Lotsa folk have said the OBL tape stiffened American spines (“No foreign
terrorist’s going to tell ME how to vote!”) Some — e.g. America’s
Newspaper of Record this morning – say it makes no
difference.
The tape left me somewhat dismayed. OBL looks tired and frustrated. He
looks like a busted flush, a broken-down old Lear — you know: “I shall do
such things, I know not what they shall be, but they shall be the terror of
the earth!…” I found myself thinking: “THIS is what all the fuss is
about? This tired, gray-haired fool, babbling inconsequentially from some
basement somewhere?”
If that’s a common reaction — that we beat him (he LOOKS beaten) — and the
War on Terror is over (which of course it actually isn’t — there’s plenty
where OBL came from) — it’s bad for Bush.