The current US presidential campaign, which is about to come to a close, has been replete with spins disseminated by the spin-masters of President George Bush as well as Senator John Kerry. Have the spin-masters of Osama bin Laden circulated one of their own as the American people get ready to vote, with his purported video-recorded address to the American people telecast by Al Jazeera, the blue-eyed channel of Al Qaeda, on October 29, 2004?
The latest telecast message of OBL has made the confusion regarding the state of the so-called war against terrorism worse confounded, raising more questions than providing answers. Is it genuine? How come OBL seems to be growing younger and healthier, when, like all human beings, he should be growing older and weaker, particularly when he is being relentlessly hunted, as we are told day in and day out by Bush? Why the absence from the latest videoo tape of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, his Egyptian No. 2, who had figured in the tape of September last year? Why the absence in the latest tape of rifles or machine guns which were present in the tapes of the past, which either showed OBL as carrying them or which were shown as placed by his side?
The latest tape shows OBL not as a dreaded jihadi terrorist hurling blood-curdling threats at the American people, against the background of rifles and the wildness of the Afghan terrain, but as a mujahideen statesman addressing well-reasoned arguments to the American people from behind a lectern in a TV studio-like ambiance, with OBL well made-up for the occasion to appear like a man in the pink of his health, in total control of his faculties and of the world around him, with no care in the world, not even about his own physical security, which might have necessitated his changing his physical appearance to prevent identification. OBL's spin-masters have manoeuvred his entry into the drawing rooms of millions of American homes as the third debater in the presidential debate.
Here is OBL, alive and kicking, alive and leading, alive and taunting not only President Bush, but also his father and his brother, the Governor of Florida. OBL does not appear to be uttering a threat of another 9/11. He is rather pouring scorn on the claims of Bush and his advisers that they are winning their self-styled war against terrorism.
As the date of the polls approached, there was feverish speculation as to whether Bush, helped by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, would produce OBL before the American people like a magician producing a rabbit out of his hat and thereby make Kerry look silly and win a thumping victory. Instead of Bush producing OBL and embarrassing Kerry, it is OBL's spin-masters who have produced him before the voters, making Bush, Kerry and everybody else in the US look silly and confused.
What does the tape tell of the state of Al Qaeda, its morale, the motivation of its cadres, its command and control, the unity of its leadership? Zilch.
What does the tape tell of the future plans, tactics and strategy of Al Qaeda? Zilch.
Then, what does the latest tape seek to tell if it wants to tell anything at all?