Reply #10: Plenty of reasons not to use a video recorder.

[jobycom]

It can give away hints to wear he is and what he looks like now, and even when he did use a video recorder people claimed the tapes were fake. What's the advantage? And if the CIA or whomever was faking audio tapes, why not just fake video tapes?

Even if they are fake, there'd be more reason for Al-Qaida or some such group to fake them than the CIA.

As to him being dead, maybe, but I'm not convinced. First, if we knew he were dead, whomever was president would parade around in the biggest celebration since VE Day. Our guys over there would broadcast it to demoralize Al-Qaeda. And someone on their side who knew would leak it to our people, in hopes of a reward. Plus, our intelligence would pick up the changes in the power structure. So it's possible, but I don't think it's a slam dunk. He's hiding from us, he's hiding from them, he's probably hiding from his own people with the size of the reward on his head.

Then again, we are still debating whether Billy the Kid and Jesse James lived into modern times, and there are people who still think Lee Harvey Oswald is innocent. Pet theories die hard, or not at all. I once had a friend who was a descendant of one of the Lincoln conspirators (Surrat), and when it came up once in a history class she got upset, told us we were too willing to believe the official story, and pouted the rest of the class. So if Bin Laden pulls off a major attack on our soil and is videotaped riding a bomb like Slim Pickens, there would still be people claiming it was faked. We'll never know.