Perhaps you might study up a bit on the differing theories of defending mountainous terrain versus almost anything else. Yes, Usama (your tactical guru), successfully escaped from being decimated along with so many of his valuable troops - as he mentioned in the address. What a wonderful victory, running away and escaping with your life.
He was under dozens of feet of rock and still had to run away.
I think you are feeling threatened that anyone might point out that your trench warfare idea was obsolete by the end of WWI and suicidal by the time of the Gulf War.
Beagle: He survived the experience (assuming it’s true). Why should he think it’s suicidal and will get everyone killed, as you put it? Why should we think it? He survived.
Aaah, Usamah is just jealous because he hasn’t been getting much attention lately. He’s trying to horn in on the current excitement. Trying to make a grab for attention, boost his importance, by inserting himself into what’s currently hot. Doesn’t want to be a has-been (trying to keep his star power).
“Everybody wants ta get inta de act!”
—Jimmy Durante
True, he survived by running. He calls others to perform acts of martyrdom - like hanging around for the big bombers, gunships, etc. Remember, in Afghanistan we only used a token ground force of our own and the Northern Alliance did most of the fighting.
I concede, in mountainous terrain defenders can hold out for long periods of time even from heavy bombardment. If you can put yourself in a position where bombs cannot physically come anywhere near you, air power is negated. What I contend is that any hastily built trench fortifications manned with volunteer Iraqi conscripts are going to be crushed if they are sacrificed in front of the armored divisions and air power of the United States. I fear a repeat of the volkssturm and Hitler Youth versus Red Army tragedy. The end was a foregone conclusion. The sooner Iraqis surrender, the sooner the US leaves the country.
Maybe Saddam will start giving Hans Blix guided tours himself, and we can avoid this.
It had better be a full-fledged tunnel, and a fairly deep one, if it’s going to “disguise” a human body from IR sensors in November up in the mountains.
In view of that fact, the description of the alleged escape tactic doesn’t pass the smell test, or even the giggle test.
I’ll second GOM’s point – audio tapes are too easy to fake. IMO, a surviving al-Qaeda leader has a batch of old tapes pre-recorded to maintain the illusion that Osama is still alive. Every so often, when he decides that the troops need encouragement, he picks out the one that seems to best fit the news, splices in a phrase here and there to tweak it, runs it through a couple iterations of analog duplication to file off the fingerprints of the splice jobs, and sends it off to al-Jazeera.
This limits the tapes to subjects that Osama knew or could reasonably predict to be significant while he was alive. Thus, we get comments about US attacks on Iraq and the failings of other Islamic heads of state, but no gibes about fraying trans-Atlantic alliances or the loss of the space shuttle. (IMO, the last is particularly telling – there’s no way on God’s green earth that Osama bin Laden could have resisted gloating about the deaths of a bunch of Americans, a Hindu, and a Jew.)
Oh, the rest of your post greco_loco I agree with. If the Iraqis want to inflict US casualties at the expense of their lives, they can do that by fighting in the cities. They could kill a lot of US soldiers, and who knows how many civilians, if there is prolonged city fighting. Fixed fortifications in cities would pose some problems and delay the end of the war.
One reasonable explanation for the lack of video: He doesn’t look like himself right now. Perhaps injured, but more likely he’s altered his appearance.
I could buy that (most likely, that he looks like hell and would demoralize his followers if he showed up in video). However, the theory that he’s dead and one of his followers is sending out prerecorded (and possibly spliced) audio tapes explains both the absence of video (too hard to fake) and the limited references to current events (Osama couldn’t predict the US v. Old Europe falling out, the space shuttle crash, etc, and so didn’t record any relevant phrases that could be added to one of his rants).
Remember the stories about Usama and his failing kidneys? Ever seen someone dying of kidney disease? It takes a nasty toll on a person. Not only does he not want anyone knowing where he is and what he looks like now for his own safety, if he’s failing fast because his body is percolated with poisons that his kidneys cannot filter, he wouldn’t want the world to know that, either. I don’t suspect that we’ll be seeing UBL on video again.
