Bin Laden Dead?

Unconfirmed reports suggest that bin Laden may have died from typhoid. Say it ain't so! Typhoid is too good for him. I can think of many better ways for him to see his last sunrise.

When Osama stopped making propaganda videos, I speculated that he was either dead or seriously wounded. There was no other plausable explanation for his disappearance from Al-Jazeera broadcasts.

I'm skeptical of the purported audio tapes made by bin Laden in the meantime. The jihadis want everyone to think Osama is still alive, because he is an important icon for their cause. He is immensely popular with Islamists and serves as an inspirational leader for the jihadis.

The U.S. wants everyone to think he is alive, too, because they need him to be the bogey-man in the so-called "War on Terror." Without Osama, we have no one on whom to focus our outrage for the actions of the terrorists.

If Osama is dead, I suspect that a lot of people will lose interest in continuing a costly campaign to rid the world of all the scumbags who carry on bin Laden's war against the West. Instead, they will support the isolationists' desire to simply hunker down in the relative (note I said relative) safety of America's distance from the bulk of the trouble-makers (yeah, the Middle East).