Should we take these vague Osama threats seriously?

[Philosoraptor]

They have become laughable long ago, do we take them seriously or do we just see them as the obligatory every third quarter vague message and yawn?

[ContraBass Black]

1. Yes! Absolutely!

The terrorists will get you if you don't!!!!!!!!!!



:P

[Master Mahon]

2. I think we need to categorize them.

We have to break them down in order by the Bin Laden that made them.

1. The tall and lanky one with a somewhat fair complexion and long, gray beard.
2. The short and hefty one with the dark complexion, and dark beard.
3. The average size one with kidney disease.
4. The one who wears Nike's all the time.
etc....
Pick the one you fear the most and worry about what he says! :+

[greyl]

3. Serious to a reasonable degree, yeah.

Since at least 1992 he's been involved in terrorism, and in '98 made a declaration of his evil intentions which Clinton felt a need to respond to.
Of course, osama isn't the only murderous nut on the planet either...

edit: Irrational denial that he exists is as ignorant as irrational fear.

[robinlynne]

4. I don't. too much to do trying to get our votes counted. I do worry about

the republicans though.

[Poll_Blind]

5. I think Osama bin Laden is still intent on destroying the United...

...States. So far, after 9/11, Bush has been doing such a good job of doing just that that I don't believe that Osama has felt it necessary and has made reference to that fact. He has focused most of his terror resources on other parts of the world. However, I do not underestimate that Osama has at least on sleeper cell in the United States which will be activated at the appropriate time.

  Let us not forget, the attack on 9/11 cost somewhere around $200,000 to execute. He has been trained by our CIA to fight superpowers (specifically the former Soviet Union) and knows just what to do to disable them. All he needs are willing participants, something the Iraq war has made sure there will be no shortage of.

  Unlike some here (and I'm not intending to imply I'm speaking to you, directly), I take Osama bin Laden's threats very seriously. He is a brilliant, well-financed, well-connected terrorist who has conglomerated a number of different terror organizations together (al-Quaeda means "the base" of which they are tentacles) and fostered a level of cooperation among these groups unseen previously.

  Osama also has a habit of releasing a statement shortly (usually a few weeks, sometimes longer) before a terror attack. While not every statement has been followed by an attack, IIRC, all attacks have been preceded by a statement.

PB

[sable302]

9. actually, I think more accurately, that

most of bin laden's statements have FOLLOWED Bush administration embarassments.

[Poll_Blind]

11. YES. Very good point. (and a word about voice-morphing tech)

  I presume that you are familiar with voice-morphing technology, it's recent breakthroughs (in the last ~5 years) and its potential application and misuse as a propaganda tool. I include the link for others who may not be as well-informed so they may understand the very real capabilities of those technologies and that sinister insinuations about the timing of Osama bin Laden's communications releases is not the stuff of tinfoil theories.

  Thanks again,

PB

[sable302]

14. I had not known anything about voice morphing

but I do know what I can see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears. Yesterday morning, when my wife and I found out about the SCOTUS ruling, I remarked that Bush is screwed, therefore I expect Bin Laden would show up by the end of the day.

Sure enough, just as planned.

[Poll_Blind]

18. You should read that article if you've got the chance, you will be...

...astounded. This is even pre-9/11, too!

PB

[greyl]

19. But, the bush administration embarassments are so frequent

that it would be impossible to cite a time that didn't follow one of them. (or preclude them)

[doc mercer]

6. Bin Laden

Out of respect to the CIA writers that put together this tape ... YES!!

[Master Mahon]

7. Ha

Exactly!
Most of the Bin Laden tapes have been officially debunked!
Especially those where he took responsiblity for 9/11.
He is no more a threat to the US or capable of destroying the US then people like Timothy McFey (Oklahoma Bombing).
Unless he has enough money to buy the Russian and Chinese Army I won't worry about him destroying us anytime soon, and probably not even then.

