Are you afraid?

Media coverage of the latest bin Laden video must have people quaking with fear. This Newsweek article is one example. Here’s the lead:

Judging from a new message released this week, Osama bin Laden is still alive and plotting. The latest video-the first since October 2004-shows bin Laden looking unnaturally youthful in at least one respect: the robust state of his bushy black beard, which was streaked with grey three years ago. Some intelligence officials wondered, only half in jest, whether the terrorist leader was using “Just For Men,” a hair dye. Other ana­lysts believed he was wearing a fake beard. If so, that could mean he had shaven to obscure his identity, wherever he’s liv­ing. Then again, he might be trying to confuse everyone about his whereabouts, which he has done for many years.

Okay, to this point, we’ve learned absolutely nothing new.

Newsweek selectively quotes some of the tape. I thought it was interesting that bin Laden not only shows ‘respect’ for Noam Chomsky (as Hugo Chavez did), but the article showed his….odd…deference to Michael Scheuer, the ubiquitous former CIA bin Laden expert whose mission it was to track down bin Laden and who is the leading expert all the news shows are going to for information right now. Here’s Newsweek’s take on bin Laden’s message:

He attacks the Democrats in Congress for fail­ing to stop the war in Iraq (“You elected the Democratic Party for this purpose”) and commends the writings of anti-war intel­lectual Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden-hunting unit.

Bin Laden is commending Scheuer’s work? And Newsweek falls for it?