Accusing President Bush of “misleading” the American people, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden made the first direct admission of responsibility for the 9-11 attacks in a video aired today by the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera.
 Osama bin Laden in video aired by Al-Jazeera |
The video, shot in front of a brown background, was the first footage of bin Laden since a tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera in September 2003 showed him descending a mountainside and calling for jihad.
In the new video, bin Laden says, “We decided to destroy towers in America” because “we are a free people … and we want to regain the freedom of our nation.”
The text can be read here
Bin Laden asserted President Bush has been “misleading” the American people since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
The terrorist leader said the attacks would have been less severe if Bush had been more alert.
“We had agreed with Mohammed Atta, may Allah bless his soul, to carry out all of the operations within 20 minutes … and we didn’t think at all that the commander in chief of the United States would leave all of these citizens fighting for their lives,” bin Laden said, according to a translation.
Mentioning the Democratic presidential candidate, bin Laden said to the American people, “You’re security is not in the hands of Bush, Kerry or al-Qaida. It is in your hands.”
An audiotape broadcast in April purportedly from bin Laden offered European nations a three-month truce if they would withdraw troops from Muslim nations.
Last week, former Navy Secretary and 9-11 commissioner John Lehman said the U.S. knows where bin Laden is hiding but can’t reach him because he is in a region of Pakistan controlled by Islamic extremists opposed to President Pervez Musharraf.
Lehman said the terrorist leader is in South Waziristan in the Baluchistan Mountains of Pakistan’s Baluchistan region.
“There is an American presence in the area, but we can’t just send in troops,” Lehman told the San Bernardino Sun. “If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell also has stated recently he believes bin Laden is in that area.
Transcript
A transcript of today’s Al-Jazeera presentation was provided by the Drudge Report.
Newsreader: A new message from Bin Laden to the American people about the reasons and resulats of the 9/11 attacks.
Newsreader 2: The head of AL Qaeda says the continuation of us policy will lead to the repetition of what happened.
Male presenter: The head of AL Qaeda organization directed a message to the American people and this video and audio apearence in this tape which Jezeera required for the first time for two years. In the beginning of his message, he spoke about the reasons why they chose the US to execute 9/11..
OBL: 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.
Female presenter: Bin Laden spoke for the first time about the main reasons he thought of executing Sept 11 attacks, confirming that the Israeli operation in Lebanon was the first incident where he thought of it.
OBL: 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.
Male presenter: Bin Laden considered in his message that the results of Sept 11 were successful in his opinion and as a reason of that, he said that the similarity between the administration of Bush the father and the arab regimes said Bush learned so much from them during his visits.
OBL: 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 th e 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.
Female Presenter: Bin Laden considered the way Bush dealt with the first moments of Sept. 11, giving a good chance to the executors of Sept. 11 to complete it.
OBL: 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.
Male presenter: the final part of the message is that the security of the Americans depends on the policy that they execute despite the winner of the elections.
OBL: 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.
Female Presenter: In Bin Laden’s message he approached other points. He pointed to the contradiction which considers oppression and killing of innocents a legal act. They formed an international law as bush the father did with the children of iraq according to bin laden. Bin Laden pointed to the millions of pounds of explosives dropped on Iraqi children as bush his son had done, as he said to remove an old agent and install a new agent to help instealing the oil of iraq. And bin laden said the events of 9/11 came as an answer to this oppression and said that if the answer to this oppression is considered bad terror, then we need to do it. And he stressed that he wants to deliver this message to the Americans in words and in deeds since the 9/11 events. He reminded Americans of a few warning messages through various news media like Time Magazine and CNN and other Arab and correspondents since 1996. He warned them of the conswquences of their countries policies. He talked abou t the damage Sept 11 caused the US economy and that it cost close to a trillion dollars. He talked about President Bush and that the emergency law requires more money.
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