However, by that theory, you’d have to grant that OBL survived the battle of Tora Bora. It’s a specific event described in great (and some say less than believable) detail.
[hijack] if it is true that OBL was at and survived Tora Bora, I’m really pissed – Tommy Franks had better get out of his Lazy Boy in FL and stay on top of things, or get a new occupation.[/hijack]
Assuming it’s Bin Laden’s voice, we have to assume that it’s not pre-taped. I just went back and read the transcript, and the following things pop out:
[ul]
[li]He talks about the battle of Tora Bora “last year”. That means the tape was intended to be released about now.[/li][li]He notes that the U.S. is building up forces against Iraq[/li][li]He notes that the U.S. is winning a propaganda war, or at least getting more support than he thought it would.[/li][li]He says that war between the U.S. and Iraq is imminent.[/li][li]He says that many Arab nations have supported the U.S.[/li][/ul]
If that was pre-recorded, it was recently. I think it strains belief to think that Osama sat down right after Tora Bora last year, dictated a time that he intentionally put a time on (a year after Tora Bora), and then began to talk about the political situation at that time so accurately.
On second thought, maybe it is possible. If he were holed up somewhere and dying, he might have dictated hundreds of hours of statements that could be spliced together in order to make it sound like he was still alive and keep the myth going. Never underestimate the enemy.
I don’t see anything here that couldn’t be reasonably guessed by an informed person in the weeks before the battle. Unless I’m wrong in my conclusion that the described technique simply wouldn’t work against an enemy equipped with IR sensors, the speech must have been pre-recorded, because afterwards the speaker would be too dead.
The battle of Tora Bora was “last year” by the Moslem lunar calendar.
The US has been enforcing the no-fly zones and getting into the occasional minor skirmish with Iraq for a decade. The outbreak of a Second Gulf War was one of the most obvious scenarios for a prerecorded canned rant.
*Likewise, the US getting support from various nations, including Arab nations, is simply an obvious repeat of history from the First Gulf War. If anything, bin Laden would have taunted the US over the diplomatic dustup with France and Germany, describing it (inaccurately, but he’s in the propaganda business, not the competing-with-Cecil business) as the first step in the fall of American hegemony, or something.
Why the attempts (no names, you know who you are and the rest can read) to find reasons to believe the tapes are faked and that Osama is really dead? You’d also have to come up with some plausible motivation for someone else to try it, and none has been established or even suggested by any of the armchair diplomats here.
Could it be wishful thinking, perhaps? If you can convince yourself that Public Enemy Number One is really dead, then you don’t have to face the uncomfortable issue of why the prime target now is someone else with no plausible connection.
For your consideration, there is another purported Bin Laden tape. I am very suspicious of a tape purchased over the internet, so make of it what you will.
I do hope that OBL comes to the states as that would give me a chance to claim the $25 million bounty.
The US has stated that a) Saddam has WMD, and b) the Bin Ladin tapes (at least one of them) seem genuine and OBL is probably alive.
I’m not trying to point a finger at any specific person, I’ve found it quite striking that there seem to be some posters who will implicitly believe the former, sans any proof (until lately), but scoff at the latter.
I don’t have to “find reasons” – the reasons (the switch from good video to low-fidelity audio, the vague and generic references to current events) are in plain view.
As for motivation, that too is obvious – the notion that Osama escaped the might of the Great Satan and is still out there to lead the jihad has considerable motivational value to al-Qaeda grunts.
I don’t have to “find reasons” – the reasons (the switch from good video to low-fidelity audio, the vague and generic references to current events) are in plain view.
As for motivation, that too is obvious – the notion that Osama escaped the might of the Great Satan and is still out there to lead the jihad has considerable motivational value to al-Qaeda grunts.