He and all Middle Eastern countries have hated Israel for 60+ years now.
They all support the Palestinians. Yet all the Palestinians have been able to do thus far is send an occassional suicide bomber into Israel.
Arab support hasn't even been sufficient enough to help them eat now that sources of aid have been cut off by the US and Israel.
Why hasn't Bin Laden in all his greatness and wealth helped Palestine?
Israel is a stones throw away yet he's done nothing there!

To think a cave dwelling old man is a threat of any consequence to the US or anyone else for that matter is patently absurd.
Blow up an embassy, well yes, McVey blew up a federal building.
But since the beginning of time, people like that have existed.
Japan and Germany each had armies far more powerful then the US before we entered the war and yet they could never touch us (excluding us allowing Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor)

Let's stop advancing the administration bull Sh_t propaganda about a boogey man who's going to eat us all up!

[bigendian]

8. Yes, and here is why.

The only similarity to Bush that bin Laden shares is he is a rich kid with a messiah complex.

After that, he has Bush out-classed.

He is patient. He observed how the president reacted to the Palestinian uprising in April 2001. When the violence on both sides spasmed to a greater degree than anytime in the past 30 years Bush was too busy with his tax cuts and "energy " policy. There was a marked lack of concern from the White House.
Clinton would have been out front calling for restraint from the Israelis and the Palestinians but Bush was too busy or too ignorant.

Bin Laden took advantage of this to paint himself as the savior of all Arabs while the West (Bush) was implicitly giving the green light to the Israeli military to do whatever the hell they wanted.

It is no coincidence that the attack came 6 months after that. The timing was perfect.

Like it or not, bin Laden has a vision for his "people". Bush has a vision for his corporate donors.

Bin Laden has a plan to drive us out of the Middle East and he hasn't lied about it. Bush has a plan to stay and it is premised on lies.

Bottom line: Bush is losing the War on Terror which allows bin Laden to "win".

I think we need a BIG change.

Need I go on?

[Poll_Blind]

10. No, you did a damn good job laying it out. From your handle...

...and from your ability to lay things out logically I'm assuming you've spent more than your fair share of time in Visual Studio? ;-)

PB

[bigendian]

12. Thanks.

But I don't know what that program is. My handle comes from "Gulliver's Travels" by Swift.

He understood human nature..and died in a madhouse IIRC.

[Poll_Blind]

13. Oh, heh heh..."Big endian" and "Little Endian" are ways of...

...referring to the way information is stored in computer memory. Interestingly I had no idea of the etymology of the term...thank you for the information! What a world, eh? LOL...

PB

[leesa]

15. bin Laden is dead, but there are plenty to follow I guess. These memos

from OBL are propaganda from BushCo however, to keep the Goldstein lie alive. It's crap.

[greyl]

20. If he's dead,

why wouldn't the bush admin claim a victory for the killing like they did with Zarqawi, and roll out a fresh troup of fake bogeymen?

(btw, the Goldstein conspiracy theory was born on right-wing sites)

[CanSocDem]

24. Without him....

...who they gonna blame????




.

[greyl]

25. Huh? You didn't follow. nt

[Posteritatis]

16. To a point, but only to a point

The man's not a fool; you don't survive two superpowers each expending some significant effort to take you out by being incompetent. If you give the Administration the benefit of the doubt to believe that Osama actually did plan the 9/11 attacks, get them through (admittedly porous) security and put the hurt on several major national landmarks - to say nothing of the embassy bombings awhile back and stuff - then you've got someone who's shown some capability, and who gave the US the first real hit on their home soil in some time. He's capable, he's determined, and he's shown that he can be effective in certain circumstances.

But!

