Only the media kept him off the news pages prior to the attacks on New York and Washington. He wasn't all that important -- then.

Only the media.

Ussamah bin Ladin has never been so completely silent, as he has in recent months. Since the attacks and his assumed death in the bombing of Tora Bora, anything assumed to come from bin Laden would be pounced upon by the media and promptly displayed to the world.

Front Page, Banner.

And there are other reports.

I can recall that a certain Dr. Steve Pieczenik stating he visited an ill bin Ladin a few months prior to the attacks on the U.S. I recall the report of a sick bin Ladin riding painfully off into the mountains on horseback a few days before the attacks began in Afghanistan, and that the same Dr. Pieczenik confirmed Ussamah bin Ladin’s death from kidney disease in January of 2002.

Perhaps.

Others, of course, claim bin Ladin to be alive and well, living in some assumed Graceland headquarters plotting his next big hit. I’m waiting for the al-Qai’da to state they have him held in stasis in some cryogenics chamber far below the surface of the Sahara.

If he did die in the bomb-showers at Tora Bora, it would take quite a mining engineer to supply anyone with the forensics required to identify what’s left of him. If he died in an accredited hospital of kidney failure, his remains may well have been spirited away, making a positive ID utterly impossible.

Dan