Still Not Buying the bin Laden Line

As Ron points out below, there are reasons to be skeptical of the authenticity of the latest bin Laden tape. Unlike Ron, I'm not 100% positive that bin Laden is pushing up daisies, but there seems to be ample grounds to question the authenticity of that tape. First of all, it showed up yesterday morning and our "intelligence" folks have already declared it to be "probably authentic" within 24 hours? My, my, but that's fast. And it certainly does seem to serve up exactly the type of pitch that the Bush administration desperately needs right now.

Polls show the GOP heading for a major disaster in the mid-term elections and the clock is running out on them. The "war on terror" is still the best card they have to play, though it's finally wearing thin with the majority of Americans. There's just too many things that sound a tad too convenient in this tape. Promising a new attack on American soil, with the scratchy voice of (allegedly) OBL threatening us might be the only way to scare Americans into giving up their fight against Bush's endless power grab. I'm also a bit cynical regarding how quickly the media took up the call of, "bin Laden is trying to drive a wedge between the American people and their government!"

During Scotty McClellan's last press briefing, he was fortunately knocked back against the ropes again when one reporter pointed out how he was yet again trying to tie Iraq to 9/11. I didn't get to see the briefing, and the transcript doesn't mention it, but I suspect this was our old friend Helen Thomas taking Scotty to task.

Q Why do you keep linking Iraq and 9/11 and so forth? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and you keep -- we started the war in Iraq. We brought the terrorists in, so-called.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think that's a misunderstanding of --

Q -- and 20 to 50 people are dying every day in Iraq.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think, one, that's a misunderstanding of the global war on terrorism that we are engaged in --

Q We invaded.

MR. McCLELLAN: Some people take a narrow view of the war on terrorism. The President recognizes --

Q Innocent Iraqis are paying the price.

MR. McCLELLAN: The President -- well, first of all, the Iraqi people, we have heard from many of them who have expressed their appreciation for the removal of a brutal and oppressive regime --

Q Many are dead. Thousands are dead.

MR. McCLELLAN: Second of all, Zawahiri, bin Laden's number two leader, has talked about how Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism. We know that the terrorists want to create a safe haven from which they can plan and plot attacks. The stakes are high in Iraq. And that's why it's critical that we prevail in Iraq, because it will be a major blow to the ambitions of the terrorists. They don't want us in the Middle East. The Middle East is a dangerous region of the world. It has been a breeding ground for terrorism, a breeding ground where people are --

Q They don't want a foreigner in their country.

I don't know what we're going to do when Helen finally retires. The WH press corps will, at that point, be reduced to nothing but a pack of fawning poodles.

Take this bin Laden tape with a grain of salt, folks. When something like this, which really looks like a gold mine for the embattled Bush administration, suddenly shows up at such an opportune time, there is more than ample ground to be suspicious. Yes... it could be authentic. It could also be an absolute fabrication. If so, it doesn't really matter who fabricated it. It's just an opportunity for BushCo to spin it from straw to political gold.