9/11 took him two and a half years to plan and enact, and he mostly shot his bolt with it. While he's still around, probably at least pretending to coordinate stuff, al-Qaeda has been mostly dismantled, reduced to something that can only effectively pull off very localized actions - comparative pinpricks, minus a few successes since like Madrid. He can't stick his head out of whatever hole he's in at the moment for two long, because someone would take part of it off; most of what he can do at the moment is make ominous pronouncements, organize much MUCH more ad-hoc things, and so on. While he was a leader and coordinator before, now he's a figurehead and spokesperson. If he's still alive, he's lost a lot of his power.

So yeah. I don't think people should turn their back on him entirely (after all, he still kinda needs to get arrested and-or killed), dismissed as a bogeyman, etc. But they shouldn't see him as nearly as powerful or effective as he was seven or eight years ago. Effort spent on dealing with him now isn't confronting and defeating him; it's merely finishing him off. But even crippled as he is, he could probably still do some damage, and I think that has to be viewed with a certain wary respect.

[Bucky]

22. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Madrid was mostly done by locals

Like the London Underground attack, Madrid was the work of people marginalized by society (but not outright losers like the 9/11 hijackers or the recent Canadian plotters) who were inspired by, but not directed by, al Qaeda. They were locals, not sleeper cells. That was my understanding.

The idea of al-Qaeda as a finite organization is misleading. It's true that we nabbed or killed about half their leadership in Afghanistan and nabbed another quarer of them in operations since--mostly in the Pakistan area. But that 75% of their captured leadership was 75% of the extant leadership as of 2001. In the years since, a new generation of plotters and informal networks has assembled--motivated in large part by Bush's validation of bin Laden's vision of what the US intends in the Middle East.

I don't think al-Qaeda has slowed down at all. They've not done another September 11th scale event--I doubt that they can. But they've done a major job every year--Bali, Madrid, London--since their Taliban buddies fell. And that's not counting their ongoing contributions in the Iraqi shooting gallery.

Yes, I think al-Qaeda is something to be worried about. They're one of those problems that isn't going to just go away with time. I'm still more worried that our unelected fuckups are handling the problem in a way that makes it four or five times worse that it used to be.

[Posteritatis]

23. Not sure; I might do some looking into it

Of course, when you start using terms like "inspired" just about anything can be tied back to them, so I dunno.

Mainly wanted to address this point:

It's true that we nabbed or killed about half their leadership in Afghanistan and nabbed another quarer of them in operations since--mostly in the Pakistan area. But that 75% of their captured leadership was 75% of the extant leadership as of 2001. In the years since, a new generation of plotters and informal networks has assembled--motivated in large part by Bush's validation of bin Laden's vision of what the US intends in the Middle East.

You're right there - that the network(s) have this hydra thing going on and that roles are probably being re-filled. There may be as many people who are actually part of al-Qaeda (as opposed to part of an unrelated subsidiary organization tangentially related to something that misleadingly referrs to itself as al-Qaeda, not that I'm talking about Zarqawi types no that would be unthinkable cough cough) as there were in June of 2001, but the pre-war organization has still been gutted. You had a large group of competent, dedicated people who probably knew each other well and had been working together for years or decades; now you've got a large group of slightly to considerably less-experienced, dedicated people who probably don't know each other as well and have been working together much less openly for months, a couple of years at the outside. And, as you implied, there isn't a formal network anymore, in the sense that people can communicate and plan at their leisure anymore; Afghanistan just isn't safe for that anymore.

So the organization's still certainly there, and they're still dangerous, but a lot of them have been driven to ground and the surviving organization simply can't be as effective as it was when it had the open, explicit backing of an entire national government behind it. That provides some breathing room, at least, and certainly injures their remaining effectiveness profoundly.

[LSK]

17. unless Bin Ladin can control the entire Russian Nuclear arms system

There is no way he can destroy America. However he can make fools in charge of America destroy America out of 1. fear and 2. taking advantage of those living in fear

[lectrobyte]

21. You're thinking perhaps too literally. If he pulls us into an endless war

in the middle east that we can't afford, then I can't see why what happened to the USSR couldn't happen to the USA.