You say "Osama", I say "Goldstein", Let's call the whole thing off!

There is no Osama bin Laden. There, I said it. Oh, I'm not saying he's not / was / is a real person... his existence is as well documented as, let's say, Jesus Christ's (which isn't exactly encyclopedic in detail but sufficient enough to suggest that he actually walked the planet at some point in some form or another). But seriously: the guy popped up after 9/11 and took the heat for the whole thing (or sort of kind of seemed to... I don't recall hearing any details mentioning the pilots by name or anything), and since then, he's resurfaced *once*! The day before Dubya's wholesale theft of a second American presidential election, he comes out of nowhere to threaten The Great Unwashed with death and destruction. Hmm, if I wanted to stop Bush and I had even the most rudimentary understanding of the Redneck American psyche, it's kind of the last thing I'd do at that particular moment, don't you think?

So in 4 years, he's made the news, what, a million times, but only appeared in some kind of verifiable form, twice. For all we know, he's got himself a villa in the south of France paid for by Haliburton or the House of Saud or whomever, and every once in awhile, somebody from head office asks he'd mind standing in front of a camera to demonize the West for a few minutes. Nice work if you can get it.

But maybe (just maybe, mind you), 99.9999% of Osama's press has been fabricated from the ground up by people you're traditionally led to believe are on "our side". Hmmm... In Orwell's "1984", there is a face that pops up on everyone's t.v. screen every 5 minutes (sort of like the NBC peacock), which is the face of "Goldstein". He's the "enemy", although you never really find out why. Okay, so imagine Orwell's 8 ft. telescreen is your 17" computer monitor, and that "Goldstein" is pronounced "Osama" and everything falls into place, yes?

C'mon, people, what's more transparent than "transparent"?

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