You may recall that he was widely believed to be dead for several years after 9/11. I therefore take this report with reserve. In any case, if he is dead, the jihad will continue. It is not based on the charismatic power of any single leader, but on an ideology.
"Bin Laden believed dead: report," from Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:
A newspaper has quoted a French secret service report as saying Saudi Arabia is convinced Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.The French regional newspaper, L'Est Republicain, has printed what it says is a copy of the report, dated September 21.
It says the report was shown to French President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France's Interior and Defence Ministers on the same day.
"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," the document said.
"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of Al Qaeda was a victim while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very serious case of typhoid, which led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."
The report, stamped with a "confidential defence" label and the initials of the French secret service, says Saudi Arabia first heard the information on September 4 and is waiting for more details before making an official announcement.
And also from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph): France orders probe into bin Laden death report leak
Yah, the Al Saud and Al Sheikh's ...good to be convinced they're convinced. Gag reflex interrupts further typing.
Being dead is an excellent witness protection program.
I think Bin Laden will die of old age at the rate things are going.
Meanwhile, here's a useful analysis of Musharraf's motivations and calculations based on his latest meeting with Bush:
http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers20%5Cpaper1962.html
As we can see, there's significantly more to the General's pronouncements than meets the eye.
I just heard this same report on Fox News and the first thing that came to my mind was that drone photo of the recent al Qaida funeral with 190 top a-Q leaders in attendance. I thought it quite bold that so many would congregate in the open like that, and figured it must have been someone very important. Could there be a connection?
For some reason, I'm not as skeptical at this report as I have been all the others.
Ace has a good rundown of why this all makes sense, reading between the lines of other things going on right now.
I can see in my minds eye this horrible skinny frail and long medieval grey bearded man humping away numerous young virgins and then I think, was all the savagery and murder he is responsible for, just for this?
The mind boggles.
One word: bullshit.
the tallest man in afganistan/pakistan, is dead, it matters not. his ideas live on among his murderous kind. although l would love to see him hung, shot, quartered and either eaten by pigs and wolves or cremated for all the suffering he had brought among his own people and most importantly non muslims, l think like mohummad , bin laden will die an old man in his bed. osama such a brave man in a cave, sending out fools to their deaths, will reincarnate into a pig.
Last week the Australian Fed.Police send out emails warning anyone who is receiving messages about Bin Ladens death in his email account not to open them, as they contain a new malicious virus to destroy the computers harddisc... wonder, wonder...
QUOTE:
Subject: Australian Federal Police warning
BRISBANE OFFICE
Tel +61(0) 7 32221347 Ext 17347 Fax +61(0) 7 32221219
www.afp.gov.au
PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE
Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged are being sent and the moment that you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be able to fix it!
If you get an email along the lines of "Osama Bin Laden Captured"
or "Osama Hanged" don't open the attachment.
This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe, but mainly in the US and Israel.
Be considerate & send this warning to whomever you know.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
"Invitation" regardless of who sent it.
It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard disc C of your computer.
This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list, that is why you should send this e-mail to all your contacts.
It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called "invitation", though sent by a friend, do not open it and shut down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.
cosmicAvenger,
I received the same warning the other day, but it turns out that it is a hoax. Seems it has been around for a while too. Here's link to the McAfee site on the "Olympic Torch":
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=98893
How did he get typhoid? Typhoid is a communicable disease with only humans as vectors. He comes into contact with almost nobody. That is one of the advantages of living in a cave like a hermit, you live forever because communicable diseases never get to meet you.
I wonder if this story broke after Bush said he would go after bin laden in Pakistan if he knew he was there.
Wait and see if the reports are true. The fact that the french government is not dementing the reports right away is in and of itself an important clue, I believe.
Typhoid is a disease caused by food or water contaminaed by human fecal matter. It is an e-coli like disease. For all you Muslim readers out there, fecal matter is a polite word for shit.
How ironic that Bin Laden dies from a disease that modern sanitary engineering has virtually eliminated from the West. That is if he is dead.
This is not the way for a brave, stalwart defender of Islam to kick the bucket. One of the symptoms of any e-coli type bacterium is diarrhea, and I imagine lots of it. If it's true, it is halarious. He must have gotten some baaaad spinach.
I'm with August 22nd. The timing of this announcement is suspect. Once Bush said he would enter Pakistan to get Bin Laden, a move for which there is precedent (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/007173.php)following reports of "Osama Bin Laden escaped to Kashmir from Afghan-Pak border region of Waziristan"http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006944.php?, it appears awful convenient to have the most wanted terrorist rumored dead.
Typhoid? Give me a break.
Typhoid? Give me a break. Posted by justamomof4.
Typhoid is rather common out there in Islamland and other undeveloped parts of the world. If someone was going to make up a story that BL is dead, I'm sure that they would think up something more glamorous than typhoid.
Interesting that the Saudis contacted the French authorities about Bin Lousy. If the French are involved, there is a twist in it somewhere...
Toss the BS flag, he is probably fine, it is hard to destroy evil. This would be the best news for us though. A kill/capture would make him a martyr and therefore a “hero”. If we arrested him the entire muslim world would demand his release. Naturally there would be worldwide riots and the ever-present violence and demands. Kill him and he becomes a mythical warrior figure holding out against overwhelming odds, in a perverted take on the Robin Hood legend. The rich man who gave it all away to live in a cave and fight the great Satan. I believe he is in a palatial palace living large, his stupid drones live in caves. Dying of a common disease gasping for his last breath would be my choice for this dog. It sort of makes his so called historic struggle a non event.
