What's the most that has been presented to prove your point? Some undated videos, dubious audiotapes, as of 2004 videos of a weird looking Bin Laden and then some even weirder videos with no audio? And I am the crackpot?
It's more than you provided.
And yes, you're the one making the conspiratorial claim that's contradicted by evidence you're handwaving away, and trying to support that claim with little more than appeals to incredulity as well as bare assertion. That makes you the crackpot.
I was referring to this interview with Bergen:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/02/01/gen.bergen.cnna/index.html
Slightly different time frame buddy.
The tape Bergen's referring to was from October or December 2001, as per your link.
Peter Bergen said:
"The big difference is that he's aged enormously between '97 and October of last year"...
... "This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he's really, by December he's looking pretty terrible."
If you're talking October, that still puts his appearance in that tape prior to the fruits of his handiwork developing, and not-so-incidentally also puts it either right before or right after the US invasion of Afghanistan. Which would be very soon after the US was pressuring the hell out of the Taliban to turn him over. If you're talking December, that's either at the height of the battle of Tora Bora, or right after the end of it. Either way, that's still a severely high stress time, before the Iraq invasion and the expansion of the "franchise" there, before the severe criticism and degradation of the reputation of America, and before he was able to benefit from the safety of his eventual hideout in Pakistan. The point stands; in fact, it's strengthened by that timeline.
You need a better understanding of the details of that point in history than what you have.
Regardless, you're going about responding to me poorly, and in doing so you're missing my point. Even if I'm still wrong, that point is that there are still a host of explanations which require far less convolutions to known history than yours. Your argument fails
lex parsimoniae. And that's what I've been telling you this entire time.
I guess that's why videos of the real him stopped coming around 2003. You're the guy swinging around with Occam's razor? Careful you don't cut yourself.
You continue to provide no real proof that the 2004 and 2007 videos were faked. You should look up
petitio principii at some point to understand what's wrong with your statement there.
Anyway, take care in trying to turn someone's argument against them. Occam's Razor cuts you far deeper than it does any of us: Again, you're the one who's not providing any proof, yet is advancing a theory requiring the cooperation of a known terrorist organization, which has not been questioned in the news, has had multiple members captured, has been tracked since before 9/11, etc., and you're basing it on minute observation about appearance in videos. Apperance issues that, again, can have be explained by many mundane possibilities.
His razor is cutting
you real deep.
1. Not even "Al Qaeda", supposed it exists,
Full stop right there. They exist. Read
The Looming Tower and
Ghost Wars at a minimum before trying that claim again. Also:
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Al_Qaeda_does_not_exist
Simply wishing they didn't exist doesn't cut it.
... has really had anything to say about Bin Laden for a long time so a LOT of people speculated after 2002 that Bin Laden was actually dead. It is possible it did not know itself what happened.
A LOT of people speculating doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the face of evidence. And again, nothing you've posted refutes the later videos after 2002.
I recall a couple of Iraqi Generals during the second invasion, as well as al-Zarqawi, mistakenly being reported as dead. Mistakes in the news can happen. Besides, that 2003 article is speculation by that Arabist. It doesn't change the fact that videos from 2004 and 2007 were released, and doesn't provide anything that contradicts them.
2. News organizations often only report what information they are provided.
Which doesn't stop them from blowing the whistle when the information they're provided is contradicted later. Research Iraq-WMD claims for a case study.
The claims you cite has resulted in practically zero whistles being sounded by that press.
3. So, what has that Pakistani doctor stated in interviews? Oh wait, there are no interviews, right?
No one has seen Shakil Afridi since after the events in Abbottabad, much like a body or other evidence of Bin Laden's death.
That tends to happen when police arrest you in a country that doesn't have the same civil-rights protections that western nations do. That's the danger in living in a dictatorship. Why paint that as mysterious? You must well know that
his family has appealed to the US for aid in his release. Claiming suspicion about the lack of communication from a man who's been arrested in Pakistan is silly at best.
The standard here on JREF is that if you believe something exists (God, paranormal events or an event such as Bin Laden's death), verifiable evidence of this should be provided. What verifiable evidence is there of Bin Laden's death in Abbottabad? Let me see: NOTHING. You should be the one trying better arguments.
I'm falsifying yours and demonstrating their flaws. The very evidence demonstrating the falsity of his early death is the very evidence you're failing to refute. Trying to say that it's "NOTHING" is just hiding from the proof. All you present are, again, minutiae regarding his appearance. That fails to account for the lack of any other effects that would be evident from his death prior to 2011, not the least of which, again, is reaction from Al Qaeda itself.
Against that, you're facing the fact that Pakistan has reacted as though Bin Laden were indeed killed in 2011. You're facing the fact that the news organizations airing the videos have not questioned their authenticity, and have done little above trying to handwave that away. You're facing the fact that a doctor has been imprison in Pakistan for betraying Bin Laden to the US years after your claim of his early death, another inconvenient line of evidence you're merely handwaving at but failing to refute. You're facing the fact that the US spent much time, money, and resources to either fake his continued existence as well as his 2011 death. You're facing a mound of difficulties that your concentration on irrelevent, minute details in a video do not even begin to address.
That's
your failing.
You need to provide something more profound than mere niggling details about a video. That fails to amount to anything more than a critique of appearance. It certainly doesn't amount to proving that he was long dead before 2011.
