Apparently, the late Osama bin Laden was tired of his brand name — al-Qaeda just didn’t have the kick and the joke-juice necessary to kill the crowd.

All organizations from time-to-time have to take a painful look at themselves, and it seems Osama was in the same fix, needing some kind of reboot to alter the ugly perceptions brought on by mass killings, which ultimately could get in the way of the group’s bottom line — more mass killings.

Osama just needed some space to brainstorm the problem — but there’s the boom, time’s up.

(Illustration found here).

From Wired:

The Associated Press reports that some of bin Laden’s final writings display an obsession with how far al-Qaida’s brand had fallen.
While the United States has flagellated itself for years for losing the information wars in the Muslim world, bin Laden thought he was worse off, irreparably tainting his terrorist organization by killing too many Muslims.
He started brainstorming new names.
The problem is that bin Laden sucks as a brand manager.
One of his new handles for al-Qaida? “Monotheism and Jihad Group.”
That was the original name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s bloodthirsty al-Qaida franchise in Iraq that killed so many Muslims that Ayman Zawahiri begged Zarqawi to stop.
When Zarqawi didn’t listen, he lost his Iraqi allies, got blown up by the United States, and his group snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Not exactly a model for a new look.

There’s a spot at the bottom of the Wired post where you can submit some original titles of your own.

I’ve always considered, ‘Osama and the Tora Bora Terror Boys‘ a good catchy name — kind of gives the organization that folksy, Pete Seeger, hootenanny type of feel to it.
And now, after Seal Team Six, ‘Obama Nails Osama,’ though, it really doesn’t uplift or inspire terror, mainly the opposite, but it does look good in a newspaper headline.