This gives new meaning, and a new application, to Mark Twain's well-known witticism about "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Reports of Bin Laden's death, or reports about his life, that is his whereabouts, are endowed with a significance that they do not possess. His life, his death, matter far less than breathless reporters, and royalty-receiving writers (how many books have there been about Bin Laden, The Life of Bin Laden, Inside Bin Laden, The Hunt for Bin Laden, Understanding Bin Laden, Bin Laden's Table-Talk, The Weltanshauung of Osama Bin Laden, Bin Laden The Family Man, Bin Laden As I Knew Him, Bin Laden This, Bin Laden That.
But he is only one figure, no doubt mediagenic, and fun to write about. But is Bin Laden necesary to Al Qaeda? Is Al Qaeda necessary to the world-wide Jihad, which consists not only of the thousand different, far larger terrorist groups, all over the place? And are those terrorist groups the only part of Jihad that Infidels need worry about? What if there were no terrorism, what if there had never been an attack on the World Trade Center -- would there not still be the insidious effect of the "wealth" weapon that funds mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings? Would there not still be the carefully planned campaigns of Da'wa, and the unplanned campaigns, conducted by Muslims wherever they attempt to inveigle the naive into accepting an Islam that they present, carefully bowdlerized until the recruit has signed up, and it is too late? Would there not still be the steady spread of Muslim population within the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, deep behind those borders which Islam teaches them to regard as enemy lines?
The significance of Bin Laden's life, and Bin Laden's death, has been greatly exaggerated. .
IrishEi, that's exactly what entered my mind too.
OBL's funeral in Afghanistan (undoubtedly they would take him back there to bury him) and we wouldn't fire on them. It was reported that it was 'probably' the funeral of some mid-level Taliban figure. Yeah right. It was certainly more important than that. I'm not saying it was OBL but it wouldn't surprise me.
No wonder we're losing....
Alexon,
Agreed. But perhaps they did not fire on the funeral gathering because they want to go back there to dig up some DNA and confirm. Who knows? History will tell.
Hugh is right. Bin Laden is insignificant in the grand scheme of things and his death will change nothing but political talking points.
I read the news today oh, boy
About a muslim man who made the grave
And though the news was rather glad
Well, I just had to laugh
Only the good die young.
Why don't we go check it out for ourselves and meet the Indian army halfway ... let's go in and have a look around the caves.
IrishEi,
"Agreed. But perhaps they did not fire on the funeral gathering because they want to go back there to dig up some DNA and confirm. Who knows? History will tell.
Hugh is right. Bin Laden is insignificant in the grand scheme of things and his death will change nothing but political talking points."
I completely agree that Bin Laden is beside the point. What I wanted is for all the other gathered Taliban/al Qaeda type minions there (even if not there for a Bin Laden funeral) to be sent packing to paradise. I could care less if it was Bin Laden's funeral per-se; It appeared to be some higher-up Taliban/al Qaeda being shoveled over, which meant that there were likely 'high value' LIVE targets in attendance.
We need to stop fighting with one arm tied behind our back. That doesn't mean we have to stoop to attacking civilians etc. like they do, but it does mean when we see their fighters gathering we need to STRIKE, funeral or no funeral. They say there was a village just out of the picture. Well, I've seen where those predator drones can hit a moving car with a missle (like the one hit in Yemen a couple years ago). So if they can hit a moving car they can certainly hit the middle of
that stationary funeral service without affecting the surrounding area too much.
Again, how many additional coalition soldiers will die because the command there wouldn't pull the trigger when it had them in sights?
They are playing with your minds folks.
If my hunch is anything to go by there will be these rumours, nothing said by Al Qaeda about Bin Laden, everyone will slowly come to the conclusion that he is dead, there will be feelings of victory.
Then Al Jazeera will release a video of Bin Laden referring to events after his death was announced and looking as large as life and as poisonous as the hell to which he is headed.
He's the walking dead anyway.
Just to put this story into its satirical perspective, typhoid is a disease that runs three weeks which is easily cured with simple anti-biotics.
This story would have us believe that a man who supposedly has amassed an army of educated terrorist cells planted all over western Europe and America, has gotten his hands on weapons of all kinds, and has even managed to get his hands on a nuclear device or two, has nonetheless, we are led to believe, failed to get his hands on some anti-biotics from a pharmacy.
Yes, indeed. Bin Laden is dead. No need for Bush to go make a mess in Pakistan now.
Bin Laden death reports are becoming like those doubts about Hitler's fate and the death of Elvis. Even if the sob is indeed dead his minions will continue his bloody work. Too bad the US can't get his body in any event. Feeding it to those reviled pigs would be sweet justice.
Bin Laden death reports are becoming like those doubts about Hitler's fate and the death of Elvis. Even if the sob is indeed dead his minions will continue his bloody work. Too bad the US can't get his body in any event. Feeding it to those reviled pigs would be sweet justice.
Bin Laden death reports are becoming like those doubts about Hitler's fate and the death of Elvis. Even if the lord of the crazies is indeed dead his minions will continue his bloody work. Too bad the US can't get his body in any event. Feeding it to those reviled pigs would be sweet justice.
Unless knowledge is confirmed, assume he is alive. If that is wrong and he is giving his account to God, we are better off .If really still alive, it won't be a shock to see him again, if you already think he is.
Think if Hitler would of survived the fall of Germany. Then, ten years later we find him still alive with nukes. The shock would shake many. Panic, fear, nothing good can come of it.
The same goes for all like him who have the "rock star" status.
Until proof is found, assume he lives.