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I agree with your analysis, but not your conclusion, for the following reasons:

- For all we know, the US simply has spies working at al-Jazeera or has the network's phones tapped in an effort to figure out how these damned tapes keep getting sent out.

- A second possibility would be that since al-Jazeera's broadcasts are examined by the Qatari government (to ensure they say nothing bad about Qatar), the Qataris, who are graciously hosting Centcom, passed the word along to the State Department.

- If the tape was a product of Iraqi intelligence, then assuming Iraq and al-Qaeda have simply a tenuous relationship at best, the al-Qaeda leadership might easily get pissed at Iraq for trying to take over the reins of the global jihad. Ignoring the fact that it makes a key US claim (Iraq's in cahoots w/ Osama) a LOT easier to prove.

- You are incorrect regarding the Swiss firm. They claimed that they were 50-60% certain that it was a fake, but they admitted that they were only working from a limited pool of data based on Osama's public statements. The NSA has thousands of minutes of bin Laden talking from them tapping his satellite phone from 1996 to 1998. More minutes means a greater pool of data to analyze from, which is why I tend to agree with the NSA on this one.