Is this an I-tunes release?

The mill for the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy theorists in all of us, are currently being plowed by the Usama Bin Laden tape, and the political message and entreaty for us, the servants of the Great Satan.  It is second nature.  (He has a black beard, I see and hear.)

Remember when Henry Kissinger, goddamned Henry Freaking Kissinger, was tapped to lead the investigation into 9/11?  Or the rules that Bush set for his testimony, sit with Big Dick Cheney — nothing in the record?  Those were the moments of pause, when I myself felt obliged to fall into that particular abyss.  Or at least let the conspiracy theorists go wild without any objection.

Beyond the taunting of simply attempting to thrust his presence into our mindspace, I can never make heads or tails of Usama’s purpose in saying what he says.  Either he is moving straight ahead with what he considers well-heeled arguments or he is trying to affect a certain political response in our corner of the world.   Richard Clarke claims that agents in the CIA watched the eve-of-the-2004 election taped greeting and greeted it with the analysis of “He wants Bush to win.”  Indeed, Bin Laden probably shoved Bush into his margin of victory, with a message that was red meat for right-wing Republicans… “Why he sounds just like Michael Moore!

I cannot offer up that analysis for that tape, and the right-wing intelligensia and pseudo-intelligentsia cannot offer up that familiar refrain for the latest.  If they want to glom onto the Noam Chomsky reference and the calls to enact Kyoto, I can only glide onto the trumpeting of “Islamofascism”‘s low tax rate and good moral groundings.  The tactical idea of acting as a parody of some left-wing figure falls to shreds.  He seems to be covering his bases, from his fuzzy perspective of how American (and onto “The West”) political discourse moves.

So, in the next tape, I want Bin Laden to make a direct plea to the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists.  The ones who believe Bin Laden is an apparation, a US government creation.  Then we can really get post-modern on our asses!

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