Bin Laden

He may be alive if this tape is to be believed. If so, then at least we will have the satisfaction of killing him still ahead. Does that seem bloodthirsty? Cold? Dismissive of Miranda rights and due process?

He killed 3,000 of us September 11 and more before that. He has declared war on us. I will sleep just fine at night looking forward to his death.

What is most interesting is al Qaeda’s defense of Iraq. Even if this is not bin Laden himself, his minions have thrown in their lot with the Iraqis: “The tape, which Al Jazeera said was an audiocassette, contained a message about four minutes long, shaped as a warning to Western nations not to join any American-led effort against Iraq lest they suffer the kind of scattered attacks that have taken place in recent months.”

This should be most instructive to those who, in their sophistication, have scoffed at the notion that the Islamist bin Laden could ever make common cause with the secular Saddam. Why the very idea sent some into sputtering derision of simpletons who worried Saddam could ally with al Qaeda or other anti-American thugs. Linking Iraq with the war on terror was criminally stupid, they said. They declared bin Laden was a threat to Saddam, if anything. Amazingly, they did this scoffing even as they complained that we supported Islamists in Afghanistan when they fought the Soviets. Maybe they think 1980s America had lots in common with the Islamists of the day.

This tape at least puts these sophisticated but completely wrong pundits on notice that yes, hatred of America really can smooth over those differences. I can just hear Mullah Omar imploring his followers, “Can’t we all just get along and kill Americans?” As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Al Qaeda has clearly thrown in its lot with Iraq and so yet another argument against invading Iraq slides away into oblivion.

On to Baghdad.

And let’s see if we can put a Predator on bin Laden’s trail.