all these 'tapes' have GOT to be phony

[mopaul]

gimmee a break already. this has been going on since bushco took over. dictators and mad terrorists releasing a new video or audio tape with vague threats and dubious cryptic messages. and they are always very poor quality, scratchy, noisy, like they were recorded on cheap tape and old machinery. and then the pentagon ALWAYS chimes in with the fact that it may not even be who it appears or sounds to be.

new ones seem to come out about once a month. and they are extremely non de script and oblique. one shows a skinny, sickly osama. the next shows a fat osama. officials say, 'we're not sure if it's really mullah akhbar or someone pretending to be him'. even with saddam's tapes, it's always the same. cia officials are now looking into the authenticity of the latest tape. that crafty saddam has many lookalikes you know. and i love it when they say translators are even now attempting to decipher the taped message. don't tell me the cia doesn't have arabic translators going back forever, but they always act like language is a barrier to them.

all along, the propaganda machine dutifully shows snippets of the 'latest hits' timed just so you get scared again right about the time you begin to relax. it's the timing of these cryptic tapes that alerts me.

don't you think these evil doer fellows could come up with a better system than grainy, awful looking video tapes? why couldn't they hold up a newspaper with that day's date on it? or make a brief appearance in front of reliable witnesses? or a live broadcast? anything other than these flimsy video tapes.

there are so many. i see them as total bullshit, designed to fool the easily fooled. the old saying goes, seeing is believing, but it ain't always true. have people never heard of trick photography, photo alterations, special effects, and covert hoaxes before?
are they still as dumb as all that? like the famous life magazine cover of lee harvey oswald holding a rifle. it was years before it was exposed as a cheap photo/altered hoax. the shadow on lee's face was the opposite of the shadow on his body. no one noticed, because....well, they weren't supposed to.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Fooling the easily fooled

Remember that the conservatives were able to brainwash a number of folks into believing Clinton was unfit for office because of his sexual escapades. They figure a few threats on inaudible tape will be enough to keep the sheeple from questioning the motives or actions of their great hero, GWB.

[bowens43]

2. I see no reason to doubt the validity of these tapes.

The bush administrations failure to capture these high profile fugitives is par for the course and certainly more dangerous to the administration then claiming that they are dead. Terrorists and dictators are a dime a dozen, they don't need to keep the old ones alive to keep their fear campaign in high gear. When the enmeny is 'terror' everyone can be a suspect.

[Junkdrawer]

3. I disagree. Saddam and Osama are boogiemen that took...

years and years to create. Their value to Bush alive and at-large is incalculable. If either or both were dead, the fact that they were dead would be kept top secret lest the domestic pressure to leave Afghanistan and Iraq rise.