Saturday, September 23, 2006 France says Osama bin Laden is dead... guess Bush can't drag him out for Oct surprise Now maybe I'm jaded... but a new report comes out this wk that sums up BushCo's complete incompetence: "Five yrs, and 2 wars after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush admin still does not fully understand the threat from al-Qaida, according to a new congressional report released by the House of Reps' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on threats facing the US, just released on Weds." We have Bush telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that if bin Laden were inside Pakistan, that the US would just ignore the sovereign rights of Pakistan and waltz right on in there to get Osama. Then we hear from Pakistan's President Musharraf that days after Sept 11th, Richard Armitage met with Pakistan’s intelligence director, Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, seeking cooperation on the newly hatched "war on terror," and then told Ahmed that without that cooperation, Pakistan had better: "Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age." Of course, Bush and Armitage were simply "taken aback" by Musharraf's claim... err... riiight. And now we have this gem coming out of France about a supposed event in Pakistan: "The French defense ministry on Sat called for an internal investigation of the leak of an intelligence document that raises the possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan a month ago but said the report of the death remained unverified. The daily newspaper for the Lorraine region in eastern France, l’Est Republicain, printed what it described as a confidential document from the French foreign intelligence service DGSE citing an uncorroborated report from Saudi secret services that the leader of the al-Qaida terror network had died. In Pakistan, a sr official of that country’s top spy agency, the ISI or Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence, said he had no info to confirm bin Laden’s whereabouts or that he might be dead. The official said he believed the report could be fabricated. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity. US Embassy officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan also said they could not confirm the French report." Asia Yahoo News reports: "Pakistan has received no info from any foreign govt that would corroborate the French newspaper report." And what does the Taliban have to say about this?: "A sr Taliban official, whose fighters are allied to the remnants of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, also poured cold water on the French newspaper story. "Taliban have no information about the death of Osama. It's only baseless propaganda against mujahideen (Muslim holy warriors)," Mullah Obaidullah told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location." Well, who knows how reliable a Taliban source is, but does it really matter anyway? What about this guy... ya know... Osama's right hand man? And what about this guy who was named as al-Qaeda's new leader in Iraq after so much ado about nothing when Zarqawi was killed and it was hailed by BushCo as some watershed moment? Al Qaeda is like the mythical Hydra. You chop off one head and yet another grows to threaten you. Now let's be clear here, if bin Laden is dead, then buh-bye to bad rubbish. And let's face it: Bush can't claim this as some kind of GOP victory, and W can't pop his nearly 7ft tall ass out of a glass cage for an October surprise. If true, typhoid took out Osama. Not some crazy-ass cowboy bullshit that "justifies" waterborading, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Shock & Awe, or the unspeakable deaths and maimings in Iraq. But am I the only one who finds these coincidences a wee bit too....uhm... coincidental? |