At virtually the same time ABCNews' Brian Ross was confirming, without question, that coercive techniques work, Keith Olbermann was claiming "torture" never works through his sock-puppet guest.

Olbermann Watch has sliced and spliced the two nearly-contemporaneous segments together to present Keith Olberman Vs. Cold Hard Reality.

Final score: Cold Hard Reality 51, Keith Olbermann 0. By quarter:

CHR: 17 10 14 10

KO: 0 0 0 0

And note, Cold Hard Reality was playing with its second string throughout the entirety of the fourth quarter. BOO-YAH!!! Cold Hard Reality's running back, Verified Facts, was en feugo!!!

Goddamnit, I took Keith Olberman and the +11.5 points. Why the hell am I always such a sucker for a big point spread?

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (64)
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

As you predicted. Didn't take too long.

If Osama is dead we should declare VICTORY!

The war on terror is over. Bring the troops home. Mission accomplished. Parades in the streets.

Democrats should be jumping all over this as a way to end this "war" against a tactic.

Question: If it's not really a "war," as the sneer-quotes indicate, why are they so opposed to it? Why do they call themselves anti-war? Shouldn't it be, at best, anti-"war"?

Perhaps they're really just annoyed we're not fighting hard enough for this to be a real war. So maybe we should really give Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Sunni terrorists what's what. Will that make them happy?

Of course, it wouldn't be DU without conspiracy theories:

7. That Bin Laden "dies from typhoid" seems like such a "wag the dog" cover story. I don't think the French created that story - they simply "intercepted" it (which the CIA probably made sure of).

Dying from a disease is a non-violent death - it's easy to fake. No bombs go off near your asset (OBL). No accidents happen - no cover actions for the cover story need take place which could endanger your asset. All you have to do is say he died of disease X (in this case, typhoid, a disease common in pakistan).

So they simply whisk him off to some safe house for a few months - give him a make over (including cosmetic surgery) and the "Osama bin Laden" we all knew of is officially dead. The man formerlly known as Osama gets a new identity, a huge bank account, and lives happily ever after.

It's amazing. They believe the CIA is conniving to help keep bin Ladin alive, under a new identity.

That doesn't make sense even given their own lunatic premises.

Same deal here:

And so the perfect cover story begins...

Intel on death of bin Laden isn't confirmed

Bush's failure to kill Osama will no longer be a political liability (Karl Rove's October Surprise?)

Osama will not be a martyr for the muslim world.

Osama gets to retire with a sweet severence package somewhere in South America, courtesy of the CIA.

It's the perfect cover story - begins with a "leaked" intelligence document - hmmm... how could that have happened?

Ummm... refresh my memory: Why would the CIA want bin Ladin alive, again?

I think the only possibility, really, is to hide the fact that the CIA actually engineered 9/11. But even in that case-- why not just kill him?

Once again: Morons are intellectually insecure and require the invention of "secret knowledge" only they know in order to convince themselves they're among the congnoscenti.

Although I do like this conspiracy theory. Jack M suggested a connection between this rumor and Clinton's anger. I don't know if I buy that. Maybe because the DU'ers do.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (36)
Post contains 496 words, total size 3 kb.

Democracy, whiskey, Legos.

Via PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (3)
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

This background from the Washington Times seems pretty definitive on the fact that there is a belief by Saudi intelligence that Osama is dead.

Osama bin Laden is dead. At least according to Saudi intelligence sources cited by a French newspaper, which in turn claims to have obtained a document leaked to them by French counter-intelligence services.

...

Bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist is believed to have died last August as a result of typhoid fever while he was in a remote part of Pakistan, according to the French newspaper.

The report of bin Laden's death was however not confirmed by official sources in either Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

But a Saudi intelligence source told United Press International: "We are not saying he is dead, but there is a lot of truth in the report." The Saudi source, who spoke on condition that his name not be revealed, confirmed the existence of a Saudi intelligence report relating to the health of bin Laden. And according to that Saudi Arabian intelligence document, it states, "bin Laden was very ill these past few weeks."

The Saudi source told UPI the French intelligence report must have concluded that Saudi authorities believes bin Laden to be dead.

"There is no way we can prove that bin Laden is dead until we can see the body," the Saudi intelligence source told UPI. But, he stressed, "A good portion of what is in the report is true."

