strange having to parallel threads on the same topic...
anyway--this tape, its timing, etc., started me wondering if osama bin laden actually exists.
he has always seemed to me more a structural necessity than actual person---the anchor of the "war on terror" narrative, the mythology, the face that enabled a personification to replace the hole created by 9/11, the signifier than enabled the transition from shock to action against someone, anyone.
the narrative needs bin laden as the narrative of jesus needed judas.
i have never been convinced that al qeada carried out the attacks on 9/11 entirely--i thought that if you were going to carry out such an attack, the entire organization would logically be on the planes.
but whatever, what is obvious is that in the period directly after 9/11 someone needed to be held to account so that a response could be undertaken. what mattered was the response in and of itself. i was skeptical from the start about how the narrative was created and maintained, but i understood how it could be compelling and why things that otherwise would be seens as problematic judgements would be undertaken once it was in place (e.g. the overwhleming support for the legal frame within which the "war on terror" has functioned, probably extending into the much more problematic vote to authorize the iraq war--without the bigger narrative, i doubt seriously that the iraq war would have been possible, given the shabbiness of the case for it)
if you go to bbc's website, you get a short video comparative analysis of bin laden;s varous appearances
www.bbc.co.uk
it does not have a seperate link so far as i can tell, so i do not know how long it will be up.
i dont adduce this as evidence for what i am saying, just as the thing that started me wondering about it.