Disinformation Dep’t.: George Monbiot shares my skepticism about the documents the investigators are coming up with to build their case — and it’s not just the five pages of notes about which I wrote yesterday. “It’s partly, I think, because they need to show that they are not as clueless as their failure to predict the atrocity suggests. But it’s also because, understandably enough, they want a discrete and discernable enemy to confront, a structure they can penetrate, a membership they can round up, and a figure whose personal evil is commensurate with the crime.

Partly as a result of this wishful thinking, the West found itself in a curious position last week. The Taliban, possibly the most brutal and barbaric regime on earth, was requesting evidence before considering Osama Bin Laden’s extradition: they insisted that he was innocent until proven guilty. The West, in the name of civilisation, was insisting that Bin Laden was guilty, and it would find the evidence later.

For these reasons and many others (such as the initial false certainties about the Oklahoma bombing and the Sudanese medicine factory, and the identification of live innocents as dead terrorists), I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against Bin Laden with a measure of scepticism. There’s no question that he’s dangerous, and there’s convincing evidence connecting him to previous attacks, but if the West starts chasing the wrong man across the Hindu Kush while the real terrorists are planning their next atrocity, this hardly guarantees our security.” [via Rebecca Blood] Here‘s more about who Monbiot is.