UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIM:
Saudi Police, Via AP France--
OSAMA BIN LADIN DEAD

UPDATE... Beginning to throw caution to the wind now. Think this might be legit.

I'm linking to the Free Republic link, as their link is in the original French. Obviously, all unconfirmed, the Saudi police would have no obvious reason to know, etc.

Supposedly died August 23rd, in Pakistan, of typhoid fever.

Here's the translation, by web translator:

Osama bin Laden has died, according to the L'Est republicain AP France ^ | September 23, 2006

PARIS (AP) - The head of terrorist network al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, has died, according to information from the Saudi police, transmitted by the Directorate-General of External Services (DGSE), and reported on the Lorraine daily newspaper L'Est republicain in its Saturday edition.

"According to a commonly reliable source, the Saudi police believes that Osama Bin Laden has died," said a September 21st confidential note from the DGSE classified as "defense." L'Est republicain will publish it in its Saturday edition. The note, specified the daily newspaper, would be re-printed "un-edited."

According to the note to be published by the L'Est republicain, the Saudi police "would try to obtain more details, in particular the location of the burial site, and then announce the news officially." The DGSE specified in the note that no "jihadist Internet site has for the moment been made aware of the death of Osama bin Laden."

According to the note, "the head of al Qaeda may have fallen victim to a strong case of typhoid fever while in Pakistan, on August 23, 2006," and may have died within a matter of days.

The French news organization transmitted this note to the President of France, to the Defense and Prime Minister and the Ministers of the Interior Department on September 21, according to the regional daily newspaper, which added that a prior note transmitted on September 19th to the leaders of France explained why the Saudi police "sought to confirm the death of Osama bin Laden."

Also grabbed from Free Republic:

What would we do without CNN experts?

(That's an old screencap, by the way.)

If True... I wonder if Bush actually was on the verge of announcing the death of Osama for that much-hyped press conference (which turned out to be entirely about the terrorist detainees and the need for clarification regarding laws against coercion).

It could be they were almost confident to make the statement, but stopped at the last moment for lack of positive evidence.

Eh... dying of natural causes is hardly satisfying anyway,

Question the Timing BIG TIME: Now, if my theory is right, the Bush Administration has of course sort of known about this for a while (for at least three weeks) but hasn't been able to confirm it, and thus hasn't been able to announce it. But they've known there might be some good news on the way.

With that in mind, check out this post at NRO's Sixers, culled from the very leftwing and very inane Raw Story (though it cites, in turn, Newsmax):

According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an "October surprise" before the midterm elections.

"In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an 'October surprise' to help win the November congressional elections," reports Ronald Kessler for Newsmax.

Ahem.

I think the news might have slipped out. Just a few weeks ago Jonah Goldberg stated, for reasons at the time I didn't quite get, that he thought Osama bin Ladin was dead.

Not to impugn Jonah. Maybe he just had a hunch. I've had lots of them myself, though few panned out.

I thought all this news out of Pakistan was kind of odd, suggesting maybe the situation had changed.

So maybe Jonah similarly just guessed.

Thanks to JackM for that.

Oh lordy, the cries of "I question the timing" now.

But it's actually not particularly helpful poltically, is it?

Osama died of natural causes and so Bush did not actually kill him (though, of course, by making him hide in caves, he probably contributed to his lack of medical attention and thus to his demise), and without Osama to kick around anymore, so to speak, the American public might give the GOP a Churchillian boot out of office. Despite the fact, of course, that there are thousands and thousands more of these psychopaths.

Six Good Adequate Reasons To Believe This Bastard's Rotting In Hell:

None of these is a good reason on its own. Together, though, they do suggest that this time it's for real. Not strongly. But enough for those who want to believe. (And I'm among them.)

1. The Article Itself. It's not beyond plausibility that the Saudi police may know a little bit about Osama bin Ladin. Why, I've even heard Osama might have allies in the Saudi government!

2. Pakistan's Strange and Sudden Announcement It Was Closing Its Border To US Incursions, And The Signing of a "Peace Deal" With Taliban Remnants and Tribal Jihadis In Early September. This went down Sept. 2 or so.

It had the feeling, I thought, of Pakistan telling us "Contract filled and finished." They'd done their part; they would do no more.

3. Musharraf's Declaration That The US Had Threatened To Bomb It "Into The Stone Age" If It Did Not Cooperate. Although some said this was "old news," I sure didn't think it was. I'd known, vaguely, we'd threatened Pakistan somehow. I didn't know we'd threaten to bomb them "into the stone age" if they did not assist us against their client and creature, the Taliban.

Why would Musharraf make such a dramatic announcement now?

Perhaps he felt he had to get out ahead of a coming story-- a story that would be very unpopular with the people who've tried to kill him several times. A defense offered in advance -- I had to help them stalk your Cult Leader, or otherwise they'd have bombed us to hell.

4. Bush's Strangely Overhyped Press Conference. Maybe this is just me trying to save face. But when the WH put out the word for all conservatives to watch the September 6th press conference, noting that 9/11 families would be in attendance, and that there would be "big news" announced there, a lot of us got the crazy idea that there would be big news announced there. Yes, I speculated that Osama bin Ladin was dead (incorporating reason two, above, as a reason for hope).

Yes, Bush did make news that day. But a lot of us felt a bit underwhelmed, after we'd been juiced up to expect... more.

It might be that Bush was prepared to announce Osama bin Ladin's death on that day, but was restrained by advisors who felt there simply wasn't sufficient proof to make such a dramatic statement.

And so the speech became about what had been intended to be a secondary matter or, perhaps, the next day's intended speech.

5. Rove's Alleged Promise of a Coming "October Surprise." Sort of speaks for its damn self, doesn't it? If Rove heard about this -- and of course he had -- he knew it was only a matter of time before there was either confirmation (discovery of hte body) or at least a news source reporting it.

6. Bush's Recent Statement That He Wasn't Terribly Concerned By Osama bin Ladin. I want to thank a new troll for spamming my threads with this. I can't find the quote, but apparently Bush recently said he just didn't consider Osama bin Ladin a top priority:

FOXNEWS HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

FRED BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.

This may be his half-assed effort to reveal while concealing what he knows, or at least what he believes -- that there's little point looking for Osama, as he's probably already dead. He's been advised not to get in front of the story and say "Osama's dead" before confirmation, but he's got a suspicion he is.

True, he's said this sort of thing before. But he may have said that sort of thing in the same situation -- when he suspected bin Ladin was dead, but couldn't prove it.

OSAMA BIN LADIN DEAD&bodytext= UPDATE... Beginning to throw caution to the wind now. Think this might be legit. I'm linking to the Free Republic link, as their link is in the original French. Obviously, all unconfirmed, the Saudi police would have no obvious...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 02:26 AM

| Access Comments