NPR: Bin Laden's Video — and Beard Job?

Bin Laden's Video — and Beard Job?

You're holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan with a bunch of guys who all probably smell really bad. Your second-in-command has been getting all the press lately. You're worried about losing your edge. So maybe you decide you want to spruce up a bit for your next jihadist video.

Still, Osama bin Laden is the last guy in the world I would have suspected of using Just for Men beard coloring.

ABC reports that intelligence sources say they believe that a new video from bin Laden is authentic and recently produced. The video itself apparently doesn't say much new, but, boy, that beard. It looks like the victim of one of the worst dye jobs since Ronald Reagan's hair. I mean, just look at it. All the gray from 2004 is gone.

"It does look oddly like he is wearing a false beard," Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official and now ABC News consultant, said. "If we go back to the tape three years [ago], he had a very white beard. This looks like a phony beard that has been passed on."

You know, now that Clarke mentions it, the beard could be a fake, not a dye job. It does remind me of those fake beards the women bought in that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian so they could get in on stoning someone.

3:18 PM ET | 09- 7-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

As my documentary-making wife would say, "They probably fixed it in post." :-)

Sent by andy carvin | 3:53 PM ET | 09-07-2007

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