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Why would they say he's alive if he's decomposing?
2002-12-17
Glenn Reynolds points to this article debunking that Binny audiotape.
"The more I work on this, the more I'm confident that it's not him," says Hervé Bourlard, director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, one of the world's leading voice-recognition institutes.

Bourlard's conclusion — that the tape is probably the work of an imposter — caused a worldwide sensation on Nov. 29 and rekindled the mystery of whether bin Laden is dead or alive.

It also raised questions about U.S. intelligence, which declared the mystery solved by describing the audiotape, broadcast Nov. 12, as "genuine" and recently recorded.

Bourlard stresses he's no political analyst. Still, he wonders if U.S. officials have ulterior motives when they insist it's bin Laden's voice on the tape.
I can think of a number of reasons why we'd continue to pretend he's alive even if we know, for sure, beyond doubt, that he's a fine layer of carbon someplace or a frozen lump of meat in a locker in Langley. The most important reason: announce that he's dead, and 20 minutes later someone — Daschle, al-Gore, Falwell, the SF Chronicle — is going to opine that the War on Terror is over, we won, even though it wasn't an even fight and we cheated and it was all our fault, anyway. Time to go back to lock boxes, Britney's breasts, who killed Chandra and/or Jon Benet, and whether the police in [fill in the blank] are racist or only brutal.
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#2  Its likely that Al Queda has a contingency plan on who takes over if Binny is dead. By admitting we think he's alive we probably caused and increase in 'traffic' that we can moniter to figure out who is where.

The most reasonable explaination of the whole thing was the one that suggested the CIA released the tape for that very reason.
Posted by: Anonymous   2002-12-17 16:51:59  

#1  Bourland's theory on Iraq is wrong. Spreading the word that Binny lives actually gives rhetorical ammo to the 'sequentialists' who think (or at least claim to in order to advocate inaction) we shouldn't deal with Iraq until Binny is gone.

But it makes sense to err on the side of caution when issuing opinions on Binny's continued existence. As Fred says, it keeps people focused. It also avoids the potential for embarrassement should he pop up and provides a ready excuse for aggressive intervention in areas in which he is rumored to be.

BTW, did the government actually say that they authenticated the recording or did they just agree that Binny's voice was on it. It could be that the US assessment of the tape did not directly contradict the recent findings.
Posted by: John   2002-12-17 16:33:38  

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