UPDATE ~ 4:33pm EDT: ABC News has also now obtained a transcript of the OBL video. In it, he rants about global warming, taxes, Democrat control, the re-election of George Bush, mortgages and he goes so far as to herald Noam Chomsky.
The full transcript can be obtained here from the ABCNews.com website.
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The Blotter over at ABCNews.com is reporting that there is a new video tape from alQaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
What's really interesting to me isn't the fact that there's a new tape prior to the anniversary of September 11th. It's the fact that Osama bin Laden has apparently discovered Just For Men hair coloring.
This picture is from ABCNews.com:
Is this guy so vain to start coloring the gray out of his beard now that he's 50?!?! Somehow, I just don't think so.
Richard Clarke (yes...that Richard Clarke) has another theory:
"It does look oddly like he is wearing a false beard," Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official and now ABC News consultant, said. "If we go back to the tape three years, he had a very white beard. This looks like a phony beard that has been passed on."
The "phony beard" may be an important clue as to where bin Laden is hiding, according to Clarke.
"One place where a beard would stand out would be southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia," Clarke told ABC News. "No one's thought he was there, but that is an environment where most men, Muslim men don't have beards."
OK...I can buy that, I guess. If I apply Occam's Razor, though, isn't it possible that it's not a new tape? We've been wrong about other stuff, what if we're wrong about that?
I'm just sayin'...
Regardless of the tape's age, the Media Spin Machine is giving OBL and alQaeda exactly what they want: face time.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
