Osama video a fake?

Yeah, this one popped out of nowhere this afternoon, but I was busy covering the heinous and idiotic decisions of Chancellor Drake over at UC-Irvine (scroll down if you want a gander at the story).

But Ace at Spades and Allah over at Hot Air have the scoop on this one. Yes, it appears that the Osama video (which we didn't watch because the bloody thing didn't want to load for some reason; we read the transcript) was faked:

The September 7 video shows bin Laden dressed in a white hat, white shirt and yellow sweater. Krawetz notes “this is the same clothing he wore in the 2004-10-29 video. In 2004 he had it unzipped, but in 2007 he zipped up the bottom half. Besides the clothing, it appears to be the same background, same lighting, and same desk. Even the camera angle is almost identical.” Krawetz also notes that “if you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years–only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted.”…

At roughly a minute and a half into the video there is a splice; bin Laden shifts from looking at the camera to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second. At 13:13 there is a second, less obvious splice. In all, Krawetz says there are at least six splices in the video. Of these, there are only two live bin Laden segments, the rest of the video composed of still images. The first live section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. The two live sections appear to be from different recordings “because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section.”

Then there are the audio edits. Krawetz says “the new audio has no accompanying ‘live’ video and consists of multiple audio recordings.” References to current events are made only during the still frame sections and after splices within the audio track.” And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really bin Laden is to see him talking in the video,” Krawetz says.

Which according to those that have done the analysis, he really wasn't speaking except in the two "live" segments, but even those are suspect upon examination of the soundtrack. It appears that our vaunted intelligence agencies, who claimed the tape was authentic, missed this. Or, they meant "authentic" to mean yes, it came from al Qaeda. It's obviously a ruse to continue perpetuating a myth, and that myth is that Osama is alive.

I've maintained this for quite some time. We hadn't heard from him in a long time, and suddenly a video appears with him in it. It's quickly debunked as old footage from around the time we were laying siege to Tora Bora. Now this one pops up, and he sounds like he's running for president rather than rallying jihadis to his cause. Global warming? Shameful Democrats? Taxes?

Osama doesn't talk about this crap. He talks about jihad. He praises his fighters and the martyrs that have committed the ultimate act in his name and Allah's. That video was suspect when we read the transcript, and now we know why. Because it was a sham. It was a put-up, snow-job by al Qaeda because they don't want to let it out that he's pushing up poppies in Afghanistan.

The second one that was released, we'll recall, had an awful lot of still frames in it, as well. And it was constructed, seemingly, as an afterthought by al Qaeda because they screwed up and didn't put one mention of jihad into the first one. Pretty amateurish, huh? I wonder if they called Reuters or CBS to consult or produce the video?

Publius II