Saad bin Laden Undead?

Thomas Joscelyn has an informative piece on Long War Journal you won't see in the mainstream news (most of whom are currently obsessed with the suicide of a gay college student or our government's apology for Democrats infecting poor Guatemalans with STDs back in the 40s):

According to Al Watan, Saad bin Laden, Osama’s son, and Saif al Adel, one of al Qaeda’s most senior military planners, were also part of the deal for Heshmatollah Attarzadeh. Both reportedly left Iran after receiving refuge there since late 2001.

Saad left Iran in 2008 and was reportedly killed in a US airstrike in northern Pakistan in 2009. But in conversations with the Long War Journal, US intelligence officials cautioned that Saad’s death has yet to be confirmed.

Al Qaeda typically releases martyrdom tapes when senior terrorists are killed. No such tape has been released for Saad, the officials pointed out.

Although Abu Ghaith, Saad bin Laden, Saif al Adel and other senior al Qaeda terrorists were reportedly under “house arrest,” it was a loose form of detention. “House arrest is a convenient cover for high-level meetings,” one US intelligence official explained.

For those keeping score, Saad was once killed in 2009 after either being released or escaping from Iranian house arrest (if he escaped Hollywood should find him and offer a movie). Like so many jihadies he seems to have a remarkable immune system.

A day after this column aired comes a new bin Laden tape featuring a warning about how climate change is impacting the Muslim world. Oddly enough, the keeper of his son railed about that very same thing at the Coopenhagen summit last year, and hinted again at the UN a few days ago by condemning US hegemony and capitalism as the main global culprit. And here we thought Shias and Sunnis couldn't work together.

Meanwhile Obama's magical influence on our world rep seems to be wearing off with the moderate Pakistanis. It's truely a bizarroworld when we have to depend on truck convoys across Khyber pass or through Baluchistan to maintain our military presence in Afghanistan. Oh well, the AfPak strategy is obviously far too complex and nuanced for hayseed tea baggers to understand, much less more cultured commentators. But most can understand the simple fact that if our enemy is on one side of the line we can shoot at them, but if they run across to the other side we can't, that such a war is neither sustainable or winnable. Something must be done--we're running out of money.