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Vice Knows Where Osama’s Hiding

vice_osama.jpgIf a hipster-skateboard-drug-leaning-irreverent free monthly breaks an international news story, does anyone bother to read it? Or, perhaps more succinctly, does anyone “important” bother to? Included alongside its obligatory drug coverage and addictively vicious Fashion Dos and Don’ts in the latest issue of Vice is a “heavy scoop” on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. The world’s most wanted Jihad-er, Vice reports, is in China; specifically, in the Taxkorgan Tajik region:

According to an anonymous Vice source (yes, we have sources, just like “real” journalists) with ties inside the Pakistani ISI (it’s their CIA), Osama Bin Laden has been tracked to a mountain hideaway in the Taxkorgan Tajik region of China’s predominantly Muslim Xinjiang area and has been under US, British, and Pakistani secret-service surveillance since mid-September of last year. The source also reports that top US officials have been trying to open a dialogue with the Chinese government since positively identifying Bin Laden sometime in the middle of last September, but to no avail.

Vice says the report confirms a 2002 Vice piece claiming Bin Laden had been covertly operating out of the Chinese mountain range in the months before 9/11.

Believe it or not, Vice does do a fair amount of international reporting. But can a magazine that credits articles with bylines like “Taco Toe” and “Samuel Butthammer” ever be taken seriously? One unlikely prediction: a CNN Reliable Sources with Vice founder Gavin McInnes in under two weeks.

Surprise! Bin Laden Takes a Chinese Vacation (Vice)

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