For the moment, the source went on to say, "We do not confirm bin Laden's death. "We don't know."

Making the report all the more credible was the choice by those in French counter-intelligence of where to leak the Saudi report, the regional L'Est Republicain, rather than one of the larger Paris-based dailies.

Alas, without a body, we'll never really know. This can only be disproved -- by a new videotape referencing very recent events -- but probably never proved.

"Proof" can only come after a couple of years of continued radio silence. There won't be some dramatic moment when everyone agrees he's dead; little by little, his silence will speak to his status.

Expect a barrage of Osama bin Ladin tapes to be released now. But this monster was in love with the sound of his own effeminate voice. He's the world's most infamous podcaster, recording audio blog entries all the doo-dah day. Those tapes will reference either recent events or the goddamned siege of Vienna or loss of Andalusia. Hoping for the latter.

Gateway Pundit has more.

CNN: Ill, Not Dead: According to Stop the ACLU.

He's also got Adnan Hajj's Reuters photo of bin Ladin's body. (Snark.)

The Big "Taliban Funeral"? AJ Strata wonders what several commenters wondered -- if that big Taliban funeral that our military didn't attack was in fact Osama's.

I think it's just a coincidence... shouldn't a SEAL team have gotten a sample of that body by now, if that were the case?

Liberals Celebrate! From the HuffPo:

by: springsm on September 23, 2006 at 09:15am

Sure he is dead. Bin Laden was the sock puppet of CIA whose stooge is the ISI. He had nothing to do with 9/11. Go the fbi.gov. Look for yourself. Where is there any mention that he is wanted for 9/11?

The government conspiracy theory is full of holes. Only an idiot would accept the official conspiracy narrative that Bin Laden was the mastermind behind 9/11. Where is the evidence? There is none.

If you want to look for who is behind 9/11 look into PakistanÂ’s ISI and who really runs it. It is a CIA creation. Through the ISI, the CIA created the terrorists as a means of controlling Central Asian countries who possess huge reserves of gas & oil.

Now lets hope Bush dies.

Don't dare question their... aww, fuck it.

Thanks to BB.

Pakistan Has Typhoid Epidemic: And an epidemic of a lot of water-borne illnesses. And it's a strain that's difficult to cure:

We report a case of ciprofloxacin treatment failure in a typhoid fever patient at a tertiary care hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This case shows not only the emergence of fluoroquinolone resistance in typhoid salmonellae but also the inadequacy of the current laboratory guidelines for detection of this resistance.

Dan notes that there is a vaccine for typhoid, and it seems bin Ladin would certainly have been vaccinated at some point. Still-- there are a host of water-borne illnesses plaguing Pakistan; he may have contracted a different one, and been incorrectly diagnosed with typhoid. Or perhaps the vaccination simply failed.

An Unpleasant Way To Die: From Dan's link:

"There is a pattern to an outbreak. It starts with diarrhoea and other severe forms of gastroenteritis followed by malaria and then typhoid," explains Agboatwala. "There is a strong chance of a cholera outbreak here''.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's still chugging along with a cybernetic heart made of titanium, plasticized heroin, and orphan skulls.

Kind of sucks to live in a cave, huh?

Whoops: I headlines this "OBL RIP Update," just as shorthand.

Thanks for pointing out I really shouldn't wish this bastard any peace, even in death.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (21)
Post contains 883 words, total size 6 kb.

By Iraqi troops, apparently. Or at least the Iraq Government made the announcement:

Iraq said it captured the leader of a top Iraqi insurgent group, Ansar al-Sunna, along with two aides north of Baghdad, state television reported on Saturday.

He was, of course, a confederate of Al Qaeda. My Pet Jawa thinks this is bigger than Osama bin Ladin's reported death:

How bad are they? Think Zarqawi bad.

They're successors to the Ansar Al-Islam terrorist organization, which Zarqawi joined after fleeing Afghanistan. (No connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, remember.)

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (5)
Post contains 110 words, total size 1 kb.

UPDATE... Beginning to throw caution to the wind now. Think this might be legit.

I'm linking to the Free Republic link, as their link is in the original French. Obviously, all unconfirmed, the Saudi police would have no obvious reason to know, etc.

Supposedly died August 23rd, in Pakistan, of typhoid fever.

