- 19% of Americans think Osama might be alive, poll says source
- » Distrusting against all odds: The penchant for some of the population to prefer any explanation, even a bad one, that makes a chaotic world make sense to them is nothing new. That said, there’s one very salient reality behind this story that makes the doubts notably, patently absurd. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that Osama bin Laden is alive. Why then has al-Qaeda conceded that he’s dead? All they’d need to do to deal a complete and utter deathblow to America’s credibility, domestically and internationally, would be to produce a live bin Laden. It would be catastrophic, and would cast Barack Obama as a liar and fraud of the highest order, a win which they’d never in a million years pass up. But they won’t, and can’t — the guy is dead as dirt.