How to handle a terror tape

Kerry will be jumped on if he tries very hard to directly tie Osama's reappearance to Bush. However hypocritical this would be of the Bush campaign (from whom I received a mailer plastered with images from 9/11) it's still unavoidable and must be taken into account. Kerry can actually do some constructive political things with this tape while avoiding the indignation of the Bush campaign. I think he can do this by addressing Osama bin Laden. Talk past George Bush directly to Osama. "I have a message for you, Osama." type of thing. If done right it would make him look tougher than he has been and avoid direct criticism of the President.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

The most interesting thing about the Osama tape is the reference to My Pet Goat. That business was, even when Michael Moore did it, closer to being a joke than a serious argument. So now Osama's cracking jokes at our expense. He's not afraid, he's not injured, he's not on the run, he doesn't worry that the courier that delivers his videotapes might betray him, or that the local government wherever he is is going to find him. He's sitting -- wounds healed, shura council reconstituted, ideological network growing -- and he's laughing at us.

Capturing OBL is not the be-all and end-all of the war on terrorism, but if you want to know what kind of weakness invites the wolves in for supper, then you saw it right there on video. A man plots and organizes the slaughter of thousands of Americans and three years later there he is, distributing his latest threats and boasts over a global satellite network. Laughing at us. At all of us. And all because the president couldn't be bothered to nab him.