Saudis say bin Laden ill, not dead

CNN:

A report that Osama bin Laden is dead has set off a flurry of denials from U.S., French and Pakistani officials, who say the newspaper report citing French intelligence cannot be independently confirmed.

A Saudi intelligence official, however, told CNN on Saturday that the al Qaeda leader is suffering from a waterborne illness. There have been credible reports that the most wanted man in the world is ill, but there is no intelligence indicating he is dead, the source said.

L'Est Republicain, citing a September 21 French foreign intelligence document, reported that Saudi officials had received confirmation that bin Laden died August 23 of typhoid fever in Pakistan. (Watch CNN's Nic Robertson reveal the latest intelligence on bin Laden's health -- 1:54)

"We believe this reporting to be unsubstantiated," a U.S. intelligence official said.

...

Bin Laden's brother-in-law, Jamal Khalifa, who was the al Qaeda leader's best friend when they were university students in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, told CNN that he has heard no report of bin Laden's death. The Saudi-based businessman has been married to bin Laden's sister, Shaikha, since 1986.

Khaled Batarfi, a managing editor at the Saudi newspaper Al Madina and who was close friends with bin Laden when they were teenagers, said he remains in touch with bin Laden's immediate family in Jeddah. Family members said Saturday they had heard nothing to confirm the report, Batarfi told CNN.

Despite the fervent denials, journalist Laid Sammari, who wrote the article, said in a telephone interview that he was confident the classified document was authentic. His article states that Saudi secret service agents on September 4 received reports of bin Laden's death.

Saudi officials plan to make an official announcement after they confirm the burial site for the al Qaeda leader, Sammari said.

In Pakistan, officials said Saturday that they had no confirmation of bin Laden's death. On Friday, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf confirmed President Bush's earlier statement that the hunt for bin Laden is still on.

...

One thing is for sure, someday it will be true tht he is dead. Perhaps we should give him some more time to enjoy his illness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more