Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda.'"
Let me be the first to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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.
I think this is Karl Rove's October surprise and it will have a very distinct impact on the opinion polls across the nation. Unfortunately the impact will almost certainly benefit the Bushites.
As a part-time tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, I too wonder about the timing here. CNN are suggesting this was a "Bin Laden October surprise" designed to tip the scales in favour of Kerry.
Bin Laden talks about how US aggression in the Middle East (e.g., he refers to 1982 US Naval support to the Israeli offensive against Lebanon) is his major motivation. All this seems to point to "Vote Bush Out" as the main mesage, for Bush has clearly shown that he is prepared to launch pre-emptive wars overseas (Iraq.)
But my gut feeling is that this new tape will only spur people on to vote for Bush, as it lends credence to his belief in an ongoing crusade against the "evils of terror", which of course is what Bin Laden personifies in a very powerful way for the average American voter.
So, knowing Karl Rove's interest in reverse-psychology publicity stunts, one has to wonder if this really is a genuine tape or not...
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_
"Ashlee Simpson and her band of infidels had failed Americans with her Saturday Night Live performance, deceiving the nation and putting it at risk from further al Qaeda strikes", bin Laden said. The speech was his clearest claim yet of responsibility for the Sept. 11 strikes of 2001.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
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.
"You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls, like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.
I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind theses incidents.
I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken to understand. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982 and the following incidents. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I cant explain but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the US to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women.
We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.
We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.
Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doenst mess with our security has automatically secured their security."
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
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 bet the rest of the tape was:
Note to self; Dont attempt humour at 6 o'clock in the morning without sleep.
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.
He meant before America sided with Israel against Lebanon and Palestine. He says so, and then continues, "And as I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same -- 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."
What he's trying to say is "Yeah I took out the WTC, but you started it."
> Do we know how long ago it was recorded? If he mentions Kerry, I suppose it's probably not that old. Are there any other clues, such as mention of recent events?
Mention of 1000 US dead in Iraq puts it within the last couple of months.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> 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.
I don't think terrorist backing will help the Kerry campaign as much as bin Laden seems to think it will.
Maybe he doesn't think it will help Kerry.
Don't you think he would have considered that anything seemingly pro-Kerry from him would help Bush?
Maybe he really wants Bush to win because so far he has remained safe and sound with Bush in charge.
I bet Osama is hiding under a bridge.
I bet he's in a disco in Germany.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
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.
This sig is intentionally left blank
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.