Manhattan-based Fox News may have accomplished what the Bush Administration failed to do: bring down Osama bin Laden. By linking his name with presidential candidate Barak Obama, Fox has seriously undermined the terrorist leader’s standing within his own party.

“Osama, Obama,” says one Taliban follower, “makes you wonder…” Rivals for the jihad leadership are discrediting Osama by mispronouncing his name, creating a subliminal suggestion that he harbors the political views of a senator from Illinois. A report circulated on Radio Kabul further suggests that Osama may have attended a secular school when he was six years old. Furious loyalists insist that the 9/11 mastermind is resolutely Middle Eastern, not Midwestern, but even so, the unfortunate name association sticks.

Observes Fox News commentator Dexter Ailes, “It probably doesn’t help bin Laden any that his middle name is Hilari.”