Very suspicious, doing this the day before elections. Also realize that this is the first video tape he has aired for three years. That surprised me.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/index.html

Especially take note of this part:

"He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said."

Interesting. Notice his strategy. It might help us gather some insights into how best to deal with him and terrorism in general. I highly suggest you read the full article. There's some very interesting points made, and the end is also highly interesting.

He claims that his goal is to "bankrupt the United States." I must admit I laughed for a moment at the sheer thought of that, but when you realize that for every dollar he spent on the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. lost over a million, it makes you think.

Great, he thinks he's Goldfinger. Next he'll be handcuffing the top British secret agent to a nuclear bomb inside Fort Knox.

ROFL! I love you man.

He looks somewhat healthly and not filthy, so I figure he's in Iran and somewhat comfortable. You simply don't look real good while living in a cave. As to bankrupt the US... fundamentalism is utter nonsense. Meh, what do i know...

You know, you could take out bin Ladin's name in the last few paragraphs there, replace it with Michael Moore, and you'd basically have the speech that Moore gave at my school a couple weeks ago...

Well, what Bin Laden said in the last few paragraphs is not highly contraversial. Many people in this country hold the same views. It's not like he said "I enjoy killing Americans" or something in them; really he expressed the views that many Americans hold, including myself. I agree with everything he said in the third and second-to-last paragraphs.

And, Rogue Leader, I wish I could have been there. It must have been a real hoot to watch all those conservative Utahans scramble around after listening to Moore.

I'm not giving him credit. Bin Ladin killed thousands of people...and he says he destroyed the twin towers to bleed us of our economy? I mean...he can't do it. I don't think it's possible. And defeat russia? If he's talking about russia in like the cold war...well wasn't that reagan?

*shrug* I say let's get bin ladin out of there before he does anymore harm.

Something tells me theres a reason why he's doing this around our election time...maybe he's got something planned.

Are you saying Reagan "defeated" Russia?

Yes.



Ok, maybe made bankrupt instead of defeated is a better phrasing...but you get the point.

Well, if Bin Laden were really smart, he wouldn't have just blabbed his maniacal plot now, would he?

When was it ever proved that he was behind the attacks?

Bin Laden directly took credit for the September 11th attacks during his most recent tyrade.

Yeah, he just played the role of the typical Hollywood villian to the dot. He basically just said his entire plan. Now all we gotta do is stop him at the last minute and have the hero get the girl.

This says more about al Jazeera than bin Laden, Kerry, Bush, or anyone else. Regardless, he is an idiot if he thinks the situation the US is in now is comparable to the Soviets' in Afghanistan. For one thing, where is the opposing superpower supplying the 'insurgents' with massive amounts of money and advanced technology?

I do agree that he sounds like Michael Moore and other American leftists, but that shouldn't reflect on them. It does, however, suggest who he would like to win the election. It may be that Jihadist-types think Bush is good for their notion that Islam is at war with the West, but this video presents an alternative view: it might also be that al Qaeda has been so weakened both by direct attacks and, potentially, by America's strategy to change the environment that provides it with recruits that they would like someone else to win.

Why? Even if bin Laden and his associates do genuinely believe what they say, and I think they do, they are still rational people within their delusional worldview. Forget the talk of martyrdom for a second, because on some level, they do want to survive - they know their cause is entirely lost if the planners and organizers behind the Jihad are killed. If that weren't the case, why is bin Laden hiding in a cave while his ideologues die in droves, rather than himself going out in a blaze of glory?

The USSR destroyed itself. Reagan, the Afghans and the Saudis just helped it along.

The Soviet Union colapsed because of nothing anyone else did... communism simply failed.

I don't really find the transcript to be all that interesting. It only proves that he has satellite television in his cave and that he enjoys using the Democrat talking points to try and convince Americans that he's really just a Democrat in terrorist clothing. Judging by a few of the comments in this thread, this hilariously simplistic strategy appears to be working.



This is his strategy. He wants to use your own beliefs against you. He simply wants naive people to believe that he's nothing more than a Democrat with a gun, fighting for your rights in the name of Islam. I'm amazed at how simple, yet effective, this strategy is.

Bin Laden knows that he's on his last leg, and he feels that he has a better chance of survival if Kerry is elected. Do you people honestly think that he cares about the American people. The absurdity of such a though confuses me. I don't know whether to laugh, uncontrollably, or to vomit.

Wow, he is like some villain from a movie. I hope this doesn't mean he has a doomsday device...

Thish ish madnessh, Oshama!

I wonder how long we have to wait for "Alien vs. Predator vs. Bin Laden".

Ah, but like any Super Evil genius, he can blab about it to the world, and they're powerless to stop him.

Or maybe that ISN'T his evil plot, and he's just fooling the world into thinking it is.

Nefarious...

Where's Pussy?

Nah, that wasn't the good part. The good part was watching everyone scramble around when they heard that he had been invited to come. Between a bunch of the student body calling for the impeachment of the student body president, requests to cancel Moores visit, and all the talk about free speech, it made for an interesting couple of weeks. Once he actually came and spoke, everyone forgot about him the next day.

WTF? Man, get some sleep.

How'd you know I was up all night? Get outta my head!

Really, Free, if he was exhausted when he wrote that it should be that much easier to refute..

:p

Lots and lots of people would claim that they were behind the attacks. 'Al Queda' is now a household name, and there are masses of organisations that would long for such notoriety. Simply him taking credit for the attacks is no evidence of anything.

The question of how exactly do we know that Osama bin Laden was involved is an important one. What evidence is there?

perhaps he's LYING

Considering the fact that terrorist organizations usually take credit for the attacks they make, it is unlikely that bin Ladin is taking credit for an attack that he didn't commit, while whatever organization did actually carry out the attack is just sitting idely by twidling their thumbs.

Taking credit for such an attack would be incredibly stupid.

I'm sure there'd be dozens of organisations that'd be desperate to use the attacks as a springboard for their cause, and would 'claim responsibility' in order to make people listen to them. I'm assuming there is evidence, as for some reason Al Queda was singled out of the many other organisations that would have claimed to have carried it out, but what exactly is that evidence?

THe hijackers themselves had Al Qaeda ties. No one else claimed reponsibility. bin Laden's release of tapes right after the attack were too timely for it to have been anyone else. 9/11 wasn't his first attack on US targets.

But how do we know who the hijackers were?

Yes, we know who was on the plane, but we don't know who actually hijacked it.

Simply taking Osama Bin Laden's word for it doesn't seem like a very good idea.

I don't care if he did them or not. I just want one less terrorist (esp. of his caliber) on this planet.

So would taking credit for other terrorist attacks, but that never seems to stop the terrorists.

These people are out to make some sort of political statement. They don't simply carry out these attacks because they are entirely sadistic in nature and want to watch people suffer/die. To remain anonymous would not help their cause, hence why they take credit for what they do.

I get more and more convinced that Bin Laden is the Antichrist.

You'll be mightily surprised when 10 men twice as evil take his place when he's killed/captured/gone, then.

There's no way bin Laden could be the antichrist. There'd have to be some religious war that he wins and then changes the US to Islam. That is incredibly far fetched.

If the events of Revelation take place, it wouldn't anytime soon. Christians are in power in America and much of the world right now, and I'm pretty sure the situation is vastly different in Revelation. If it were to happen soon, my guess is that the christian faith of the majority would be perverted into something totally different.

Heh, there is Irony in that.

On a tangent, Osama is becoming rather sterotypical. If he wasn't actually dangerous, this would be comedy gold. What next, he is gonna threaten the US unless they pay him ONE MILLION DOLLARS?