Frank,

I am sometimes guilty of hideous cynicism and the occasional fit of utter stupidity. Despite these character flaws, I think ObL is an evil scumbag and responsible for the 911 atrocity. I have no doubt that he is guilty of organizing the WTC terrorist action and numerious other crimes against humanity.

Preamble aside, I have to ask two rhetorical questions:

1) Is the Mossad capable of producing a technically high quality fake ObL video tape?

2) Does the Mossad under the Sharon government have a motive for producing a fake ObL video tape?

I have two big quarrels with that tape's authenticity?

1) ObL would have shown amazing stupidity to have allowed such a tape to be made.

2) The tape systematicly hits all the "hot buttons", i.e. admits prior knowledge thus establishing guilt, names the guys flying the planes, shows utter contempt for the highjackers lives, hobnobs with an important Saudi cleric, etc.

The tape is too pat. I suspect the President and his advisors also had doubts about the tape which is why they waited so long before releasing it to the public. Probably the only reason why they die release it was because there were too many public copies floating around. The tape was "public" anyway so they had to engage in "damage control" by releasing their own "qualified" version. The whole thing smells of black propaganda.

Gary