So, it seems that the only ones in the world who have seen the evidence the US claims to have against Osama bin Laden are Britain's Tony Blair and the head honchos at NATO, who in turn proclaim to the whole world "Oh yes, that proves it". Forgive my cynicism, but such third-party endorsements are about as convincing as a detergent commercial. Is there really any difference between this and a marketing campaign to make a product SEEM "new" "improved" "effective" etc. without ever stating anything factual, and avoiding the reality that the product is the same inferior soap-dust it's been for the last hundred years?

In citing "security" to justify the absence of hard facts, what is the US attempting to protect? We all know about the eavesdropping capabilities of Project Echelon and the high-tech abilities of the intelligence agencies to monitor everything, everywhere; we know about the spy satellites, and what we don't know we can extrapolate; we can assume there are human intelligence assets involved; and we know that electronic and paper records can be easily accessed. I suppose it might be that the US has allied itself with little green men from outer space who have methods of intelligence-gathering far superior to our own, but that's about the only possibility that would merit this professed concern for "security".

Don't get me wrong - maybe Osama is involved and maybe he's not, but no one will ever know unless the US replaces its Madison Avenue-inspired "product endorsements" with hard facts. I wouldn't buy a product based solely on the assurances of a corporate shill, and I suspect most thinking people born before last week wouldn't either.

The stakes are too high not to get this right the first time. One can always discard a worthless product that turns out to have been fraudently represented, but we don't have the luxury of discarding millions of lives on a bum tip ... or do we?