I think "October surprise" theories are way way off.

WorldThreats.com, which seems to be pretty reliable on these matters is saying this:

Conclusion

The conclusion WorldThreats.com has reached is that either Osama Bin Laden is in custody (alive or dead), OR we have a general idea of where he is, and we will likely nab him within six to eight months. If he is in custody, this will be announced either when Zawahiri is caught, or when all actionable intelligence from his capture is used up (which will take a bit of time). If Osama is caught, and held, and the US decides to “pick” a place where to “find” him, WorldThreats.com believes that the most likely scenario would be to say he was on the Afghan side of the Pakistani border. This would be the best approach, as saying he was in Iran would create major foreign policy problems, while saying he was in Pakistan could likely result in an uprising against Musharraf. For this reason, it is most likely he will have been said to be in Afghanistan. Already, if the theory about him being captured awhile ago is true, then we may see signs of the stage being set. Recently it was leaked, almost certainly intentionally; to the major media that there were signs Osama was moving into Afghanistan very soon.

Now, you may ask, why did WorldThreats.com issue this report now? On March 8, 2004, the Northeast Intelligence Network was told by one of the inside sources that the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s capture or suspected death will be made within 15 to 20 days by the head of Task Force 121, Admiral Bill McRaven. “It could be sooner or it could be later, but not much later”, the intelligence source said.

UPDATE 3.14.4: Two high-ranking sources have claimed that OBL will be announced found dead in Afghanistan from "ill health".

I think we're moving toward the endgame right now. If there's an October surprise, it'll be something else. Bush needs to shut down the terrorism fight screw up talk asap. Catching bin Laden that late in the game will cause him too much bleeding among his marginal support. This will stop that "Bush as screw-up" talk and let them move to a more palatable agenda--stopping gay marriage and sports steroid abuse...

is one of those new bogus terrorist experts that have popped up since 9-11. They are mostly an outlet for propaganda and terrorist chatter.

This looks legit to me, tho admittedly I don't know much about this side of the war. It seems to me that saying we have OBL already and that Zawahiri is the real guy in charge of al-Qaeda is pretty pointless disinformation. It would undercut US strategy (which is to bring out the baddies) to propagate these facts or "facts".

Think about it this way: If they don't have OBL already, announcing that we did is making it easy for them to make a fool of us--he wouldn't have to do anything, just make his presense known and, WALLAH, we're jackasses. But if we did have him, then using our propaganda organs to spread the word that we do would tip our hand to (and therefor delegitimize) any staged "capture" we would suddenly make.

Either way, announcing it plays against the government's needs. If the Northeast Intelligence Network is really an anti-terrorist consultancy outfit, it makes a hell of a lot of sense from a business-generation standpoint for them to figure out what's really going on and then to publicize their knowledge toward the potential client base, showing that they're the ones with their ear to the ground.

I stand by my claim.

Also, they seem to be trying to spin it that OBL was captured in Iran. Gee doesn't W need an excuse to invade Iran? Then he could say that was why they didn't announce OBL's capture sooner because they needed to retaliate and didn't want the Iranians to know what was going on until we finished with the troop rotation and would be in a better position to deal with this 'problem'.

plus Iran is the country that supposedly "captured" al-Zawahiri back in February 2002. Now he's loose again just as things start getting hot in al-Qaeda's corner of Afghanistan. Who knows what Iran is up to. There's also been a story (probably source from the US) that Iran was behind a warhead shipment going into Iraq.

The story was that an al-Qaeda driver was caught with one warhead designed to fit with whatever missiles the insrugents there have. Upon interrogation he revealed that 19 other warheads (designed to carry chemical agents) got through security and will soon be in the hands of people ready to use them. This sounds too pat to me. But mostly it's getting hard to keep the players straight in all this.

It will be in September....October is too obvious...

...for the same reason (October too obvious)

the Democratic Convention starts. Can't have Kerry getting all that free TV coverage.

I was convinced they were going to plant WMDs in Iraq, but it didn't happen. Who knows what they've got up their sleeves to beat back Kerry?

:shrug: