Fake Tape Speculation: The baron of bloggers,
InstaPundit, points out an interesting theory posed by blogger Joshua Ferguson concerning the much-debated bin Laden audiotape.
American intelligence officials claim that the voice on the tape is bin Laden's but a Swiss research lab claims the tape is a fake. On his blog site,
Unfossilized.com, Ferguson speculates on these conflicting conclusions: "My contention with this whole Bin Laden tape issue is that it was put out by an Intel agency (CIA, MI6, who knows) in order to stir up all of the 'Terrorist Chatter' that came out to ultimately catch some more bad guys."
One of Ferguson's readers, Mike G., thinks this theory makes sense and offers some more food for thought: "I'm not one of those people who sees the Bush administration behind everything, honest. But the timing of a Bin Laden tape (immediately endorsed by the CIA etc.) RIGHT after our election seemed suspicious to me-- surely Bin Laden would want to embarass Bush by announcing nana-nana I'm alive before the election? (This was, after all, a speech with plenty of America-specific blather in it.) I hesitated voicing such a thing for not wanting to encourage IndyMedia types jumping to the conclusion that the Bushies did it to rouse the rabble with 'Osama Lives!' before the Iraq War (another theory the timing gave a certain support to), but I certainly would have no problem with the administration pulling a scam like this to catch and/or blow up a few more al-Qwazies."
If the tape is indeed a fake (
and I believe it is), it could only mean one of two things: 1) Osama bin Laden is dead and a desperate Al Qaeda faked the tape or 2) Osama bin Laden is dead and the Ferguson/Mike G. theories are correct.
