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New Bin Laden Tape Surfaces
An anonymous submitter writes "Osama bin Laden delivered a new videotaped message in which he told Americans their security does not depend on the president they elect, but on U.S. policy. 'Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda.'"
Does he actually want to defeat Bush, or does he know that Bush's approval ratings go up whenever he(Bin Ladin) makes a threat, and so he actually wants Bush elected?
OR does he know we know he knows, and he actually want Kerry elected?
Or.. wait a second.. does he know we know he knows we know he knows, and he actually wants Bush elected? DIABOLICAL!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
From the CNN article:
The terrorists will not scare the United States as it did Spain, the Phillippines and other countries. I do not believe Kerry would be as effective at this as Bush, but I do believe he will pursue and destroy al Qaeda should he become our President. Anything else sets the precedence to begin the destruction of America.
I believe that all Americans should unite behind our President, whoever he is in January, to continue and win this war for our security and the security of free people everywhere.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Bush had started planning Iraq well before 9/11, as evidenced by some of the reports that leaked about Cheney's energy task force as well as PNAC's policy statements, which Jeb Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolowitz signed off on in the late 1990's. Apparently George W. at that time wasn't considered part of the key group, while his brother was.
The figure I heard was 21,800 Iraqi Civilians - that was on the McLaughlin Report a few weeks ago. That of course doesn't include the number of dead American soldiers and the number of dead Iraqi soldiers.
... at all - but I will say that Bush Jr. has murdered at least seven times as many Iraqi civilians as Osama murdered Americans. And while I am an American I will not be so arrogant as to pretend that American lives are somehow more valuable than Iraqi lives.
... but they are both terrible people.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that I trust Osama bin Laden
I feel it is perfectly fair to pin these as 'murderes at the hand of Bush Jr.' - just as fair as it is to say that Bin Laden killed people on Sept. 11th. Neither of them did the actual killing - both of them did the planning and made the call to have the people killed.
In this regard Bush Jr. has shown himself to be a larger risk to the safety of the people of this world than Osama has. There are of course other factors and I'm not sure I could decide which one I trust _less_
Funny how the above statement applies equally well to Bush and his troops, as it does to bin Laden and his followers.
Which, I think, was the parent's point.
-- mind over pixel
of this topic. His request is simple, he's asking the US public to do some self-reflection; to allow a bit of humility, to examine ourselves. It's a fantastic ploy, and I'm sure BL is sincere.
However, I hardly think for a second that Joe-Six-Pack-Swing-Voter is going to even bother to humor that sort of thinking. This leaves both canidates to ignore the line of argumentation that he has put forth. More than that, no mainstream news paper will dare touch it, for fear of being bashed as "Liberal". This leaves the tabloids.
One thing I have to agree with him upon: the demonization that he's fighting America because he dislikes freedom is absurd. The only spin on that argument that is remotely plausible is that he's fighting against secularization and disrespect for Islamic law, and in that case why wouldn't he just come out and say it rather than beat around the Bush with proclamations that they're supporting those bad guys who hurt some of our guys?
No, bin Laden truly believes that the US is meddling in affairs where it does not belong. The way he goes about acting upon his beliefs is somewhat less than proper, of course. But they are, at least in his twisted mind, well founded.
Few people seem to understand Osama bin Laden is an educated and well-spoken man. He's not just some fundie psychopath that "hates us for our freedom". In his opinion, international terrorism is the only means to get to the end of percieved US imperalism. While I strongly disagree with his methods, he does have a well articulated position.
... just because the position is held by terrorists, doesn't mean that the position is false.
I'm not a betting man, but I bet if we took an even handed approach to the Israel/Palestine problem as well as let the middle east be the middle east, we'd see a drastic decrease in worldwide terrorism.
Of course, the mainstream would denounce such a change in policy as "letting the terrorists win". Here's a newsflash, kids
Jill: "The terrorists say 2 + 2 = 4! What are they crazy?"
Bob: "I've consulted my calculator, and it says 2 + 2 = 4 as well."
Jill: "Quit siding with the terrorists, Bob. Why do you hate America?"
This conversation is similar to any conversation I try to have with someone who is sure that America is Always Right.
I don't know man. Bin Laden killed 3000 civilians, and what, 50 servicemen on the USS Cole? Bush has killed 100,000 civilians and 1000 servicemen. This is not to say that Bin Laden isn't a violent murderous psychopath. It's just to say that, even though I saw the towers fall with my own eyes, even though I hate bin Laden and everything he stands for with a firey, burning passion, even though if given the chance I would rip bin Laden's balls off and feed them to him before I rip off his head, shit down his neck, and feed him to the wolves... It's just that, put into perspective, he's less scary than Bush.
And if he *did* do it again, you'd still be voting for Bush, using the excuse that Kerry would be worse.
Anyone notice how all the media are basically publishing the same words of the same text regarding this story? Isen't there any independant thinking journalists left?
Also: Does anyone have a link to an english version of a transcript of what Bin Laden said in the video? I'd like to make up my own mind about what this guy has to say VS getting just choice quotes.
> Who would argue that the American Civil war wasn't worth it?
The sad thing about that war is that England gave up slavery two generations sooner, and didn't have to fight a civil war to do it.
