At the time of bin Laden’s first audio message, I wrote that I didn’t believe it

First, Al-Jazeera produces what is supposed to be a handwritten message from bin Laden, and now an audiotape, assessed by US authorities as ‘probably genuine’. If someone can smuggle a tape recorder into and out of whatever hole bin Laden is hiding in, why not a videocamera ? That would prove he’s alive, which seems to be the object of the exercise. I prefer the hypothesis that someone is producing spurious evidence of bin Laden’s survival and that the US is playing along, either because they’re the ones producing it, or for some other obscure motive. Of course, even if the evidence is spurious, bin Laden could still be alive.

Now bin Laden resurfaces, again without video, and sings in tune with Bush, saying that he’s arm-in-arm with Saddam or at least with the Iraqi people. This would certainly explain the first tape as “establishing character”. If it hadn’t been for that tape, no-one would believe that the current one was anything but a CIA forgery.

Unfortunately, we still can’t be absolutely sure that the tape isn’t genuine. After all, if he’s alive, bin Laden almost certainly wants war even more than Bush does. And, if he’s dead, the same would go for the surviving Al Qaeda leadership, who might also have produced such a tape.