Maybe He’s Still Dead After All

No sooner had I prematurely abandoned my conviction that bin Laden is dead, based on news reports that Pakistani officials said Mohammed’s documents and computer files showed that he and Osama had recently met, than new reports appeared, quoting American officials to the effect that they have seen no such documentary evidence. Oops. I think he’s dead again after all.
Several readers have taken me to task for jumping ship so easily. Dafydd ab Hugh (real name? beats me) writes:
“This isn’t evidence… this is garbage. We all know what would constitute evidence: the gaunt, skeletal, 6’5″ Mr. Osama bin Laden himself on videotape, shot either by Al-Qaeda and clearly after the Tora Bora campaign — or else shot by CNN or Fox News Channel as he is being whisked away to an undisclosed foreign location. No amount of suspicious audiotape, hand-scribbled memos in Arabic, or hand-on-the-heart testimony by Pakistan officials that they’ve by golly seen ‘documents’ that prove his livingness will convince me.”