Here's the translation, by web translator:

Osama bin Laden has died, according to the L'Est republicain
AP France ^ | September 23, 2006

PARIS (AP) - The head of terrorist network al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, has died, according to information from the Saudi police, transmitted by the Directorate-General of External Services (DGSE), and reported on the Lorraine daily newspaper L'Est republicain in its Saturday edition.

"According to a commonly reliable source, the Saudi police believes that Osama Bin Laden has died," said a September 21st confidential note from the DGSE classified as "defense." L'Est republicain will publish it in its Saturday edition. The note, specified the daily newspaper, would be re-printed "un-edited."

According to the note to be published by the L'Est republicain, the Saudi police "would try to obtain more details, in particular the location of the burial site, and then announce the news officially." The DGSE specified in the note that no "jihadist Internet site has for the moment been made aware of the death of Osama bin Laden."

According to the note, "the head of al Qaeda may have fallen victim to a strong case of typhoid fever while in Pakistan, on August 23, 2006," and may have died within a matter of days.

The French news organization transmitted this note to the President of France, to the Defense and Prime Minister and the Ministers of the Interior Department on September 21, according to the regional daily newspaper, which added that a prior note transmitted on September 19th to the leaders of France explained why the Saudi police "sought to confirm the death of Osama bin Laden."

Also grabbed from Free Republic:

What would we do without CNN experts?

(That's an old screencap, by the way.)

If True... I wonder if Bush actually was on the verge of announcing the death of Osama for that much-hyped press conference (which turned out to be entirely about the terrorist detainees and the need for clarification regarding laws against coercion).

It could be they were almost confident to make the statement, but stopped at the last moment for lack of positive evidence.

Eh... dying of natural causes is hardly satisfying anyway,

Question the Timing BIG TIME: Now, if my theory is right, the Bush Administration has of course sort of known about this for a while (for at least three weeks) but hasn't been able to confirm it, and thus hasn't been able to announce it. But they've known there might be some good news on the way.

With that in mind, check out this post at NRO's Sixers, culled from the very leftwing and very inane Raw Story (though it cites, in turn, Newsmax):

According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an "October surprise" before the midterm elections.

"In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an 'October surprise' to help win the November congressional elections," reports Ronald Kessler for Newsmax.

Ahem.

I think the news might have slipped out. Just a few weeks ago Jonah Goldberg stated, for reasons at the time I didn't quite get, that he thought Osama bin Ladin was dead.

Not to impugn Jonah. Maybe he just had a hunch. I've had lots of them myself, though few panned out.

I thought all this news out of Pakistan was kind of odd, suggesting maybe the situation had changed.

So maybe Jonah similarly just guessed.

Thanks to JackM for that.

Oh lordy, the cries of "I question the timing" now.

But it's actually not particularly helpful poltically, is it?

Osama died of natural causes and so Bush did not actually kill him (though, of course, by making him hide in caves, he probably contributed to his lack of medical attention and thus to his demise), and without Osama to kick around anymore, so to speak, the American public might give the GOP a Churchillian boot out of office. Despite the fact, of course, that there are thousands and thousands more of these psychopaths.

Six Good Adequate Reasons To Believe This Bastard's Rotting In Hell:

None of these is a good reason on its own. Together, though, they do suggest that this time it's for real. Not strongly. But enough for those who want to believe. (And I'm among them.)

1. The Article Itself. It's not beyond plausibility that the Saudi police may know a little bit about Osama bin Ladin. Why, I've even heard Osama might have allies in the Saudi government!

2. Pakistan's Strange and Sudden Announcement It Was Closing Its Border To US Incursions, And The Signing of a "Peace Deal" With Taliban Remnants and Tribal Jihadis In Early September. This went down Sept. 2 or so.

It had the feeling, I thought, of Pakistan telling us "Contract filled and finished." They'd done their part; they would do no more.

3. Musharraf's Declaration That The US Had Threatened To Bomb It "Into The Stone Age" If It Did Not Cooperate. Although some said this was "old news," I sure didn't think it was. I'd known, vaguely, we'd threatened Pakistan somehow. I didn't know we'd threaten to bomb them "into the stone age" if they did not assist us against their client and creature, the Taliban.

Why would Musharraf make such a dramatic announcement now?

Perhaps he felt he had to get out ahead of a coming story-- a story that would be very unpopular with the people who've tried to kill him several times. A defense offered in advance -- I had to help them stalk your Cult Leader, or otherwise they'd have bombed us to hell.

