The spate of headlines over the weekend announcing that Osama bin Laden was back with a new audio-only message in which he claimed credit for the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a passenger jet via a bomb in his underwear leave out out one foundational fact: We don’t really know if Osama bin Laden is alive.

It has been years since a video was released that could be verified as having been filmed later than the general timeframe of the attacks on the United States in 2001, and digitizing a convincing audio recording of bin Laden ranting would be relatively easy. A savvy high school student could do it with the right software.

Jazz from Hell caught this telling omission from the weekend’s news, too:

Buried deep in the piece is the following factoid: “There was no way to confirm the voice was actually that of Bin Laden.” Naturally, that won’t stop the AP, Al Jazeera, Fox News, the Republican Party, right-wingers, wannabe terrorists and the Pentagon from taking Osama’s “statement” at face value and reacting forthwith while the rest of us wonder what the fuck is really going on.

At this point, hell, The News™ may as well run headlines like JESUS DENOUNCES LIBERALS, or CHRIST HAILS BROWN ELECTION IN BLUE STATE, or MESSIAH LAMBASTES CHARGERS FOR KEEPING NORV TURNER. Buried deep in these pieces would be, “There was no way to confirm the voice was that of Jesus.” How about making that your first sentence, newschebags?

Speaking of Christmas, or rather Boxing Day, on Dec. 26, 2001, a little over three months after the 9/11 attacks, no less a right-wing propaganda outlet than Fox News reported that Osama had died:

Osama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

“The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Osama alive or dead,” the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some “Taliban friends,” attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the “great leader.”

Six month after bin Laden’s obituary in Fox News, Time magazine speculated about reports of the death of the terrorist mastermind:

Six months after hailing bin Laden’s imminent capture or death, Pentagon officials now admit that the al-Qaeda leader “has gone missing” since the siege of Tora Bora. Missing, of course, could mean dead, and a small minority of officials in the Pentagon, CIA and FBI believe that bin Laden’s public silence since the December tape suggests he has succumbed — if not to U.S. air strikes, then possibly to kidney failure. But the fact is, Washington just doesn’t know. “The proof that he’s alive is, we don’t hear anything from Osama bin Laden,” says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official. “The proof that he’s dead is, we don’t hear anything from Osama bin Laden.”

In a book published last year, “Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of religion and theology at Claremont College in California, lays out a convincing case that bin Laden is dead:

First, up until mid-December 13, 2001, the CIA had regularly been intercepting messages between bin Laden and his people. At that time, however, the messages suddenly stopped, and the CIA has never again intercepted a message.

Second, on December 26, 2001, a leading Pakistani newspaper published a story reporting that bin Laden had died in mid-December, adding:

“A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement . . . stated . . . that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial.”

Third, bin Laden had kidney disease. He had been treated for it in the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, at which time he reportedly ordered two dialysis machines to take home. If you have ever wondered what bin Laden was doing the night before the 9/11 attacks, CBS News reported that he was being given kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Pakistan. And in January of 2001, Dr. Sanjay Gupta said – based on a video of bin Laden that had been made in either late November or early December of 2001 – that he appeared to be in the last stages of kidney failure.

Fourth, In July of 2002, CNN reported that bin Laden’s bodyguards had been captured in February of that year, adding: “Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most-wanted man in the world is dead.”

Fifth, the United States has since 2001 offered a $25 million reward for any information leading to the capture or killing of bin Laden. But this reward offer has produced no such information, even though Pakistan has many desperately poor people, only about half of whom have been supportive of bin Laden.

One wonders — hopes — that when these recordings come out, someone is bothering to pick up the phone ask someone who knows/knew bin Ladin if the voice is authentic — someone like, say, Omar bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind’s prodigal son, who was profiled in the current issue of Rolling Stone. Omar apparently believes his father is alive:

“I love him because he is my father,” he says. “I don’t want him to be caught and put on trial. It would break my heart. I wish he could die before someone gets him. I don’t want to see my father under the rule of somebody else. My father is my father, to this day, and until I die. I came from his body. I am part of him.”

“How do you feel when you see him on television?” I ask.

“I get worried,” Omar says. “For me, for my father, for the world.”

And:

According to Omar, Americans are actually lucky that his father has not been captured or killed. “It is going to be worse when my father dies,” he says. “The world is going to be very, very nasty then. It will be a disaster.”

“Omar always says that without the head, the arms and legs will run wherever,” Zaina says.

“I know this for a fact,” Omar says. “People were always asking my father to attack more. They would say, ‘Sheik, we must do more.’ Crazy fucking things. My father has a religious goal. He is controlled by the rules of jihad. He only kills if he thinks there is a need.”

“Will there be more attacks?” [the Rolling Stone reporter asks].

“I don’t think so,” Omar says. “He doesn’t need to. As soon as America went to Afghanistan, his plan worked. He has already won.”

It’s true that Osama and al Qaeda have won both all the battles so far in his war against Western civilization. Right-wing fearmongers like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have played right into his hands. Whether or not the United States declares victory in its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, by drawing us into those briar patches, he has ensured that new generations of suiciders will be created for decades to come.

And the two occupations have sucked up trillions of dollars from U.S. and coalition treasuries and are a partial reason Western civilization is on the brink of financial ruin — just as the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse when bin Laden and his motley crew forced it out of Afghanistan in 1989. The communist regime in Moscow collapsed just two years later.

All that being said, it’s a wonderment why a media whore like bin Laden has not released an indisputable video recording of himself in recent years. While he certainly doesn’t need to prove he is alive to get the world’s attention, it’s hard to believe that if he were alive he would have the willpower to resist.