New AQ videos

[haztacmedic]

Fox News is showing a "new" video of OBL and gang. Showing things like a meeting of the minds some where in A-stan and some silly looking high kicks during H2H training. Also saw them practicing the difficult skill of opening a folding knife! Interesting stuff.
HTM

[Team Sergeant]

Haztacmedic,

The coward known as osama bin laden has not been seen by anyone in over four years. The films that are currently being shown are about five plus years old.

osama bin laden is dead, has been for years. The middle eastern news agencies are attempting to breath new life into al qaeda and its coward leaders, the jihad and islamic ideology to no avail.

To all our readers think about this;
We currently live in an age of instant/live worldwide news and video. We have billions of recording devices, billions of cameras, cell phone cameras to digital video devices to numerous to name and not one picture or video of osama bin laden in almost five years???

If the islamic jihadists can covertly smuggle tons of heroin, emplace IED’s without detection, distribute arms, ammo, and battle orders throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan then I believe they could smuggle out one 2oz flashdrive containing a recent video of the coward known to the world as osama bin laden.

One video of "bin laden the coward" would unquestionably give the islamic jihad a significant worldwide boost. Why has he not done this? Hard to do when he is currently taking a dirt nap.

One does not need the intellectual capacity of Albert Einstein to reach a logical conclusion; osama bin laden is dead and has been for years.

Team Sergeant

[Cincinnatus]

TS,

While I would love to believe this, and in fact argued pretty much the same thing in times past, I'm no longer convinced UBL is dead. Didn't the tape released not long ago have UBL specifically commenting on al-Zarqawi's demise? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but if not this would seem to argue that UBL was alive until recently.

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Cincinnatus

TS,

While I would love to believe this, and in fact argued pretty much the same thing in times past, I'm no longer convinced UBL is dead. Didn't the tape released not long ago have UBL specifically commenting on al-Zarqawi's demise? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but if not this would seem to argue that UBL was alive until recently.

From what I've heard it was his son that made the audio.

Again, we've seen no video in four years.

obl is dead.

my opinion.

TS

[Cincinnatus]

Interesting, I'd heard it was UBL and that CIA had, with the usual caveats, confirmed that. Guess I need to do some googling. I hope the SOB is dead, and died badly, but...

[BoyScout]

I agree with TS. If not from his injuries at Tora Bora, then from his poor health. A part of me wants to see him denied martyrdom by sitting in a cage (a real and tiny cage) but I believe he is in Hell and glad for it.

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Cincinnatus

and that CIA had, with the usual caveats, confirmed that.

You get your news from CNN also?

Don't believe everything you hear...... (Especially from an organization that makes a living selling disinformation campaigns.)

TS

[jfhiller]

Team Sergeant and other QP's,

Since you are able to compare information from your experience and reliable personal contacts in the SOF community with what you see in various publicly available news outlets, are there any sources that you recommend as reliable (at least comparatively speaking) for those of us outside the SOF?
(ps.com is obviously on the list! )

As always, your insight is much appreciated.

jfhiller

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by jfhiller

Team Sergeant and other QP's,

Since you are able to compare information from your experience and reliable personal contacts in the SOF community with what you see in various publicly available news outlets, are there any sources that you recommend as reliable (at least comparatively speaking) for those of us outside the SOF?
(ps.com is obviously on the list! )

As always, your insight is much appreciated.

jfhiller

Most of the QP's spend decades reading from multiple sources both classified and unclassified. All are taught to assess sources and information. Not all classified information is reliable but it usually more credible than most "pay for information" such as mass media sources. When a source makes a living "selling" information such as news much of what one reads can be very bias.

Or when one agency such as Reuters ot the Associated Press start disiminating fake pictures or news with a left liberal slant one needs to be aware of "who" is selling what to whom...

Don't rely on one single source, read many concerning your topic of interest and then make an informed opinion on your own.

TS

[incommin]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

From what I've heard it was his son that made the audio.

Again, we've seen no video in four years.

obl is dead.

my opinion.

TS

Could be! We see the #2 guy, al-Zawahri, but no OBL. Why?

Jim

[Cincinnatus]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

You get your news from CNN also?

No. I don't watch tv.

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

Don't believe everything you hear...... (Especially from an organization that makes a living selling disinformation campaigns.)

