The Bush Administration is sticking their proverbial finger in the wind and making moves to drum up support for a tape that they would like to release. The tape shows Osama bin Laden gloating about the World Trade Center attack and remarking that it turned out even better than he expected. Bin Laden also mentions, apparently while laughing, that most of the hijackers did not know that they were going to die.
So we are told.
That information by itself is not unexpected. The surprise comes from the fact that this tape is of allegedly poor quality. The talking heads and spin doctors are framing the story in a very particular way on all stations. Osama, we’re told, is either unaware that he is being videotaped or that this tape was intended for internal viewing only by the al-Queda organization. Because of the poor quality of the tape, the government is allegedly worried that people might think the administration invented this tape in a top-secret propaganda studio or that the tape is of an entirely different subject that was dubbed over to meet the political aims of the U.S.
Bush is leaning towards releasing the tape because it proves al-Queda executed the September 11th attack.
We’re not sure what the tape will prove. We don’t have access to the government’s information. However, we do know two things about Osama bin Laden:
If the Bush Administration has the moral high ground, they have no need to deal with such pretension. If, however, this tape is a tool of propaganda then we will need a full week to convince the public that low-quality, dubbed over tape actually gets produced inside of the high budget global syndicate of al-Queda.
