October 29, 2004
Complete Transcript of Bin Laden Tape
From NCB News, courtesty of Robert Cox at The National Debate
NBC NEWS TRANSLATION OF AL JAZEERA - BIN LADEN BROADCAST
Bin Laden Translation Al Jezeera 4 pm NY broadcast
Open: I direct my speech to the American people to the best way to avoid another conflict. (OBL)
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.
Posted by Michele at October 29, 2004 06:17 PM
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Dear Osama, Your security is in your hands, turn yourself in now and we promise not to bury you in a pig carcass like the Russians would.
You've already screwed with our security and we haven't forgotten. There's nothing you can do at this point to change things. We're coming to give you the ultimate freedom, the chance to frolic with 72 virgins in the sulfur lake, the pit of unquenchable fire.
Sounds like you had a chance to see Farenheit 9/11 - wasn't that a great flick? Right up your alley, really. I think you and and Michael could be best buddies, I really do.
And he could show you how to ski on the sulfur lake, I think it would be great. See you soon!!
Posted by: torpedo_eight at October 29, 2004 10:20 PM
I'd say OBL really doesn't want Bush to be re-elected, does he?
Note that OBL mentions Kerry as the other presidential candidate - which means the tape was probably made after Kerry secured the nomination (unless he made different versions for Dean, Edwards etc - possible but unlikely). So it's definitely fresh, the Democratic candidates weren't sorted out 2 years ago, and Kerry was an outside chance back then.
Posted by: aebrain at October 30, 2004 03:03 AM
Yeah, I noticed the Kerry reference and its import as well. And also notice that the jihadist rhetoric has been replaced by left-wing talking points, most of them straight out of Fahrenheit 9/11.
Obviously, bin Hiding has held some focus groups...
Posted by: CERDIP at October 30, 2004 10:04 AM
actually, I think bin laden does want Bush re-elected. The fire of hatred needs much fuel, and is better fanned by an active, assertive America abroad than one with a more isolationist policy. He needs a steady and increasing supply of martyrs to fight his war (the purpose of which is not to drive us out of the mideast, but to kill as many of us as he can, wherever he can), and he thinks Bush will serve that purpose to a greater extent than Kerry. If he's trying to influence the election, it's by reverse psychology. I'm not sure that's the case -- more likely, he's trying to influence present and potential recruits. The one thing we know for sure is that we can still hunt him down and kill him. We should continue to add resources to that task until it's done.
Posted by: j at October 30, 2004 09:02 PM
I am agree with you j,
You can say what you want about Bin Laden, but he is not stupid.
He made a clear reference to Farenheit 9/11 making fun of Bush, which immediately inspire feelings like “think Osama and Michael (Moore) could be best buddies, I really do.” On the other hand, he don’t talk so bad about Kerry, but at the same time, he say that a democrat victory will not change anything.
Apart from that, he is using a weird “conciliator” speech, explaining that he is not so bad, and talking about the “horror” that the people faced the 11-S, etc. It sounds like a lefty point of view, really.
The fact that he has seen Farenheit 9/11 is just other clue that he is perfectly informed about what is happening in USA, and he knows perfectly the American (and the whole western) psychology.
In my opinion he clearly wanted to switch votes for Bush. I think definitely he wants Bush to win, for the reasons that J explained.
Now, just to say that in my opinion, Osama Bin Laden has not any power, or at least not so much power over Al Qaeda, as many people think. He is just a symbol now, the propagandistic scratch of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda has become his independent son. I bet he doesn’t have a clue about the terrorist attacks which are incoming around the world. He is just sited in somewhere enjoying the consequences of the Bush’s war on terror.
Posted by: VinoTinto at October 31, 2004 10:09 AM
ALERT: Please note that this transcript does NOT represent the entire 18-minute videotape, but only Al-Jazeera's politically-chosen edit, which conveniently leaves out many of Bin Laden's statements that may benefit the Bush campaign.
Posted by: Clyde McKenney at October 31, 2004 01:20 PM
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