Bill Whittle says bin Laden is dead

[Undertoad]

Bill Whittle is an essayist with a bloggy site called "Eject Eject Eject", which is highly pro-US and pro-Bush and all full of WoTy goodness. He tries to convince us to vote Bush -- which failed, for me -- but in the middle of it, he makes a pretty strong case that bin Laden is dead. I was convinced, it's at least an interesting take on it.

I've taken this bit out of the whole two-part essay because Mr. Whittle is extremely long-winded. The following is very long-winded too, but I think he needs all that text to set up his point correctly.

(The bigger essay is here and that link doesn't even include part one.)

First of all, you may recall that three years ago, the President -- correctly, in my estimation -- pointed out that this was not a criminal manhunt for Public Enemy Number One, but rather,

Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.

"Secret even in success…" An interesting phrase, that. What does that mean?

Osama bin Laden has not been seen since the battle of Tora Bora in December of 2001. Remember now, this is not someone like Abu Nidal, a genuine terror mastermind described by the US State Department as having carried out terrorist attacks in 20 countries, killing or injuring almost 900 persons. Targets include the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, moderate Palestinians, the PLO, and various Arab countries. Major attacks included the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul and the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking in Karachi in September 1986, and the City of Poros day-excursion ship attack in Greece in July 1988

Abu Nidal was rightfully phobic about being photographed. Anonymity was camouflage to him: incredibly tight operational security, even plastic surgery. The man wanted to remain unseen. In fact he did remain unseen, retiring in his golden years to a nice apartment in Baghdad until he was assassinated by Saddam just before the war to maintain the well-established fact that Saddam had no ties to terrorism. No living ties to terrorism. Well, to that terrorist. It’s all very nuanced and sophisticated.

Contrast this behavior to that of Osama bin Laden, who did not operationally plan the 9/11 attacks (see dead underlings, above) but was rather the figurehead for an international organization of many thousands of fanatics, their numbers much thinned now.

Osama made endless videotapes. Lecturing, preaching, instructing, firing an AK-47: all the things that make young jihadis feel funny in the pants. After 9/11, he wowed ‘em in several tapes gloating and laughing over the attack and its aftermath. He was reliably heard on the radio during the final phase of Tora Bora, then…nothing.

Maybe he escaped. It’s possible.

Then came the videotape condemning the Israeli incursion into Ramallah and Jenin…only it didn’t. The US corporate scandals? Silence. Anniversary of Holy Tuesday? Cue the tumbleweeds.

The freaking invasion of a Muslim country by the Great Satan, and this new Caliph, the Leader of the Oppressed, cannot bring himself to shoot a crummy VHS in front of a white wall condemning this outrage? This glory-seeking egomaniac, the New Saladin riding the White Horse across the desert, who practically put out a 10 DVD commemorative set every time the US so much as hiccupped, is now suddenly silent, and has been for three years?

You may call that a Terror Mastermind. I call it a greasy wet spot on the wall of a cave in Afghanistan.

The man is dead. Dead, or just possibly captured. The likelihood of him having been killed at Tora Bora by US “outsourcing” was rising with his deafening silence concerning each American counterstroke and became 100% when nothing was heard from the late Osama after the US invasion of Iraq.

Does President Bush know what became of him? I would say, very likely. We know what did not become of him: he didn’t become a Martyr. He did not become the symbol of Glorious Death resisting the Great Satan. He did not become a Symbol or a Cause or an Example to Them All.

He became, if you will pardon the expression, AWOL. Bugged out. Handed in his walking papers. Fizzle…poof. Gone.

Brilliant.

Unfortunately, I do not have fake (but accurate!) documents to back this claim up. I just have common sense, a psychological history, and the ability to see Naked Emperors. The man is dead – just possibly captured; he has been for years.

Now, do I fault President Bush for not announcing this? I do not. For the President to not disclose something so beneficial to himself, politically, must mean that there is a reason of great magnitude behind the official silence. Are we, the American People, entitled to know what this secret is?

We are not.

We are not for the same reason we were not entitled to know that allied cryptographers won WWII by breaking the Japanese and German codes and having the good sense to shut up about it. But don’t dare breathe such sentiments to the current editors of The New York Times. Had those people been running the paper in 1943, tomorrows headline would have read:

AMERICAN AND BRITISH CRYPTOGRAPHERS BREAK JAP AND NAZI WAR CODES – ALL FUTURE ENEMY MOVEMENTS NOW KNOWN WITH CERTAINTY BY ALLIED HIGH COMMAND.

I suspect that if I live another ten years, I’ll be sitting watching the History Channel some night in my pajamas and all will be revealed to me. Until then, I’m happy not to know. I know some people have a hard time with that. Go to hell. This is serious business. Not everything is about you.

Has President Bush deterred bin Laden from repeating his attack on the US? I don’t honestly see what Osama can do these days, what with him being in several thousand crispy pieces and all.

One nice thing about those hyperbaric bombs, developed by that Vietnamese immigrant who fled to the US after certain people’s ideological heroes overran her country and likely killed most of her extended family: they make a small boom, release some nastiness, and then make a much louder boom.

I hope that son of a bitch knew what the sound of that first little boom meant.