To: John Vosilla who wrote (92884 ) 3/28/2008 8:16:59 PM From: glenn_a Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 110194 I seriously question whether Goldenstein ... err, I mean Bin Laden ... is still alive, or whether it's relevant if he is or not. Bin Laden served his purpose, which was to allow the US and western powers to wage a land war in the heartland of Eurasia, as Brzezinski predicated in his "The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives" book published in 1997. At this point, I largely consider Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda for that matter, a "myth" useful for western geostrategic elites to achieve their grand geopolitical designs. It's also not clear to me if Al Qaeda was not most significantly a western-inspired black-op from the get go. I'm not saying that there aren't sentiments in the Middle East that genuinely sympathize with the professed goals of "Al Qaeda", but Al Qaeda has served as an incredibly useful tool for neo-con types in many countries and political parties, and it is not clear to me that these interests are not Al Qaeda's ultimate "handlers". So John, when you stated: "Somewhere in a cave Bin Laden is laughing at the stupidity of the US government. I bet never in his wildest dreams did he expect his plan to go so well. " ... My thoughts are, I don't know what Bin Laden thought in his "wildest dreams", but it wasn't Bin Laden's "wildest dreams" that put this series of events (i.e. 9-11 & post 9-11) in motion. It was OUR wildest dreams that put this in motion, and Bin Laden has played the role of a "useful agent", a modern-day Goldenstein. And the western mainstream media has also played its role perfectly, which is to perpetuate the Al Qaeda/Bin Laden mythology, and limit the scope of acceptable dialog (or as Noam Chomsky would put it, manufacture consent) to narratives which position Al Qaeda as the very embodiment of ultimate evil. In other words, the mainstream media has fulfilled its role as a propaganda organ in wartime. Same as it ever was. Now regarding the stupidity of the US government, well, what is it they say about absolute power??? :( FWIW. g