Black Box OBL

[JackRiddler]

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Unintentionally the headline may apply to the last 10 (or 30) years as well as it does to the subject of the OBL kill operation.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/40796

CIA ran bin Laden operation

By ROBERT BURNS and KIMBERLY DOZIER

May 10 2011


CIA Director Leon Panetta leaves after briefing members of Congress on Capitol Hill Tuesday, May 3, 2011, in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)


Has anyone noticed that CIA Director Leon Panetta has said a lot more about the Navy commandos’ killing of Osama bin Laden than has the Pentagon chief, who, after all, is second in the military chain of command behind President Barack Obama?

The reason Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said exactly nothing about the raid is that the CIA, not the Pentagon, ran the operation.

That fact speaks volumes about the government’s rarely noticed post-9/11 melding of military might with intelligence craft.

It’s gotten a lot harder lately to distinguish between soldier and spy. The blending of the two missions can blur the definition of an act of war, raise questions about oversight and accountability, and create a clash of military and intelligence cultures.

To an extent, this is a coming-out of something that's been true since the beginnings of the postwar intel complex. Covert operations have been war by parapolitical and paramilitary means.

The CIA helps gather information on military targets such as bin Laden. It also runs its own shadowy commando force and flies its own killer drones under written presidential authority. The military gathers information to be exploited by the CIA, such as the trove of computer drives and similar material the Navy SEALs scooped up in bin Laden’s Pakistani safe house.

Top military leaders, including the current Afghanistan war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, believe that blending the traditional roles of the armed services and intelligence agencies is key to future success in defeating al-Qaida.

Petraeus was named last week as the next CIA chief. Panetta, meanwhile, will take over from Gates as Pentagon boss.

Yet it has taken billions of dollars, bureaucratic makeovers, and trial and error in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, to get to the point where a president could score arguably the most dramatic counterterror victory in U.S. history.

It is not uncommon for the elite of the elite among the military’s special operations forces — top-drawer “special mission units” such as the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and the Army’s Delta Force — to be assigned to covert operations under CIA control. But rarely is it acknowledged so publicly as in the case of Monday’s helicopter-borne raid on bin Laden’s secret lair.

Gates was visible in official White House photos of Obama and his national security team monitoring Monday’s daring raid, but he has not spoken publicly about the operation. Panetta, in contrast, has done interviews on NBC “Nightly News” and elsewhere this week, talking about his marching orders from Obama, the prospect of releasing a photo of bin Laden’s corpse and other details.

In the arrangement established by Obama for the bin Laden mission, Panetta was, in essence, the commander rather than Gates, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters of intelligence. The legal authority for this is known as Title 50, and although the president can empower the secretary of defense to run a Title 50 mission, Gates has preferred that it be done by the CIA, according to special operations officials who have worked on such missions.

Perhaps appropriately, as he's always been more CIA than Pentagon.

The military is capable of leading a counterterror operation like the bin Laden raid, but putting the CIA in charge avoided potential controversy over legal questions.

The CIA has the necessary legal authorities and the expertise to gather intelligence and conduct operations which, under domestic and international law, would be considered by many to be highly questionable if not illegal if conducted by the military without explicit authorization from the president, a former U.S. intelligence official said.

Nonsense, translating into: the CIA by definition exists to break the laws of other nations, and necessarily comes to disregard and break the laws of the United States. The CIA is the extralegal arm, the military pretends to be governed by the ostensible laws of war.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

In the bin Laden mission, the chain of command extended from Obama to Panetta to Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, himself a SEAL. McRaven is commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. That is the secretive outfit in charge of SEAL Team Six and the military’s other specialized counterterrorism units.

Panetta’s order to McRaven was “find Osama bin Laden.” And if the al-Qaida leader turned out not to be present at the Abbottabad compound, the CIA chief directed, “Get out quickly and safely.”

When he announced Sunday evening in Washington that bin Laden had been killed, Obama spoke about his longer-term approach to eliminating the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The president said that shortly after taking office he directed Panetta to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of the U.S. war against al-Qaida, along with a broader effort to dismantle bin Laden’s network.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was good reason to put the CIA in charge. The hunt for bin Laden, Rogers said in an interview, “resembled more an investigation than tracking a target.”

The military and the CIA have had close ties since the spy agency’s creation in 1947, but the degree of collaboration — and the capabilities of special operations forces — have grown dramatically since 9/11. For example, the military’s Special Operations Command has seen its budget more than quadruple — from about $2.3 billion in 2001 to $9.8 billion today. And its manpower has expanded from 45,500 a decade ago to 61,500 today, according to Pentagon figures.

In striving for closer cooperation, the CIA and the military sometimes have butted heads. The CIA, for example, used harsher interrogation methods on captured insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than the military believed was useful.

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Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Kimberly Dozier can be reached at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press

[JackRiddler]

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This one perhaps not entirely kabuki -- not the security state talking but a parliamentary resolution; parliaments are subject to popular pressures.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... aden/print

Pakistan may cut Nato's Afghan supply line after Osama bin Laden killing

Senior politicians vow to review ties to America after discord over drone attacks and assassination of al-Qaida leader
Declan Walsh

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 May 2011 20.51 BST


Nato tankers burn in the northern town of Pindi Gheb, Pakistan, after an attack. There are fears that convoys will face a greater threat in future. Photograph: Mian Khursheed/Reuters


The security of Nato's main supply line into Afghanistan came under threat on Saturday as Pakistani parliamentarians voted to review all aspects of their relationship with the US amid worsening political fallout from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The unanimous motion was passed in the early hours of Saturday morning at the conclusion of an extraordinary 10-hour parliamentary session when the military's top brass offered apologies and admissions of failure, and the country's spy chief offered to resign.

Condemning the 2 May raid on bin Laden's house in Abbottabad, 35 miles northeast of Islamabad, as a "violation of Pakistan's sovereignty", parliament voted unanimously to review the country's terms of engagement with Washington.

In feisty speeches lawmakers warned against further "unilateral action", including CIA drone strikes, and urged the government to consider cutting the Nato supply line that runs from Karachi to Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass and Balochistan.

Suspicious of Pakistan's failure to capture bin Laden but recognising the importance of the supply line and pursuing other al-Qaida fugitives, the Obama administration is dispatching Senator John Kerry – the "good cop" of US diplomacy with Pakistan – to Islamabad on Sunday.

"We're not trying to find a way to break the relationship apart, we're trying to find a way to build it," he told reporters in Kabul on Saturday.

Kerry arrives in Pakistan at a time of unprecedented criticism of the powerful military. On Friday night top generals were submitted to harsh questioning from parliamentarians during a marathon session that stretched late into the night.

The inter-services intelligence (ISI) chief General Shuja Pasha, one of the most powerful figures in the country, admitted to an "intelligence failure" on Bin Laden, insisting that the ISI had been kept in the "complete dark" by the US over the raid, and tendered his resignation to prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. It was not accepted – a sign that the government, led by Asif Ali Zardari, has decided to support the weakened military.

A sign of kabuki. As is the choice of the adjective, "weakened."

The fragile civilian government

Fragile, now that's more like.

is gambling that its pro-army stance will guarantee it a full term in office. "It was politically a very astute move," said Talat Masood, a retired general and political analyst.

Another striking revelation came from the deputy air force chief, who admitted that CIA drones take off from Shamsi airbase in Balochistan province. But he insisted that the drones were unarmed – those carrying missiles came from Afghanistan, he said – and that Shamsi was actually under the authority of the United Arab Emirates, which built the remote airstrip in the 1990s for rich sheikhs on bird-hunting expeditions.

Let's spread that around, shall we?

Despite having been technically held in camera, details of the parliamentary session leaked out to the media. One MP told the news website Dawn that the air force chief claimed to have ordered his jet fighters to shoot down US helicopters with Bin Laden's body on board when they were leaving Pakistan, but they were too slow.

Although generally apologetic, in some instances the generals struck back at their critics. When an MP from a religious party attacked Pasha, the spy chief told the mullah that was in no position to talk because he had received funds from Libya and Saudi Arabia.

The parliamentary motion appeared intended to deflect attention from uncomfortable questions about Bin Laden's Pakistan sanctuary onto complaints about US breaches of sovereignty. But the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted from power in a 1999 military coup, said he was determined to seek greater accountability of army power. "The elected government should formulate foreign policy. A parallel policy or parallel government should not be allowed to work," he told a news conference yesterday.

Deteriorating relations with the US are further complicated by a bitter row between spies on both sides. The fact that the CIA could run such a massive operation to capture Bin Laden had deeply embarrassed the ISI, said Vali Nasr, a former Obama administration advisor. "It's not just a diplomatic embarrassment, it's a counter-espionage failure," he said. "Suddenly the ISI is scared of what the CIA is capable of doing."

In a further sign of cooling relations General Khalid Wynne, chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee, has cancelled a five-day visit to the United States due to start on 22 May.

The US has begun to look to central Asian countries to reduce its reliance on Pakistan for military supplies to Afghanistan. The cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has already threatened to have his supporters block military trucks passing through Peshawar.

But outside parliament, the gap between political rhetoric and ground realities is as stark as ever in Pakistan. On Friday a CIA drone fired missiles that killed five people in the tribal belt, the fourth such attack since 2 May.

Yesterday the death toll from Friday's Taliban suicide attack on a paramilitary training centre climbed to 89; a Taliban spokesman said the vicious bombing was to avenge the al-Qaida leader's death and warned of more to come.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Horror and horror.

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[JackRiddler]

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Relevant... Blackwater sets up international mercenary force in UAE.

Blackwater and PMCs at the center of Afpak action, and suitable devices for covert ops of all kinds... why even including things like managing OBL or pulling off a September 11th attack.

Plus, the base in Pakistan from which the US drones take off ostensibly belongs to "UAE," according to the Pakistani military statements of the last few days.

Article with comments here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28897&p=402176#p402176

[8bitagent]

Kerry: US-Pakistan alliance at 'critical moment'
Senator is trying to resolve the widening rift between two nations after bin Laden's killing

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Sen. John Kerry warned Sunday that already shaky U.S.-Pakistani relations have reached a critical juncture as calls grow in the United States to cut some of the billions of dollars in aid to Islamabad following al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's killing.

Kerry, who spoke in Afghanistan before traveling to Pakistan, said sober and serious discussion was needed to resolve the widening rift amid growing suspicion that Pakistan's security forces were complicit in harboring the al-Qaida leader, who was killed May 2 in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs not far from Islamabad.

For its part, Pakistan is angry that it was not told about the raid in Abbottabad until after it was completed. That prompted accusations that its sovereignty had been violated.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43040759/ns ... tral_asia/

As per Jack's Kabuki theory...is this part of the obligatory "smooth over", or the leadup to the eventual complete breaking up of this unholy alliance?

Because this was today's other top MSNBC headline, about the ISI possibly having ordered the Mumbai massacre
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43039269/ns ... -security/

Even the average Joe Schmoe is thinking "wait, if Pakistan is secretly helping the terrorists...why are we funding and partnering with them?"

[JackRiddler]

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Let's keep in mind that the vast majority of relevant political actors in Pakistan and the US would be involved in neither the construction of the terrorist threat, nor in the what I am describing as a post-OBL kabuki. Pakistanis of all walks of life will find their own reasons to rise up against US presence in their country, and many in the USG will just see it uncritically as anti-Americanism and support for al-Qaeda. Absolutely this can spin out of control.

