started a war elsewhere for no good reason instead - spending maybe a trillion dollars. What, in comparison, is the reward on Bin Laden's head? Something wrong there, surely.

I still think the man has been dead for some time, and that is not him in the video. This video may even be the works of our own government, somehow, though I don't know how it would benefit. I did read that all the sites carrying the video were immediately shut down after the US announced it had a copy.

One can never believe anymore what he/she sees in print or video.

quote:

It should be a scandal that all you can do is throw taunts at him. BIn Laden should have been arrested and tried long since.

You get three guesses at who had the best opportunity to do that very thing, and blew it.

Clue: It ain't Bush.

Just how good was the opportunity you (maybe) are so coyly referring to? What could Clinton have tried him for at that time?

'The government of Sudan, using a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in custody in Saudi Arabia, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.
.
The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later.
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Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept Mr. bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture...

...Clinton administration officials maintain emphatically that they had no such option against Mr. bin Laden in 1996. In the legal, political and intelligence environment then, they said, there was no choice but to allow him to leave Sudan unmolested.
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"In the United States, we have this thing called the Constitution, so to bring him here is to bring him into the justice system," said Samuel Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then. "I don't think that was our first choice. Our first choice was to send him some place where justice is more" - he paused a moment, then continued - "streamlined."..

...Resigned to Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, some officials raised the possibility of shooting down his chartered aircraft, but the idea was never seriously pursued because Mr. bin Laden had not been linked to a dead American, and it was inconceivable that Mr. Clinton would sign the "lethal finding" necessary under the circumstances.' www.prisonplanet.com

Clinton should have guessed that Bin Laden would plan 9/11 some time after all this, and therefore gone all out to kill him? I thought you frowned on such hindsight-driven partisan point-scoring.

However, if we're going to go raking up missed opportunities...

Reagan's Osama Connection

Bush himself, of course, has an interesting past when it comes to the Bin Ladens:

Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas

What evidence is, or was, there that the first WTC bombing was 'the work of Bin Laden'?

'...there was a limit to what could be learned directly - ironically because the group that carried out the attack had been so easy to track down.

"We encountered probably the dumbest terrorists we've ever encountered," recalls Neil Livingstone, one of the top terrorism experts in the US.

Mohammed Salameh appeared in court only a week later, charged with the bombing after he tried to collect the deposit on the rental van used in the attack.

Three other men were arrested soon after...

...And it was Yousef's attack, Ms Shannon argues, that encouraged al-Qaeda to launch their own fully-fledged campaign of terror.

"The FBI's theory is that this was such an audacious act that al-Qaeda then sought out Ramzi Yousef and said: 'Do you want some more money, do you want to do some more imaginative bad things,' - and of course he did."' Lessons of first WTC bombing

The NBC story you link to talks of an opportunity, in 2000, to blow up Bin Laden (or, rather "a tall figure in flowing white robes" which might have been Bin Laden), not arrest and try him. It seems Clinton did not have an "opportunity to do that very thing" - but an opportunity to do something else.

quote:

It seems Clinton did not have an "opportunity to do that very thing"

Whatever you want to call it, he had an opportunity to get rid of him.

BUT

And yet Clinton did choose to use cruise missiles against "terrorist targets" in 1998. Of course, there was a strong suspicion that he was trying to divert attention from his personal affairs, and the case for blowing up the al Shifa plant seems weak, to say the least.

But how effective were bombs and missiles as assassination devices?

'The possibility that the figure in the [2000] tape might have been bin Laden helped speed the decision to arm the Predator drone aircraft with "Hellfire" missiles, which can be fired by remote control, officials said.

With the technology available in 2000, it would have taken three to seven hours to strike the Tarnak Farm site with cruise missiles or bombs, U.S officials said.

In 1998, President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on suspected terrorist training camps in eastern in Afghanistan where intelligence suggested bin Laden might be. In the time it took for the cruise missiles to reach their target, officials say bin Laden moved to another location. That attack killed at least 21 Pakistanis, but missed bin Laden.

In November 2002, the CIA used an armed Predator to execute a senior al Qaeda official who was riding in a car in Yemen.

Steve Coll, in his recently published book "Ghost Wars," says that the Clinton administration at one time planned to seize bin Laden at Tarnak Farm but never carried out the mission, in part over concerns about killing innocent women and children, as well as legal disagreements within the administration.' www.cnn.com

So, trying to hit Bin Laden at Tarnak Farm in 2000 would have been a pretty long shot, and just such an attempt (if that's what it was) had failed previously. Yes, Clinton had a chance to kill Bin Laden before 9/11; so, presumably did Bin Laden's nanny and a string of other people throughout his life.

It was Bush Jr. who let Bin Laden off the hook after Bin Laden had perpetrated 9/11.

CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight

Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions

quote:

It was Bush Jr. who let Bin Laden off the hook after Bin Laden had perpetrated 9/11

Maybe if Clinton had done his job, 9/11 might have been prevented.

Well, there are a million scenarios in which if people had done their jobs, or had done their jobs differently, 9/11 maybe wouldn't have happened.

Bush on vacation

Reagan's "Freedom Fighters"

Nice of bin Laden to talk of global warming (it's the fault of the infidel West, in case you were wondering) and sub-prime mortgages. Wonder which newswpapers he reads? (Seems like a Guardian or NYT reader to me )

This site claims the video is fake too. Interesting analysis. Can anyone here confirm or discount this claim?

quote:

Originally posted by Kendor:
This site claims the video is fake too. Interesting analysis. Can anyone here confirm or discount this claim?

