From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 21:42:24 MDT
At 02:07 PM 5/20/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> As to knowing where bin Laden is? It would be nice to catch him,
> but,
>so long he is living in fear in some hovel in Pakistan and afraid to even use
>his cell phone to coordinate either attacks or defense haven't we got time on
>our side. Did you notice that the latest round of attacks were in Moslem
>countries. Even the one in Saudi Arabia killed more Moslems than Americans.
>Ron h.
One theory is that hes already dead, but that we haven't bothered to tell
anyone (or don't have confirmation). If Osama was alive he would have
every incentive to tell the world, to boost flagging morale. If he kept
the video to the barest of minimums, I would assume that he could prevent
us from learning anything of importance from it regarding his
location. After all, if wealthy Muslims perceive Al Queda as being
leaderless, they are less likely to donate large sums of money. On the
other hand, if Osama is dead, he can be proclaimed a martyr, and a new
leader can step into his place.
On the other hand, we have a professional rather than a volunteer force,
and the news of our success in Osama's death is more likely to decrease
than increase defense and intelligence funding. So if our military or
intelligence agencies were able to kill him they would have no reason to
tell the public, and we would be in the situation we are in now, with
nobody knowing where Osama is. Then again, he might have been killed in a
way that rendered his body unidentifiable, and we'd be in a similar situation.
Of course, this doesn't explain the current attacks, so maybe the theory
needs some reworking.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign
to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. And try not to assume your
opponent is the ignorant one-until you can show it isn't you.
-M.N. Plano
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