SEOUL -- Ban Ki Moon, ordinarily a mild and discreet gentleman, could barely contain smoldering anger over the "October surprise" as he sat down for breakfast with me just hours after Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network, released a videotape apparently starring the inimitable Osama bin Laden.
The soft-spoken foreign minister of South Korea wasn't so much angry over the content of the tape -- which featured bin Laden explaining to the world the reasons for his outfit's 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and explicitly criticizing the incumbent U.S. president -- as over its intended effect.
"It's highly sophisticated psychological warfare," explained the erudite diplomat, who holds impressive degrees from Harvard's JFK School of Government and South Korea's prestigious Seoul National University. "He's trying to sow the seeds of division. He's trying to create divisions not only among the U.S.-led coalition forces but also among Arab countries."