'Laden s' eludn'

Yeah, that's right. Bin Laden is eluding me. I thought I was so clever and could solve the war on terror in an afternoon and write my essay on Diplomacy about it. I had ascribed a lot of this to the latest Bin Laden speech - which I thought was a major breakthrough, a silent one as it might be.

But as I have been researching it my grand hopes has been kind of let down. I thought I saw some interesting pointers towards a diplomatic dialogue here. But my research so far has shown that his old credo still is valid: "There is no dialogue, except with weapons" (January 2003).

The interesting thing, however, is that I had kind of foreseen that already in my entry on the speech. Interesting how your historic I can be smarter than you present. And a bit scary as well.

Now I just have to turn that immense wisdom of my historic I into a 3000 word essay, namely: "This [the dialogue] might have a very large impact on the notion of al-Queda as a diplomatic entity."

Good pointers are always welcomed...