Will the Real Osama Stand Up?

It took a few minutes to sink in – the new tape of Osama Bin Laden that was shown and analyzed on MSNBC’s Keith Oberman show on Friday, September 7, 2007. Perhaps the most striking thing was his black beard. From all accounts, what sets OBL apart from others, even his most devout followers, is his devotion to Islam*. While Islam allows the trimming of the moustache, it calls for fully growing the beard without trimming it. Coloring it, would be out of the question for OBL.

What was said was even more suspicious. OBL was said to have been surprised that the democrats were not able to bring the troops home. The intended message by ‘OBL’ was that Democrats may have House majority, but they are as impotent as they have always been and clearly the Cheney/Bush team are the emperors.

I also heard that he endorsed reading two books by American authors, one of them Noam Chomsky’s American Imperialism [“Hegemony or Survival; America’s Quest for Global Dominance” 2004] – I have to wonder how ‘OBL’ being on the run and being pursued by the world’s greatest military, the only superpower, and while hiding in a cave with a bounty of $50m on his head, got the chance to enjoy this marvelous and enlightening book? Or was this a smear campaign to make the Americans relate Chomsky to al-Qaeda? Here is a brilliant intellectual who speaks to the truth and spills the beans on American foreign policy, what better way to destroy his reputation than to have America’s number one enemy, the leader of al-Qaeda, endorse his work?

And finally, as judge slams down parts of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional, it would seem that Mr. Bush has found a way to remind the American public that they should remain petrified. Nothing intimidates a nation better than fear, not even ignorance. Fear will allow more liberties to be taken away, after all, Osama is coming back – full, trimmed black beard and all.