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[DrVolin]

The billions will still go to Pakistan, and they will still go through the US. But they will start transiting through China.

[JackRiddler]

The billions will still go to Pakistan, and they will still go through the US. But they will start transiting through China.

Who or what? The billions of US aid will go through China? The supply lines for Afpak?!

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[DrVolin]

They will come from China. Which is to say they will be US debt. But now instead of going from China to the US to Pakistan, they will go from the US to China to Pakistan. And Pakistan will be more overtly China's friend and less overtly an American friend. Not that it really makes a difference in the long term.

[JackRiddler]

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/world ... ice=mobile

Bin Laden given haven by militants linked to Pakistani security forces

GRAEME SMITH AND MUZAMMIL PASHA

ISLAMABAD

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Last updated Wednesday, May. 04, 2011 12:51PM EDT


Pakistani police, media personel and local residents gather outside a burnt compound at the hideout of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 3, 2011. (Aamir Quershi/AFP/Getty Images)


As suspicions grow about how Osama bin Laden spent years living next door to Pakistan’s military, there are indications emerging that the terrorist mastermind was sheltered by one of the militant groups that has enjoyed tolerance, if not support, from Pakistani security services.

A police officer familiar with Mr. bin Laden’s compound in the scenic town of Abbottabad said the location was used by Hizbul Mujahedeen, one of the biggest militant outfits in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Like other groups fighting Indian troops in the borderlands, HM’s radical membership has never been rounded up by Pakistani forces and some analysts say Islamabad covertly supports the group.

Bin Laden’s death unlikely to affect Afghan rebels
Implausible deniability: Pakistan must have known about bin Laden’s compound
White House struggles to get story right on Osama raid

Any link to HM would deepen Pakistan’s embarrassment over Mr. bin Laden’s death. Pakistan has denied any collusion with terrorists, saying that its leading intelligence service had been sharing information with U.S. counterparts since 2009 about the compound where Mr. bin Laden was found.

Still, in the wake of the raid, Islamabad scrambled to ensure that precise ownership of the compound would not become public knowledge.

“The place belonged to Hizbul Mujahedeen,” the police officer said. “But the authorities have asked us not to share any information about the exact ownership.”

Land-registry officials in Abbottabad, known in the local language as patwaris, were summoned to a meeting on Tuesday and urged to keep quiet.

“The patwaris are meeting right now,” a local official said. “They are being instructed not to say anything about the land-ownership issue.”

American officials have described the owners as “brothers,” and neighbours recalled seeing a pair of men, possibly ethnic Pashtuns from the rugged western frontier, who largely kept to themselves.

Their names were reported in local media as Bara Khan and Chota Khan, or Arshad Pathan and Chota Pathan. However, “Bara” and “Chota” are common vernacular for “older,” and “younger,” making the names almost meaningless.

A Pakistani official said the mystery surrounding the two men has deepened with the discovery that their national identity cards were faked.

Demands grew louder on Tuesday for an investigation that would determine what support Mr. bin Laden received inside Pakistan.

“If I were a prosecutor at the United States Department of Justice … I would be tempted to call a grand jury,” wrote Steve Coll, a Pulitzer-winning biographer of Mr. bin Laden. “Who owned the land on which the house was constructed?”

If the ownership were traced to HM, it would mark an unusual example of co-operation between the militant group and its more extreme cousin, al-Qaeda. HM has maintained a narrow focus on removing Indian forces from Kashmir, while Al-Qaeda pursues global ambitions.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of links between Hizbul Mujahedeen and Osama, but its members would probably admire him,” said Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor international analysts.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office issued its first detailed statement about the raid on Tuesday afternoon, making oblique reference to the suspicions raised by the fact that Mr. bin Laden apparently lived near a prominent military school, in a garrison town dominated by security forces.

“There has been a lot of discussion about the nature of the targeted compound, particularly its high walls and its vicinity to the areas housing Pakistan Army elements,” the government said. “It needs to be appreciated that many houses occupied by the affectees of operations in [tribal areas] have high boundary walls, in line with their culture of privacy and security.”

