Dead or Alive? - That is the 25 million dollar question as yet another audio tape purporting to be of the terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden surfaced recently on the Al-Jazeera television network. I still think he's dead. I say enough already with the fuzzy-sounding audiotape routine. It seems like every month or two we hear some new reports of OBL's disembodied, purported voice coming from out of nowhere.

Even if OBL is sick or recovering from injuries, his legitimate appearance would buoy the terrorists immensely. And it would be easy to do. All you need is a regular consumer-type video camera, and a newspaper or television news broadcast to prove the date. But there was no video on the first anniversary of 9-11 or at any other time, and the few tapes issued since the last legitimate tape are suspect, because they didn't have any proof of a date. We know that the last video we saw of him in November 2001 revealed a useless arm, or at least an arm that he never moved, and he was drawn looking and colorless. He looked very ill at that time and I would imagine that he is worse now, and probably dead.

If he is alive, why doesn't he make a tape of himself singing holiday songs to his goat..."On the first day of Ramadan, my Mullah gave to me, an AK-47 in a date tree."