Bin Laden's Beard

How sad is this?

McConnell swiftly rejected any possibility that the hair in his chin was intended to send any signal to his Al-Qaeda members.

"So far, we do not think there's been a signal. He's done this periodically, as has (Ayman al-) Zawahiri (the group's second-in-command), and there has not been a correlation necessarily between one of these tapes or a public statement and a particular event," McConnell said.

But he wondered whether Bin Laden's beard was genuine.

"The big question in the community this morning, 'Is that beard real,' because as you know, just a few years ago, the last time he appeared, it was very different," he said.

"So we don't know if it's dyed and trimmed or real, but that's one of the things we're looking at. But no specific message."

I tend to think the CIA is deceptive in matters like this. But here, they just sound kind of clueless.