The idea that Mr. bin Laden’s presence went unnoticed did not sit well with Pakistan’s media, however. Dawn, a leading newspaper, pointed out that the head of the country’s military, General Ashfaq Kayani, had visited the nearby Kakul Military Academy on April 23 and bragged that his forces had broken the “terrorist backbone” in the country.

“Was the general completely unaware that the most wanted man lived but a short distance away?” the newspaper asked, in a sharply worded front-page analysis.

Another major newspaper, The Nation, expressed similar sentiments in an unsigned report on the front page: “The presence of the world’s most wanted terrorist in such a strategically sensitive city is beyond the understanding of a sane man.”

Muzammil Pasha is Special to The Globe and Mail

This is not much to work with, I'd have to think. In fact, the unqualified headline is shamefully unwarranted, it should at least add a "Source Says." It's so easy for an unnamed "police officer" to be wrong or to be conveying misinformation or disinformation, or for that matter for the reporters to be doing so.

We're left in a situation not unlike with September 11th itself: you can see the outlines of something that must be there, all logic screams that something must be inside, but the attempts to draw a picture of it in are dubious, or take off from the slimmest factual basis.

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[Gouda]

Gates: Somebody in Pakistan knew about bin Laden

LOLITA BALDOR - Associated Press

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/gates-somebo ... 35053.html

"Somebody" in Pakistan knew Osama bin Laden was hiding there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday. But he said he's seen evidence that the country's senior leadership was unaware the terror leader was in a compound a short distance from a Pakistani military facility.

Both Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, however, said the U.S. must continue to work with and provide aid to Pakistan.

(...)

Asked about congressional pressure to hold back aid until Pakistan moves against militants within its borders, Gates and Mullen said Islamabad is already paying for its inaction.

(...)

Mullen said there is a lot of "soul searching" going on within the military there, and he said they should be given some time to deal with that.

[JackRiddler]

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SF Gate: Feinstein Now Knows "OBL" Is Rob Lowe!

[bks]

We're left in a situation not unlike with September 11th itself: you can see the outlines of something that must be there, all logic screams that something must be inside, but the attempts to draw a picture of it in are dubious, or take off from the slimmest factual basis.

Their names were reported in local media as Bara Khan and Chota Khan, or Arshad Pathan and Chota Pathan. However, “Bara” and “Chota” are common vernacular for “older,” and “younger,” making the names almost meaningless.

That's strange. I heard it was the same two "institutional investors" who made those fortuitous pre-9/11 stock trades:

[2012 Countdown]

Yes, love the double meaning "CIA ran bin Laden operation"
To that end, we ask, what message do they want us to receive...

Bin Laden lauds Arab Spring in posthumous tape
However he laments 'great catastrophe' that many Muslims don't agree with him
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 5/19/2011 8:20:08 AM ET

U.S. intelligence officials are poring over what is likely Osama bin Laden’s final message to the world. NBC’s Richard Engel reports.
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CAIRO — Al-Qaida has released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden in which the Islamist group's ex-leader praises the revolutions sweeping the Arab world.

In the audio, the former al-Qaida leader, who was killed in a U.S. raid on May 2 in Pakistan, expressed joy at the victory of uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia amid the so-called Arab Spring, Reuters reported.

In the audio, bin Laden talks about how the movement started in the Maghreb region of North Africa.

"The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy," he says.

Tunisia's president was overthrown in January, and this was then followed by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak's departure after mass protests centered on Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square," said bin Laden, adding: "It has made the rulers worried."

He celebrated the reasons behind the uprising, saying it "wasn't one about food and clothes, but a revolution of glory and defiance; revolution of sacrifice and giving."

'Big ignorance'
Bin Laden urged people to "continue the march and don't fear the hardships."

