The government and the media, will squeeze everything it can from the leftover detritus of Osama bin Laden. It will twist and twirl it out like the most distasteful piece of nose toffee simply for sales value and because it cements the directive that we're still hot on the trail of his legions. A better way to look at is the sifting of an old fool's delusions.
It's now baldly obvious bin Laden was a slack old man but one who, in isolation, still thought he meant quite a bit. And he was a pack rat.
And only impediment to reading through his stuff may be either/or the amount of it or the boredom it brings upon those given the job.
Today, if you had a button to push that would now immediately annihilate any person using the word "trove" on TV or in print in speaking about the man's worldly remains, you'd use it.
Here's the over usage -- the Google "trove" of "trove" citations.
And now there is his "journal," revealing all his plots. Or his wishful delusions.
Hey, bin Laden mentioned my town! Los Angeles! Woo! (I'm actually in Pasadena but let's not split hairs.)
Here's the standard wisdom on bin Laden's nose gold, courtesy of AP:
Until Navy SEALs killed him a week ago, bin Laden dispensed chilling advice to the leaders of al-Qaida groups from Yemen to London: Hit Los Angeles, not just New York, he wrote. Target trains as well as planes. If possible, strike on significant dates, such as the Fourth of July and the upcoming 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Above all, he urged, kill more Americans in a single attack, to drive them from the Arab world.
Bin Laden's written words show that counterterrorist officials worldwide underestimated how key he remained to running the organization, shattering the conventional thinking that he had been reduced through isolation to being an inspirational figurehead, U.S. officials said Wednesday ...
He also schemed about ways to sow political dissent in Washington and play political figures against one another ...
But you can also interpret the remains as the work of a doddering anachronism.
Such stories are enough to elicit laughter in many, certainly anyone who has become hardened to monthly doses of news from the war on terror for the last ten years.
Bin Laden wanted to launch an attack on the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Boy, took a long time to come up with that wish, I'll bet.
So another to look at this to view bin Laden's musings as similar to Hitler moving around nonexistent armies on his maps down in the Fuhrer bunker just before the end.
And another rude question needs to be asked.
How does one write and publish something like "[he] schemed about ways to sow political dissent in Washington and play political figures against one another ..." and maintain a straight face?
That's the collective conduct of jerks -- in this case, the usual anonymous leakers and journalists.
Very few can maintain over an entire decade. Bin Laden was no exception. It was probably never in the cards. One is curious if the man ever questioned why his holy warriors weren't more effective as the years came and went.
Meriting more laughter, the oh so busy man
The writings of Osama bin Laden, much in the news the last couple of days, amount to a single notebook of "10 or so pages" in his handwriting, a senior U.S. intelligence official says.
The singular impression of analysts, said the official: "He was down in the weeds ... a micromanager."
That was from MSNBC, something necessary to justify its author's appearance on the network's late afternoon shows.
Where the well of counterfeit astonishment is seemingly bottomless.
This post was originally published at Dick Destiny blog. Visit for the rude insights, keep coming back for the jokes.