> Every major war in the world for the last 150 years has led to the advancement of rights, liberty, and economic improvement.
Only if you're selective about what you look at. For example, WWI gave us Fascism and Communism, and economic collapse in Germany.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Is going to point out that according to the man himself, WE WERE ATTACKED BECAUSE OF OUR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL? (and note that he cited direct military support for Israeli policy)
Or shall we just continue to pretend this doesn't matter?
Regardless of what you think may about Israel, you have to admit that this makes a helluvalot more sense than "they hate our freedom."
It may be more productive to address this one issue than to run around invading whomever we like and justifying it by calling them terrorists no matter how tenuous the relationship is between them and Al Qaeda.
Fear in America is a little different. It doesn't elicit compliance, it elicits swift violence and a suspenstion of the normal rules.
My poorly socialized little yippy dog is exactly the same way. When he gets scared, he runs around and barks and snarls and snaps at any damned thing he can get away with. He never actually confronts the thing he's scared of (because he's scared of it, duh), but his little stuffed animals really get the shit kicked out of them.
I think it's pretty damned funny that we got so scared of Bin Laden, so as a country we decided to take our agression out on a country that we saw as no threat to us. Boy, do we look foolish, now that Iraq has refused to be our little stuffed animal to kick around.
Try to understand this: the previous Spanish governement took Spain to war against the will of a large majority of the people. Why can't you understand that this tends to upset people, and may cause them to vote for the guy how says he'll take them out of there?
Every major war in the world for the last 150 years has led to the advancement of rights, liberty, and economic improvement. Sure it's terrible when people die, but war is inevitible. And usually good always wins in the end, and the world is better off.
You might want to ask for a refund for your history degree.
You should take bin Laden's statements with the greatest seriousness. In fact, the U.S. government has effectively declared war on Arabs and Muslims. Here is just one example: New York Governor Pataki's statements are equivalent to a declaration of war.
To get votes from Jews in the United States, U.S. politicians go into the Jewish community and declare their "support for Israel". That's code for support for Israeli violence. Many politicians don't care about the morality of their actions. They don't care whether U.S. government support for Israeli violence is actually good for Jews. They just want the vote.
Non-Jewish United States citizens never hear about this support for foreign wars. It isn't a secret; it's on Pataki's web site. But it is effectively a secret, because no one tells U.S. citizens that they are engaging in a war that will definitely cause them to be attacked.
There is a one-sentence record in ancient Jewish texts, that are now part of the Christian Bible, that a Pharoah of Egypt had some complaint against the Jews about 3,200 years ago. Since then, at least every 200 years, the Jews have annoyed the surrounding cultures enough that they have been the targets of extreme violence. Certainly this is regrettable. Certainly something should be done about this. However, there is no evidence that anyone presently in power in the U.S. government has a sophisticated understanding of the problems, or any sensible ideas about how a nation thousands of miles from Israel could be helpful. In fact, it seems that U.S. government support for Jewish violence is like pouring "gasoline on a fire", as one Jewish leader said.
The U.S. government, at present, fully supports the use of violence to achieve its goals. Under George W. Bush, the U.S. government believes that it is okay to kill people and destroy their property even when the U.S. is not directly or immediately threatened.
Most U.S. citizens do not make the connection that a policy of violence supported by the U.S. government means that they will inevitably be attacked.
Quoting from the CNN article, here are some of Osama bin Laden's words: "And as I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon [with U.S. government help], it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same" he says, "and that we had to destroy the towers in America, so that they taste what we tasted and they stop killing our women and children."
If you live in Kalispell, Montana, USA, to pick a place at random, it is unlikely that you will be directly attacked by Arab terrorists. However, attacks on the U.S. affect you profoundly because they lower your quality of life, just as the U.S. attacks on Iraq lowered the quality of life there.
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It's not just that Bush removed a strong and secular government from Iraq, one that hated Osama's Islamicism, leaving the vacuum needed by religious fundamentalists sympathetic to Al Quaeda who want to grab power. (Al Sader is polling at 50% nationally!)
It's also that Bush is the best Al Quaeda recruiter that anyone could imagine. Sure, we've destroyed a nominal number of terrorists and training camps, but all the intelligence agencies report that new recruits pour in far faster than we are able to kill them.
So of course Bin Laden, and anyone sympathetic to Al Quaeda, wants Bush to stay in power. I can't imagine a US response to 9/11 which would have been better from the Al Quaeda point of view. Obviously, there would be an Afghanistan invasion. But such a tepid one, where we bribe local warlords to do our fighting, is something Osama could not have dreamed of. All he had to do is bribe them more, and he stays alive. Meanwhile, the recruiting is in full swing, not in concentrated training camps which are easy to hit, but all over the world, including the US and Europe. There is no hope of a systematic campaign against these new recruits, because this would certainly involve serious coordination between the US and other states, but Bush's America is so politically isolated now that this cooperation is impossible. So basically, Al Quaeda cells can drop their roots all over the world, and during their most vulnerable phase (the next four years) they have nothing to fear from the USA if Bush remains president.
The above is just so obvious that I can't imagine how it might escape someone, so I don't get how people might even consider the idea that Bin Laden would prefer that Kerry becomes president.