Were the Bin Laden film fakers trying to get caught?

[jmowreader]

I awake this morning to find there is credible evidence that the Bin Laden video is not all it seems. Especially the "frozen" parts of it.

I can think of several groups out there who might fake an Osama video:

1. Al Qaeda. Osama is reported to be in ill health, and he doesn't exactly have the safest job in the world. It's completely possible that he's dead--either of his own ill health, because the US military bombed the building he was in, because he blew himself up (maybe al Qaeda works like Amway, and they make the leadership go out and blow shit up every once in a while so they don't get disconnected from the work) or because one of the three thousand Number Two Men decided he was tired of being just Number Two. Whichever. It would NOT be to al Qaeda's benefit for the world to think Osama's dead, though, so every once in a while they gin up an Osama tape and send it to the White House.

2. Some Other Terrorist Group. Al Qaeda's not the only game in town, although Bush seems to think they are. If I was an Evil Islamic Terrorist Leader, I'd be whippin' up all the Osama videos I could. Every time I mailed one to the White House, the world would focus on al Qaeda and not me; this would let me do my work in relative peace and comfort.

3. A Nation That Likes To Watch Shrub Go Off Half Cocked. I'm Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I'm President of Iran and I think George Bush is an imbecile. But it's funny as shit to watch Bush when he's hit with an al Qaeda communique, so since there hasn't been one in a while I called Iran State Television and had them make one. Which, of course, I mailed to the White House.

4. A Nation That Has Evil Intent Toward The US And Its Allies. I'm Kim Jong Il. I'm president-for-life of North Korea and I was dropped on my head as a child. (He was. And then he got into auto racing and hit his head in a crash, which made him worse.) I would really like to annex South Korean soil down to...oh, say Uijongbu, since we need the land for farming. But I need a diversion to get the eyes of the West off my little venture. Osama works better than just about anything else, so we'll use him.

5. Shrub. Nothing is going right in Iraq and most of the country is talking about the need to at least partially withdraw. This Shrub doesn't want to happen because we haven't annexed all the oil yet. So he needs "proof" we need to stay, and Osama always worked before.

Now here's the problem: Making a credible fake Osama video isn't that hard to do. They can use nonlinear video editors to take a real Osama video and copy/paste footage into the places where it's needed. They can use advanced Hollywood makeup techniques to turn a man of the proper size into a good likeness of Osama. They could even go to cities where large numbers of Arabic men reside and find one whose facial structure is similar to Osama's. These guys froze the frame when they needed to add "extra" dialog. NOT credible!

And then they used terms Osama himself wouldn't have used. Once again, not credible.

The only thing I can think here is that they just needed the "impact" of an Osama video for a few days--long enough to divert America's attention from some kind of bad news about them. They knew they'd get caught.

The thing I'm really afraid of...and this truly scares the shit out of me...is that one of these days they're going to have a credible terrorist threat that's carried through to an attack, and no one will pay attention to it because the administration cried wolf so many times.

[jobycom]

1. He could have faked it himself.

Just to throw in another scenario. What if he were injured in some attack, and badly disfigured. Maybe even lost his voice. It seems there was a rumor of that at some point. So he wants to release tapes, but doesn't want people to know how badly he's injured. So they piece together stuff the best they can.

Or maybe he recorded a tape and had to edit stuff that might give away his location--background noises, for instance.

Or, the tape's main purpose is to say "I told you so" after the next attack. So he puts out a tape with built-in flaws so that people won't trust it. Then, he pulls off his attack, and then the tape becomes chillingly confirmed.

Just thoughts. I haven't seen the tape or read a transcript, I'm just going off your analysis of its fakery. No matter the truth of the tape, I'm nervous about tomorrow. Any scenario supports the idea of an impending event, from whoever created the tape.

[robcon]

2. The hard part is determining the target audience.

Who, outside of the U.S. and perhaps Western Europe, cares about mortgage crashes in the U.S., tax rates/spending in the U.S. and Democrats in power in the U.S. Congress?

So if the target was the U.S., what was he trying to do - or goad the * administration to do?

[jmowreader]

3. You were around when we still had Soviets as the bogeyman, correct?

A lot of what we did to each other was designed to send the other side off half-cocked chasing shadows.

Let's narrow this down to three possible scenarios:

1. Someone's actually going to attempt an attack. I see this as the least likely alternative--if I was going to go out and blow something up, I'd do it and THEN claim responsibility. (Or not. Terrorists don't seem to be taking credit for their attacks as much as they used to.) I wouldn't announce it around the world, partly because sneak attacks are the hallmark of terrorism but mostly because I'd probably get caught before I could run the attack.

2. This really was Osama, or his followers, and they're trying to use terror alert fatigue (where you make false alarm after false alarm until people quit listening, and then run a real attack--the American people are almost there but their own government did it to them) to "soften up the beachhead" for a real attack.

3. This was our government trying to deflect attention from something like the Petraeus report--in fact, it probably WAS the Petraeus report. A very sizable number of Americans think the report is going to be bullshit no matter what it says, just because Petraeus has been coopted by Bush. (And now the revelations that Petraeus was a player in the "mobile bio lab" bullshit have emerged, and people are even less likely to believe anything he says. They needed something to "justify" our stay in Iraq, and Osama's always been reliable.

[RainDog]

4. Faked

I think the video is a pastiche. The screen freezes, as others have mentioned here, whenever he talks about current events or agrees with democrats.

I also think that whoever made the video did it precisely because of the petraeus report. If you remember, the Bush administration always had a high alert suddenly when they wanted to cover for some scandal or bad news or whenever they wanted to get some totalitarian piece of legislature passed. And I include the Anthrax attacks in that -- and funny how, like that attack, this video targets democrats by the propaganda ruse (for U.S. audiences) of obl "agreeing" with democrats.

I do not dismiss the idea of a terrorist attack in the near future. however, I think that the terror currently forced upon the American people is the fear that those in power use to keep Americans submissive.

[thecrow]

5. it also denounces Noam Chomsky

and that CIA book author (Sheurer ... sp?)by endorsing them.

OBL is a right wing operative!