[CWuestefeld]

we have no good cause to question Osama's stated motives. When an organization repeatedly makes clear their motives through public statements; when that organization undertakes combat operations at such great risk and cost...

Let me ask everyone who believes OBL's stated motives: when GWB tells us repeatedly in public that we must invade Iraq because of the threat of WMD, and that the objectives have nothing to do with protecting oil supplies, should we take that statement at face value? I mean, the US through GWB has invested tons of resources, including the lives of its troops, into fighting that war, so surely the President's statements regarding the motivations can be accepted without question, right?

I'm not taking sides here. I'm trying to say that nobody ever truly knows the motivations of another person; in fact, frequently we don't truly understand the roots of our own motivations. See, for example, discussion in Mises' Human Action.

[roguecoder]

But Bush did tell us why we invaded Iraq: "He tried to kill my dad." Before he was even elected he indicated a desire to invade Iraq because he saw it as the hight of his father's presidency left unfinished. "If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it," he said on the campaign trail. He never once stuck to the WMD story; it was just what they made Powell say in public as a cover for all the other reasons he gave (see the Downing Street Memo for more details.)

If Osama had came out with a multitude of mutually-contradictory statements we'd have reason to doubt him, but he was amazingly consistent from when the CIA started funding him until the US military gunned him down.

[babblefrog]

I think GWB really did think there were WMDs there. And protecting the oil supplies from who, exactly? They were going to go onto the market anyway.