2002 all over again

What, did I just go to sleep and wake up back in 2002?  First we have a modestly exaggerated threat of a pandemic — not SARS but this Swine Flu — and now I see this headline:

Pakistani leader: Bin Laden ‘may be dead’ — or not

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s president said Monday his intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden may be dead, but he added there is no proof. Other Pakistani officials and a U.S. counterterrorism official said they thought the al-Qaida chief is alive.
Money Shot.

“We continue to believe that bin Laden is alive,” said the U.S. official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.

Of course, there is no proof of this.  AND SO…

Zardari added that his country’s intelligence agencies “obviously feel that he does not exist anymore,” but he didn’t explain how or when they reached that conclusion, and quickly qualified his comment by saying bin Laden “may be dead.”
“That’s not confirmed. We can’t confirm that,” he said. “It’s still in between fiction and fact.”

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, appearing later Monday with his visiting British counterpart at a news conference, seemed surprised when a reporter asked about Zardari’s remarks.

All very uninteresting, I’d say.  But we’ve been about here before.

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