Power Line points out that the Middle East Research Institute has shown that, whether purposefully or not, Osama’s recent tape was mistranslated in one very important respect:
The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to “each U.S. state,” designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words “ay wilaya” (which means “each U.S. state”) to mean a “country” or “nation” other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: “Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security.”
The Islamist website Al-Qal’a explained what this sentence meant: “This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, ‘Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,’ it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn’t treat all American people as if they’re the same.
That last part is certainly true: all American people are not the same. But none of us deserves to be murdered by Islamic terrorists, and no state should give in to this threat.
ObL shows a stunning and profound lack of insight into Western psychology and natural consequences. And he still hasn’t learned anything.
Somebody at work brought up that old canard that “we” had built him up and made him what he was; and I pointed out that if he hadn’t ungratefully sent those hijackers to attack us he’d still be fat, dumb, and happy in Afghanistan, not skulking in caves the rest of his life. Duh.
Maybe his next tape will say “What, you say? New York was a blue state? My bad!”
It’s pretty sad when OBL is taking talking points from Michael Moore. Maybe Jimmy Carter should have invited OBL to his box at the DNC.
It’s pretty interesting that in many circles, a liberal filmmaker is more hated than a man who admits to ordering the death of three thousand innocent Americans.
–Cobra
Cobra-
Once again, you miss the point. The Michael Moore/UBL comparison is not made to disparage Bin Laden, it’s made to disparage Moore.
I thought that one was pretty self-evident, but I guess not.
It will have to be monitored, how nearly total the major media news blackout is, on Osama’s offer to not attack US states which vote as he directs.
I also find it interesting that in the REST of the 18 minute Bin Laden tape, he details the strategy Al Qeada is trying to use against our country.
>>>”The thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war” about the dangers of invading Iraq, bin Laden said on the tape, according to a U.S. government transcript released yesterday. “But the darkness of the black gold [oil] blurred his vision. . . . The war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threatened his future.”
Bin Laden continues…
>>>The results of the U.S. war in Iraq, he said, “have been by the grace of Allah positive and enormous, and have by all standards exceeded all expectations.”
“The policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations — whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction — has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results,” bin Laden said. “And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and we are playing as one team toward the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.”
And here…
>>>He added: “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” He noted remarks by counterterrorism experts that al Qaeda’s expenses in attacking America are a tiny fraction of the cost of Washington’s counterterrorism efforts. “Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million [U.S.] dollars . . . besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16971-2004Nov1.html
There are many things you can say about Osama Bin Laden…super-terrorist, murderer, evil-doer etc. But one thing you can’t call this college educated multi-millionaire is a fool, and it’s sheer folly to disrespect an intelligent, diabolic enemy of this magnitude, no matter what your political ideology is.
–Cobra
I’ll call him a fool.
I’ll call him a multicolored gold-plated fool.
What has he really accomplished, except to have Afghanistan liberated (and Iraq if he wants to take credit for that), his thug network destroyed, and himself sentenced to miserable exile hiding in caves the rest of his short life?
Laura writes:
>>>What has he really accomplished, except to have Afghanistan liberated (and Iraq if he wants to take credit for that), his thug network destroyed, and himself sentenced to miserable exile hiding in caves the rest of his short life?
It’s true that Afghanistan is no longer controlled by the Taliban. Since no part of Afghanistan is under control right now except for Kabul, I don’t know if that’s neccessarily a better alternative. In my opinion, our millitary exchanged a pack of right winged religious thugs for a pack of opium-dealing warlords. Iraq is on the teetoring on the edge of anarchy, with 100,000 dead civillians, 1123 dead American troops, 29,000 plus wounded evacs (according to McLaughlin Group 10/31/04) and $225 BILLION in costs by March 2005.
Meanwhile, Osama is obviously well fed and rested, with a clean set of threads, has hundreds,if not thousands of followers ready to die for him, and puts out videos that command worldwide attention like some James Bond super-villain.
I don’t care what party affiliation somebody belongs to here. These realities shouldn’t sit well with ANYBODY.
–Cobra
It is going to have to be investigated, the extent to which, the jihadists influenced the elections here, through Osama’s threat to the states which did not vote as he instructed. The ‘red states’ seem to have voted as if in defiance of the offer of non-aggression for appropriately voting states, and it needs to be researched the correlation of this with the local coverage of Osama’s offer. The major media have maintained an approximate news blackout on Osama’s reference to what will happen relative to states which vote one way or the other; yet different media may have effectively spread this news to the relevant states.