Previous to the 2004 election, Bin Laden surfaced on a video on the eve of the two year anniversary of 911. Once again impeccable timing to deliver a video, given that he was reported to be hiding in the mountains of Pakistan.
However, the video was quickly recognized by experts as simply a re-hash of old material cobbled together quickly and so amateurish that it could not have fooled anyone.
Previous to the beginning of the Iraq war, Bin Laden appeared in February 2003 on an audio tape that was touted as proof positive of Al Qaeda links with Saddam Hussein.
In another amazing timing coincidence, the tape came barely a week after Colin powell's attempts to link Al Qaeda and Saddam in his botched presentation of lies and exaggerations before the UN Security Council.
In an even more bizarre twist, just hours before the tape was found and aired by AlJazeera, Colin Powell announced in the US Senate that a “Bin Laden tape is coming proving Iraq’s links with Al-Qaeda.”
How does Colin Powell know what AlJazeera are going to broadcast before they do?
The tape voiced support for Iraq, but did not prove any link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi leadership. It was described as dubious at best and at worst as an outright fake.
Previous to this tape a poor quality release in November 2002, deemed to be completely authentic by US Experts, was determined to be a total fake by the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence in Switzerland.
This time Bin Laden was said to be admitting to recent small scale terror attacks. Yet the voice on the tape was different to around twenty previous recordings of Bin Laden.
And of course, then there is the all time classic Bin Laden video, the number one hit from december 2001. The one we like to call the "Fat nosed" Bin Laden video.

This one was magically found in a house in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in. It featured a fat Osama laughing and joking about how he'd carried out 9/11. The video was also mistranslated in order to manipulate viewer opinion and featured "Bin Laden" praising two of the hijackers, only he got their names wrong.
This Osama also uses the wrong hand to write with and wears gold rings, a practice totally in opposition to the Muslim faith.
Despite the fact that the man in the video looks nothing like Bin Laden, the CIA stood by the video whilst many have declared it an outright fake.
And so we come back to this week's tape, Osama's "latest release". Already experts are coming forward to suggest that yet again this is a fake that has been put out at a very convenient time to divert attention away from important events.
Professor Bruce Lawrence has described the tape as "like a voice from the grave".
He thinks bin Laden is dead and has doubts about the tape. Lawrence recently analyzed more than 20 complete speeches and interviews of the al Qaida leader for his book. He says the new message is missing several key elements.
We have previously highlighted the evidence to suggest that Bin Laden is dead. More and more experts are now coming forward with the same opinion. Every time a new tape is released it seems to become shorter and more vague as if whoever is making them is running out of material to work with .
If it is conceivable that there is one group of fundamentalist individuals who wish to change the way we live because "they hate our freedom", then it is equally as conceivable that there is another group of richer, more sophisticated fundamentalists that wish to do the same thing themselves and will use the first group as a cover for what they do.
They have groomed Bin Laden for their own ends and will continue to use his image (whether he is dead or not) until they no longer have a cause to, this is simply another example of his usefulness in the fake war on terror.