The November Surprise---bin Laden on a Silver Platter?

This morning, the AP reported that French President Jacques Chirac acknowledged the intelligence suggesting bin Laden is dead is "not yet confirmed." What is puzzling is a widely practiced CIA, and administration policy of bypassing FISA by data mining U.S. citizens, all the while vowing ignorance with respect to bin Laden's whereabouts.

Whether he is dead or alive, the FBI's most wanted, Osama bin Laden, has a high profile niece who lives in this country, and has for years. Why is it that so-called "intelligence agencies" have been unable to wrangle his cell phone number, email address, and/or post office box from her? Better still, why is it that Dick Armitage, his friends at the NSA,and those who like to fool us into thinking they're in the "homeland security" business haven't thought of contacting those relatives of bin Laden's, back in Saudi Arabia, who were partying with the Bush clan, and jetted out, only hours before 9/11? Does domestic, and foreign surveillance, stop short of tapping the phones of those Saudi oil barons?

hmmmmm.... can it be that this administration is saving the discovery of bin Laden for a week before the November election to sabotage the clear and present danger (one hopes, anyway) of a Democratic landslide, and the placing of their great crusades on hold? is W. holding out for the November surprise -- bin Laden's head on a silver platter? What was that movie, from about 20 years ago, about the South American world leader who was dead for years, but kept afloat by spin? Maybe bin Laden has been gone for years, but kept in a state of suspended animation for precisely the best strategic moment for him to surface?As has been suggested, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

If nothing else, the past 6 years have shown us that we are no safer as a result of the "intelligence" gathering efforts of our government and, indeed, the world is an infinitely more terrifying place as a result of the politics of preemption, and selective prosecution.