No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Weasel Zippers)

I don’t know whether I should be complaining about the AoS commenting system since I hit the CPU Quota Exceeded error again, but since he isn’t on this one yet, I’ll jump in with the details from CTV:

Canadian military officials say they’re happy with a weekend raid carried out by coalition forces that reportedly caught the Taliban completely by surprise.

About 70 Taliban fighters were asleep in a compound when Canadian, Afghan National Army and British Ghurka soldiers attacked.

Forty-one Taliban died, with no coalition or civilian casualties reported in Operation Sharp Sword.

Airstrikes were used on the insurgents.

Good flying and hunting, men.

The Jawas have the details. To wit:

– The voice on the audio-only tape (guess the M-m-m-m-max bin Laden video machine’s out of commission) is whining that the Europeans aren’t stringing up Bush and Rumsfeld.
– Said voice once again claims responsibility for 9/11 (as if the video authenticated to have been shot October 2001 wasn’t enough proof).
– The Arabic version of the al Jazeera story exhorts the Islamokazis. Can we vaporize al Jazeera’s HQ now?

(H/T – Little Green Footballs)

In an attempt to stall the world from acting before it gains nuclear weapons, Iran turned over a copy of a 2-year-old set of blueprints on how to mold uranium into weaponized shapes to the IAEA. LGF notes that the IAEA, headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, has been claiming that Iran has nothing but piec…er, peaceful intentions with their nuclear weapo…er, power production plan. Iran claims that they ‘accidentally’ got the blueprints during other black-market shopping. I say that Iran was shopping for them, kept the originals, and has every intention on acting upon them and using the results.

Can we bomb them now?

(H/T – Curt/Flopping Aces))

I’m sure you’ve heard by now all the bloviating over Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of martial law, busting up their Supreme Court and muzzling the Pakistani press. What you’re probably not going to hear from the LeftStream Media is the semi-official reason why – he’s declaring war on Al Qaeda. Supporting that is a report that Pakistan has pulled many of its troops from the Kashmir region.

If this is true and not the same old tightrope walking Musharraf’s done since 2001, it’s a big development. Much of Pakistan’s elite, namely the lawyers and the presstitutes, which is caught up in the wake of the martial law, is solidly in the camp of Al Qaeda. Of course, so is Pakistan’s ISI, which is presumably what Musharraf would need to rely on to effectively combat any internal opposition to him.

In any case, it’s more complicated than simply Musharraf wanting to hold onto power, though that is undoubtedly his main goal.

Head Jawa Rusty has blown the lid off some games keyboard Islamists want to start on the 11th.

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

From militaryphotos.net via head Jawa Rusty…

Militaryphotos.net has it in full 2048×1536 glory. I don’t care to know whether that’s a Photoshop (though I suspect it is).

(H/T – Allahpundit)

Dr. Neal Krawetz, who is good enough to get a C|Net story, did some video/audio and image analysis of the “new” Osama bin Laden video. The money quotes:

The big question is: is the audio from Bin Laden? I’m not an audio expert (yet) and since I don’t know Arabic, I cannot tell if there is an accent or if the accent changes. I do know that the room echo and background sounds change during different audio clips. 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, but all references to current-events come during the frozen-frame section.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there would be so many splices in the audio-only portion of the M-m-m-m-max bin Laden tape. How about the under-4 minutes of video?

There are some very obvious places where the video has been spliced. Here’s some examples:

• 1:39 — A little more than a minute and a half into the video is a splice. He goes from looking out to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second.
• 13:13 — The second splice. Not as big, but definitely there.

There are actually six splices in the video as far as I can tell.

The video itself was filmed in two takes. The first section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. That’s right: the entire 26 minute video has less than four minutes of animated footage. The rest of the video just shows a still-frame of Bin Laden. The two sections are clearly from different recordings because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section.

Let’s see; 3:28 of live video, 6 splices. They couldn’t get more than 35 seconds out of “ObL” before they had to cut. M-m-m-m-max Headroom got more than that. Let’s continue with the video analysis, with my note that Krawetz believes the 2004 video was made in 2004 (I have my doubts on that):

Yet here is Bin Laden in the same clothing, same studio, same studio setup, and same desk THREE YEARS LATER. In fact, his stack of papers that he reads are moved between the exact same stacks. 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.

What are the chances of nothing changing (except his beard) in three years? Virtually zero. The clips appear to have been recorded three years ago.

Or longer. However, I do not put as much stock in the sameness; a studio in Milwaukee can be made to look exactly the same as one in New York City. Morever, others have noted differences in the face between the 2004 video and the 2007 one. On to the image analysis:

As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the Bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color. (I’ve asked another graphics researcher to also look at the image I analyzed, as a cross-check.)

One of the limitations of image analysis is that staged environments are not digital fakes. For example, when China Airlines painting over their logo on crashed planes, the pictures did not analyze as being faked — because they were not. In the case of his beard, it could be a costume mask, or a trimmed and dyed beard.

Let’s stop for a moment. It could also be a look-alike. Do recall that the late Saddam Hussein reportedly employed up to 25 look-alikes to try to prevent his assassination.

Another limitation concerns image size and resaves. If you make a picture small enough or resave it many times, then the fine details vanish. A picture that looks obviously like a fake cannot be detected as being a fake.

Neal goes on to note that the bin Laden frame and border were both saved at least twice and not at the same time, and that the various elements of the video came from different sources. The conclusion:

So is Bin Laden still alive? I see no proof of his existance that is newer than three years ago. Bin Laden is as alive as Elvis.

It is a lot easier to hide a corpse than a living body.

Six years ago today, a bunch of Islamists decided to snuff out the lives of 3,000 people because they wanted a worldwide Caliphate full of nobody except their kind. Though they haven’t managed another attack on American soil, they are still as committed to that goal now as they were then.

Fortunately, we’ve been taking the fight to them, slowly but surely eliminating those that hold that murderous view. We need to stay at least as committed to defeating them as they are to killing us.

If you haven’t heard the news that al Qaeda has issued a “new” videotape of Osama bin Laden, you’re not paying attention. Howie at The Jawa Report has the full video, and there’s something quite “curious” that Allahpundit pointed out. At the 1:55 mark, the image of Blackbeard bin Laden becomes a freeze frame. Interestingly, that is before the first reference to events past December 2001.

Guess al Qaeda’s Max Headroom technology isn’t perfected (or is it the Left’s; after all, “ObL” rails on Global “Warming”, corporations and neocons as well).

Revisions/extensions (7:58 am 9/9/2007) – I should’ve watched the whole thing; Dr. Rusty Shackleford (founding Jawa) notes that there also is motion on the “Osama”-cam from 12:30 to 14:00, when the figure channels Breck Girl, Barack Hussein Obama, and Alpha Algore Goracle. It makes it a bit more likely the video is somewhat-fresh; however, Osama has expressed admiration for the Vietnam-era defeatists among the Dhimms in the past, and the envirowhacko/anti-business plank has been part of the Dhimm policy since the 1960s, and there is no concrete references to events beyond December 2001.