If this tape has inserts or additions then that's nothing new. A tape issued back in 2002 consisted of an old recording by bin Laden in which references to recent events had been inserted.The inserts also were genuine recordings made by bin Laden, so if this recent tape has inserts or dubbing the current text could nonetheless be entirely of bin Laden's voice and words.

As to this tape , the BBC reports that American experts believe that the tape is genuine. The BBC does not say how or why the experts so concluded. However, the experts would have more than simple familiarity with bin Laden's tones, accent or pronunciation.For example,forensic scientists can use voice recognition machinery. Any individual's voice has unique patterns, seen on analysis of a recording, which the best imitator cannot reproduce. A comparison between the known and the questioned tape then shows the falsity or otherwise of the latter. (This equipment is used here in Britain where it famously led to the detection and conviction of a hoaxer who sent tapes in which he mischievously distracted police in a murder investigation by pretending to be the 'Yorkshire Ripper', a serial killer,whom they were hunting)

bin Laden tape

The 1993 WTC bombing was orchestrated by none other than the U.S. Government. Most directly, by the F.B.I. There is concrete evidence to support this, as I had previously posted following 9-11-01. The story was even on the news immediately following the 1993 bombing, shortly after which it was expunged from the public record.

"Our story begins in 1993, when the FBI facilitated and allowed the World Trade Center bombing to happen when they could have stopped it. FACTS: As reported by The New York Times (10/28/93) and CNN, Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the FBI to infiltrate the terrorists later charged in the Trade Center bombing. The original plan told to Mr. Salem was that his job was to see to it that fake explosives were used, then the bombers would be busted for planting what they thought was a real bomb with no possibility of anybody getting hurt. A good plan. Mr. Salem secretly tape-recorded hundreds of hours of his telephonic communications with authorities without their knowledge. The recordings reveal that the FBI changed the original plan and told Mr. Salem NOT to use the fake explosives but to use REAL explosives. The FBI agent who told him to use real explosives was adamant about this. I saw and heard this on CNN in '93 and could not believe my eyes and ears, I thought, "We'll never hear the end of this." Boy was I wrong, it totally disappeared. Alas, there is an excerpt of some of this that was printed in The New York Times (10/28/93). While these recordings were played in preliminary court hearings, they were barred from the actual trial because Mr. Salem made them without the permission of the FBI agents. The Government can bug you without your permission, but the opposite is not also true -- that's tyranny. The tapes exist, and they prove that the FBI de facto orchestrated the bombing of the World Trade Center, an act that would result in massive new police powers for the FBI. However, because the tapes were barred from court, the media simply pretends they don't exist and the truth is forever nullified from the official GovtMedia story, exiled to the dark allies of seedy conspiracy theory. They say that tens of thousands would have died if the truck-bomb had been able to park in the spot the bombers had reserved, right next to a key column, but when they got there a car had taken their spot. I'd like to think someone knew about this and parked the car there to save the lives of thousands of people."

(Published: 6/25/97 Author: Ian Goddard)

VD - What's really great about that particular conspiracy theory is that it presumes that if a lone truck filled with explosives had just been parked one parking spot away from where it was that "tens of thousands" of people would have been killed because a key structural column would have been damaged. Basically the only way to kill tens of thousands of people in that particular building is to collapse the building.

Okay so great, right? Well then we have all these other conspiracists that claim that the building couldn't come down due to a freaking jet airliner laden with fuel ramming into multiple floors with critical columns. Gee wiz, structural understanding is very fickle with these conspiracy theories.

It's total nonsense and that's a FACT.

quote:

Originally posted by aminator2002:
VD - What's really great about that particular conspiracy theory is that it presumes that if a lone truck filled with explosives had just been parked one parking spot away from where it was that "tens of thousands" of people would have been killed because a key structural column would have been damaged. Basically the only way to kill tens of thousands of people in that particular building is to collapse the building.

Okay so great, right? Well then we have all these other conspiracists that claim that the building couldn't come down due to a freaking jet airliner laden with fuel ramming into multiple floors with critical columns. Gee wiz, structural understanding is very fickle with these conspiracy theories.

It's total nonsense and that's a FACT.

You're entitled to your opinion, animator, but that doesn't make it factual. It also seems that you've missed the point, here. The point is not how many people may or may not have died if the explosives truck was parked elsewhere. The point is who committed the act. And, my point was that there is direct evidence which implicates none other than the F.B.I., who work for our own U.S. Government, not "Mr. Boogeyman bin Laden", as our government would have us all believe.

Additionally, the point of the '93 WTC bombing was not to bring it down. The point of it was to scare people. And, it succeeded. The result of which gained the F.B.I. and other U.S. Government agencies sweeping new powers and funds at their disposal, which takes away from the taxpayers pockets and rights.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9777136-7.html?tag=head

"beard is real, video is not."

quote:

The point is not how many people may or may not have died if the explosives truck was parked elsewhere.

I understand that isn't the "point" of the article. The theory that it was a faux attack though rests partially upon the idea that someone in the know might have foiled them by preventing them from parking in the spot that was the magic destruction spot. It's totally bogus. More important to me was that this theory had an aspect that respects the destructability of buildings while the more recent theories rest upon some kind of super buildings that don't really have to deal with physics. It's interesting and if you don't see it, that's because you can't see the light of day anymore with how deep into this nonsense you are.

I invite you, just like kathaskung, to discuss it, but you can't just say "That wasn't the point." when I blow a hole in your arguments. At this point it's as bad as discussing religion but if you want to talk individual points, that's fine.