I don't. While I certainly don't see the CIA as infallible (I grew up in the DC area and know of too many stories of friend's CIA parents locking themselves out of the house or setting half the lawn afire when barbecuing ), I think they generally deserve fairly high marks on analysis (failing to predict the USSR's implosion, notwithstanding. )

In this instance, it seems a pretty straight forward effort to compare recordings of previous known UBL recordings to the one from this past June referring to al-Zarqawi's demise. Digital voice spectrum analyis can point up differences that the human ear might miss [I recall seeing a print out of Rich Little doing John Wayne and Wayne's real voice and they were markedly different.])

As others could do this as well, and the stakes (particularly in the present political climate) are high enough that getting it wrong could have significant consequences, I see little reason to doubt this analysis. I did a google search last night, and a little research at the library this afternoon, but haven't found anyone offering evidence to the contrary.

I'd love to believe that UBL is taking a dirt nap. I'd been saying for more than a year that I thought he died choking on a pork chop bone while watching a donkey show in TJ and that the cantina owners panicked fearing what the federales would do to them and fed UBL's corpse to their 72 pigs. (Which is, IMO, a fitting end. ) Lacking some evidence (e.g., a voice analysis that showed a match with UBL's son) to suggest that the recording is other than UBL, I'm inclined to believe it is his voice. Occam's razor and all that.

[Team Sergeant]

Again, read my analysis, billions of small video devices, no new movies of ubl in years. He's dead.

I'm not the only one that thinks the coward osama bin laden is dead. There was a lot of debate concerning the audio tape and that it was made by one of his sons.


(failing to predict the USSR's implosion, notwithstanding. )
You may want to add the the failure to predict the invasion of Kuwait to your list.


http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/24-Voice_of_Osama.htm

3. The tape was a recording of one of Osama bin Laden's sons, who was deliberately trying to sound like his father. This is, in my mind, the most likely hypothesis.

Here is my scenario:



Osama bin Laden was killed at Tora Bora -- or his dialysis machine was destroyed and he died shortly afterwards. The strongest evidence for this is the absence of new videos. Al Qaeda fears that news of his death will shock and discourage many of its supporters. There is no other leader who can hold together this diverse and contentious organization, so they believe that they need to keep the news secret. The initial tapes they released were old recordings of former speeches. But many supporters were concerned. They, like me, noticed the absence of videos, and of speeches with clear date indicators. Al Qaeda knew a video counterfeit would be detected, but they noticed that Saad sounded a lot like his father. They had him listen to his father's speeches, and practice enunciating them with a similar style. It took many attempts, but Saad's voice on the final tape was good enough to deceive not only al Qaeda's foreign legions, but even some analysts at the CIA.



And if my personal experience is indicative, the tapes may even have fooled one or more of Osama bin Laden's wives.





Richard A. Muller, a 1982 MacArthur Fellow, is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches a course called 'Physics for Future Presidents.' Since 1972, he has been a Jason consultant on U.S. national security.

[jfhiller]

TS, thank you for sharing your advice on reading various sources. That is the approach I try to take. Since I have been doing so, I've been amazed at how many things I didn't learn when I only had one or two sources.

On the subject of OBL being dead, why do you figure that this view isn't more widely accepted/publicized? While I had understood voice analysis to be fairly accurate in discriminating between even like-sounding voices, if my confidence was too great (not hard to imagine), it seems plausible - even very likely - that OBL could be dead from what you've written and what Richard A. Muller wrote in the piece you linked. If the Bush Administration believed it, they would seem to have a great deal to gain from publicizing at least the strong possibility of his death if not it's certainty. All of the MSM would make lots of money covering the story, though many would be incensed at doing anything to help the President politically. I could go through various gyrations in my head of pros/cons, but if you have a theory on the motive for the general federal government to keep this quiet about it, would you be willing to educate me/us?

Always learning,
jfhiller

[CoLawman]

This below site makes some interesting observations.

http://www.welfarestate.com/binladen/surprise/

I am with TS on this one!

[jfhiller]

The evidence presented is compelling. I still can't figure out how it would be such an undercovered story if there's not more to it. It's not as if the MSM control the dissemination of news anymore. I don't get why Rush, Drudge, LGF, etc. wouldn't be all over this if there weren't serious mitigating evidence. Just trying to get a more rounded picture.