AS LETTERMAN WOULD SAY: WILL IT FLOAT?

The Toronto Sun headline for the hottest newsmurmur going:

Perhaps we can also anticipate the follow-up article to Mark Steyn's October 2004 speculation that "He's Bin Laden to rest":

As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.

This most recent Frenchly-rumored scenario-- that OBL succumbed to typhoid in remotest AghanoPakistan-- would go a long way to explain why his #2, Ayman "Big Al" Zawahiri, and not OBL himself, turned up in the "Favourite Fatwas: Bridges to Babylon Fifth Anniversary Tour" video released to Big Al Jazeera this past 9/11.

OBL-ah-dee, OBL-ah-dah, OBL-ah-dead?

It works for me. And, oddly, for President Dubya too, since it takes OBL off the table (as it were) as an election issue, without anyone being able to accuse the Republicans of having busted, bombed, or buried him and then held back the news until it fit the "October Surprise" model.

The truth is OBL is more or less a dead issue anyway in the grand scheme of thwarting Big Al Qaeda-- despite the Democrats' best effort to periodically dredge him up into an anti-Bush bat-- since (to quote another British invasion limey bastard, Donovan) "the organization ain't really organized", and has pretty much outgrown his control. His money was probably not getting out as freely as it once did either, major funding having been taken over by their good friends in Iran, and perhaps some quarters of Saudi Arabia.

So we'll wait with less than baited breath to see if, like Twain (in this and no other way), "Rumors of his death will prove to have been greatly exaggerated."
May he rest in pieces.