4. Bush's Strangely Overhyped Press Conference. Maybe this is just me trying to save face. But when the WH put out the word for all conservatives to watch the September 6th press conference, noting that 9/11 families would be in attendance, and that there would be "big news" announced there, a lot of us got the crazy idea that there would be big news announced there. Yes, I speculated that Osama bin Ladin was dead (incorporating reason two, above, as a reason for hope).

Yes, Bush did make news that day. But a lot of us felt a bit underwhelmed, after we'd been juiced up to expect... more.

It might be that Bush was prepared to announce Osama bin Ladin's death on that day, but was restrained by advisors who felt there simply wasn't sufficient proof to make such a dramatic statement.

And so the speech became about what had been intended to be a secondary matter or, perhaps, the next day's intended speech.

5. Rove's Alleged Promise of a Coming "October Surprise." Sort of speaks for its damn self, doesn't it? If Rove heard about this -- and of course he had -- he knew it was only a matter of time before there was either confirmation (discovery of hte body) or at least a news source reporting it.

6. Bush's Recent Statement That He Wasn't Terribly Concerned By Osama bin Ladin. I want to thank a new troll for spamming my threads with this. I can't find the quote, but apparently Bush recently said he just didn't consider Osama bin Ladin a top priority:

FOXNEWS HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

FRED BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, thatÂ’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said thatÂ’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. ThatÂ’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and thatÂ’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.

This may be his half-assed effort to reveal while concealing what he knows, or at least what he believes -- that there's little point looking for Osama, as he's probably already dead. He's been advised not to get in front of the story and say "Osama's dead" before confirmation, but he's got a suspicion he is.

True, he's said this sort of thing before. But he may have said that sort of thing in the same situation -- when he suspected bin Ladin was dead, but couldn't prove it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 PM | Comments (153)
Post contains 1519 words, total size 10 kb.

Anyone's who angry must be telling the truth!

Plus... MSNBC promised Keith Olbermann would pose the "hard questions" to Clinton.

Did he?

I don't know. It was hard to hear him, with him under the desk the whole time.

Is "mmmff mmmf mmmmthhllp" a true question or just a rhetorical one?

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 PM | Comments (20)
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

Wow. What a bunch of angry, do nothings.

Why don't you people become constructive instead of destructive. Be a contributor to society and stop being haters. People that hate create more hate. Don't you see the downward spiral you are contributing to?

-- Josh, who has a site called "Positive Energy Output"

It keeps us warm, Josh.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 PM | Comments (27)
Post contains 65 words, total size 1 kb.

Putting in quotes because it's just as likely it was a planned release.

There have only been a couple of Bond themes sung by men and they've all be thoroughly forgettable, and it just doesn't really seem to make sense to have a dude singing about how cool James Bond is. Except A View To A Kill, but they all sort of looked like chicks anyway, so it kind of worked.

Here's the latest attempt at a guy singing a Bond theme. I think it'll go down with Matt Munro's From Russia With Love and a-ha's The Living Daylights.

Everyone's already kind of goofin' on Daniel Craig as being unBondly, and they can't even get a chick to sing about him? They make it a dude? Does he really need more baggage?

I always thought the perfect person to sing a Bond theme was Fiona Apple. Her songs already sound a bit Bond theme-ish.

Thanks to Dave Munger/Gay Celebrity Crap.

UPDATE: BY JACK M.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of Ace, there is an exception to the "all Bond songs sung by men suck" rule. The exception? Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die".

Other than that, though, yeah..they all suck.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 PM | Comments (32)
Post contains 212 words, total size 1 kb.

Ask yourself this:

Would you voluntarily undergo waterboarding to save someone else's life? Would you undergo hypothermia, belly-slapping, or any of the other techniques if by so doing lives would be saved?

If you can honestly say yes--and I can--then I don't see what the problem is with doing it to someone else.

On the other hand, I can't say that I'd let someone lop off my fingers with bolt cutters, knuckle by knuckle, to save a life.

-- Dicentra

I can only imagine this means that Sullivan and the other anti-coercion absolutists would not trade some temporary pain and discomfort to save an innocent human life.

Posted by: Ace at 06:20 PM | Comments (54)
Post contains 111 words, total size 1 kb.