sure he's real.
last night, as i was trying to remove that damn blue masking tape from our freshly painted walls, i mentioned to erik that i thought the newly "discovered" audio tape of osama bin laden was a fake. but a fake in the sense that it was planted by our government. sure, this sounds rather freaky lone-gunman conspiracy-obsessed of me, but it's really quite logical. america needs it's own country and the rest of the world to stop complaining about the "possible war with iraq" (a phrase that was dropped over 11 times in less than 30 minutes of All Things Considered yesterday)... they want to make known the credible threat that would trigger a publicly-supported war. how can we make this terrorist-obsessed country of ours fear iraq? i know! let's make OBL say something that undeniably connects himself to the iraqis!!! it's so simple!

erik managed to one-up me and say that he didn't think osama bin laden existed anymore. perhaps he never did, but erik suggested that given the monetary reward for his head, and the amount of international intelligence seeking him, he's probably now not quite alive. that's a little extreme, erik, but still feasible.

think about it: the one thing that does get this country all rallied up for war is a tangible enemy. not a nation, but a person. frankly, sadam isn't bad enough right now. we all know he's "capable," but we need some super asshole in order to loosen the bomb strings. it's not completely outlandish to think that desperate people would create or enhance an image of the asshole to inspire "american unity" and to all-around warmonger.

if i'm wrong with this, there's also something about osama's tape suggesting that a) he's with the iraqi people, b) he hates america, and c) he doesn't like the iraqi dictatorship either. except for the whole hating america thing, that's pretty similar to our platform. in that case, their attempts to make this tape proof that war against iraq is totally necessary are a little flawed.

try harder next time, guys.