Call me Captain Courageous, but the latest tape of Osama bin Laden doesn't scare me much. There he is with his Dickee Dee skullcap, a dead cat nailed to his face, and he's not moving around an awful lot, like -- maybe? -- they propped him up for the camera and got him to lip-synch the deal, though I note his lips aren't moving too much, either. E's turning a bit green round the edges, mate.
That smell of bad cabbage emanates not from al-Jazeera, but from the Iraqi government, which is crapping its collective bloomers with the thought that al-Qaeda has hitched its wagon to the soon-to-be-extinct Saddam.
I am cynical, but not that cynical. The exquisite timing of all this shrieks CIA, but the CIA isn't smart enough to time it correctly.
bin Ladin or his successors are. They're all going down together.