"Sons of my Muslim Ummah (community): You are before a dangerous crossroads and a great, rare and historic opportunity to raise the Ummah and be liberated from enslavement to the wishes of the rulers and the man-made laws and the Western domination," he added.

"It is of great sin and big ignorance that this opportunity gets lost, which the Ummah has been waiting for faraway decades. So take advantage of it and destroy the idols and statues and establish justice and faith," he said.

However he also lamented "the great catastrophe" that "lack of awareness exists in many of the Ummah's sons, which results from the wrong culture the rulers have been broadcasting for long decades."

Terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, speaking on msnbc's "The Rachel Maddow Show," said that the audio was real.

"There is no doubt whatsoever this is authentic, this is real, this is bin Laden, this is his last message," he said.

--
FULL-

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43085911/ns ... mous-tape/

==

No really, its REAL! I'm an expert!

[JackRiddler]

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A cutout of a cutout, triple agented. Do they know I know they know I know? While you ponder it, here's a cut from the OBL farewell album...

May 18, 2011
In Message, Bin Laden Praised Arab Revolt
By SCOTT SHANE

In a message to Muslims made public 16 days after his death, Osama bin Laden praised the pro-democracy uprisings that had swept the Arab world and, in the view of some experts, had called into question the relevance of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network he founded and led for 23 years.

In the 12-minute audio message, posted on Wednesday to jihadist forums on the Web, Bin Laden welcomed the uprisings that toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, according to a translation released by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private Web monitoring service. As Sahab, Al Qaeda’s media branch, entitled the recording, “Speech from the Martyr of Islam — As We Think of Him — To the Islamic Ummah,” or global community of Muslims.

“We watch with you this great historic event and we share with you joy and happiness and delight and felicity,” Bin Laden said. “We are happy for what makes you happy, and we are sad for what makes you sad. So congratulations to you for your victories.”

Before he was killed May 2 by Navy Seals who stormed his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Bin Laden had not reacted publicly to the series of popular demonstrations in Arab countries that had riveted the world’s attention.

But Al Qaeda had said in a statement after his death that he had recorded a commentary about a week before his death.

Some experts on the Middle East

(magic words invoked, we can now pull whatever we like out of our ass)

have said that the so-called Arab Spring appeared to catch Al Qaeda unawares and that young demonstrators had implicitly rejected its extremist ideology. But some militants, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Qaeda propagandist hiding in Yemen, have claimed that the uprisings will make room for Islamists to seize power.

In recent years, Bin Laden has released about half a dozen audio messages annually. But months had passed without any comment on the transforming events in the Arab world.

His new message, presumably his last, did not scold the demonstrators in Egypt and Tunisia for the fact that their slogans and demands were almost exclusively secular in nature.

But he said the region was at a “serious crossroads” that offered a “great and rare historic opportunity to rise with the Ummah and to free yourselves from servitude to the desires of the rulers, manmade law, and Western dominance,” suggesting that the new order should be governed by shariah, or Islamic law.

He advised creating a “council” to advise the new governments in Egypt and Tunisia and decide on the best timing for uprisings in other countries.

He did not comment on the continuing attempt to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya or the turmoil in Yemen, Syria and other countries.

But he urged Muslims to seize the moment. “A delay may cause the opportunity to be lost, and carrying it out before the right time will increase the number of casualties,” he said. “I think that the winds of change will blow over the entire Muslim world, with permission from Allah.”

The audio message was accompanied by a photograph of Bin Laden in which his beard has considerable gray in it, in contrast with some videos found in his compound in which he appeared to have dyed his beard black.

Our Chance-Zelig's latest face is a still photo. Piece of cake.

[2012 Countdown]

That also has to be noted as I didn't see it expressed on other threads. They are trying to portray him as vain, with the beard dying. I've heard several times from various newscasters/commentary trying to make fun of his alleged beard dying.

I guess our OBL decided on this last release to grow old gracefully. (Not a slip-up in coherance)