Bin Laden, live or memorex?

Osama peeped out of his cave long enough today to pass another cassette tape to an al Jazeera runner. Nothing sensational--the tape is full of the same tired litany calling for the brave Mujahadeen to rise up and kill everyfrigginbody in the west, basically because we haven't converted fast enough or died yet.

But as Austin Bay points out the tape contained some curious political calculations, such as calling on a jihad against people trying to stop genocide in Darfur. He even managed to tick off Hamas:

Responding to the tape, Hamas spokesman Sam Abu Zuhri said Hamas has "a different ideology" than that of al Qaeda.

Side note--anyone notice that since Hamas has become politically legitimate they now bristle at being called terrorists? That might be a good thing.

So, was the tape real? It certainly contained references to current events, such as the elections in Palestinia and even the Mohammed cartoons, with very little about Iraq since they haven't quite devolved into the planned civil war yet. But isn't it strange that as soon as one of these things pops out the 'intelligence community' is johnny on the spot to say, "yep that's bin Laden alright". You'd think we'd occasionally see a fake.

What about the rest of the world? Is the US intelligence apparatus the only deciding judge on bin Laden tapes? For example, we rarely hear the government of Brazil or Canada countering these claims. Surely they have some electronic techo-capabilities.

Add that to the fact we haven't seen a video of the bearded one in awhile and it almost suggests the CIA is making these things in the basement at Langley. Besides, according to Michael Ledeen bin Laden died in Iran last year.

I realize this all sounds impossible, since with all the patriot leakers working at Langley surely someone would have leaked it to the Times long ago. But if we are creating bin Laden in the laboratory one certainly might ask, "why?"

To win the war.

AQ can hardly announce he's dead without producing a body or giving themselves away. If Ledeen was correct about Iran harboring him (or his corpse) they could hardly give that up, either. The CIA is practically unfettered here, since anyone popping up to deny the tapes immediately becomes a suspect. That would also include bin Laden himself, since he can't realistically make a tape claiming his own tapes are fake because nobody would trust any future releases.

Yep, the CIA could do a lot of damage to the cause of worldwide Jihad by faking the tapes. Would they?