Tapes. It's always in the tapes. Surveillance recordings solve crimes, and surreptitious cassettes can change the way we look at leaders, at a war, and at the world. The Pentagon's just released Osama bin Laden tape is being called everything from the mother of all smoking guns to a crude American fabrication. Yet seeing the reclined chuckling al Queda leader describe the murder of so many people in such an off-hand way, few can help but stop and wonder. The poetry and the dream sequences, the sycophantic praise from his companions: it's either a revealing portrait the man never meant to project, or the gesture a man so certain, so determined, so maniacally focused, that he's convinced history and God will judge him well. Bin Laden, and the video war over public opinion.
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Ibrahim Moosa, Professor of Religion at Duke University
Anthony Shadid, correspondent for The Boston Globe and author of "Legacy of the Prophet"
Jamal Khashoggi, deputy editor for Arab News
and Irfan Husain, weekly columnist for the Dawn newspaper.
