In a new video of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing Americans that was broadcast on Al-Jazeera yesterday, bin Laden actually makes some valid points; we Americans ignore what our opponents have to say at our own peril. The Associated Press notes that bin Laden appears "far healthier in the video released [yesterday] than many would have suspected, considering speculation that he was already ailing in the winter of 2001... U.S. officials have often described him as holed up in a dank and dreary cave, all but cut off from the outside world."
What October surprise?
This is the October "surprise"?
I'm disappointed.
My dictionary defines "surprise" as "a taking unawares."
Who was unaware that Osama bin Laden is still at large, except, perhaps, those well-informed Bush supporters who still believe that George W. Bush was fairly elected as president of the United States; that Iraq had something, anything, to do with the al-Qaeda-conducted terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which the United States found?
The pundits are crawling all over each other pronouncing what effect Osama's new video will have on Tuesday's presidential election.
My guess: It will have less effect on the election than will Eminem's new video (which you really must see if you haven't).
My guess is that for every person who feels more "inspired" by fear to vote for Bush because bin Laden has shown his salt-and-pepper-bearded face again, there is another person who is only reminded by bin Laden's resurfacing that more than three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush regime has failed to capture bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11.
But even if the Bush regime were to capture bin Laden today, how would our personal situations change whatsoever? Are we better off today than we were four years ago?
Hell no, and that's why the BushCheneyCorp is toast on Nov. 2.
At any rate, here is a translation of bin Laden's latest video, which I have cobbled together from WorldNetDaily's translation and World Press Review's translation:
To begin: Peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.
People of the United States, my speech to you concerns the best way to prevent another Manhattan and deals with the war and its causes and results. Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. [If we hate freedom,] then let him explain why we did not strike Sweden, for example.
We know that those who hate freedom don't have defiant spirits like those 19 [a reference to the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, 15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia and not one of whom was an Iraqi -- Ed.] who were blessed. No, we fight because we are free men who do not sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Muslim nation; and just as you lay waste to our nation, so shall we lay waste to yours.
I am so amazed at you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of Sept. 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and deception and hiding from you the real causes [of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks], and, therefore, the reasons still exist for a repeat of what happened before.
So I shall tell you the story behind those events and I shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken for you to consider.
I say to you Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we saw the oppression and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind. The events that affected my soul in a difficult way started in 1982, when the United States allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the American sixth fleet.
And the whole world saw and heard but did not respond.
In those difficult moments, many ideas that I can't describe bubbled in my soul, and they resulted in intense feelings of rejection of tyranny and gave birth to a strong determination to punish the oppressors. As I looked at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressors in the same way and destroy towers in the United States so that they taste some of what we tasted, and so that they stop killing our women and children.
We have not found it difficult to deal with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. Our experience with them is long. Both types are arrogant and stubborn and the greedy and take money without right.
This resemblance began after the visits of Bush Senior to the region at a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by the United States and hoping that these visits would have an effect on our countries. All of a sudden [Bush Senior] was affected by these monarchies and military regimes and he became jealous that for decades they were remaining in power, stealing the public's wealth without anybody overseeing them.
So he transferred dictatorship and the suppression of freedoms to his son, and they named it the PATRIOT Act under the pretenses of fighting terrorism.
[Bush Senior] was bright in installing his sons as governors of states, and he didn't forget to transfer his observations of election fraud by the rulers of our region to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.
All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.
And for the record, we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Atta, God bless him, to execute the whole [Sept. 11] operation within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration would notice. We never thought that the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in both towers to face those great horrors alone when they needed him most.
But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by listening to the little girl telling him about about her goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the airplanes butting the towers, we were given three times the amount of time we needed to execute the operation. Thank God.
Your security is not in the hands of [John] Kerry or Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each nation that doesn't interfere with our security has automatically secured its own security.
I'll get hate e-mail and nasty comments for this, but fuck it: I agree with bin Laden on many points.
The Bush dynasty is just as bad as is the Saudi dynasty. (Actually, the Bush dynsasty is worse because it commits its crimes against humankind in the name of "democracy" and "freedom," while the Saudi dictatorship doesn't pretend to be democratic, to my knowledge.) Both dynasties, and all dynasties, need to go, need to be replaced with democracies -- not the bullshit, pseudo-democracies that the Bush regime pushes, in which it uses the U.S. military to invade sovereign nations and then install in those nations puppet prime ministers who lick the United States' ass, but real democracies.
Bin Laden, unlike many Americans, is sane enough to point out that George W. Bush's presidency has been illegitimate from Day One, that Bush became "president" only because of the blatant election fraud that the Republicans perpetrated in Florida in 2000. And bin Laden seems to have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11," because he refers to how Bush, when he was informed that a second airplane had hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, sat dazed, confused and paralyzed in a classroom for several minutes. (Eminem opens his new video with a scene inspired by this. I guess Eminem is an America-hatin' Commie like me.) Yeah, I have nothing but confidence in our current "commander in chief" to protect me from the big bad terror-lovin' freedom-hatin' sand monkeys when it's clear that when crisis hits, he fucking freezes.
Like bin Laden, I also believe that the United States should just leave Muslim nations the fuck alone; invading and occupying Iraq without provocation and without reason, killing as many as 100,000 Iraqis in the process, certainly doesn't qualify as the United States leaving Muslim nations the fuck alone.
Let the Muslims be Muslims in the Muslim nations and let Americans be Americans in the United States. The two cultures mix like, um, oil and water, and while I hope for good relations between all peoples someday, if two groups of people can't get along for the time being, if their meetings result only in violence and destruction and death, then it's better for the groups to keep to themselves.
Lest readers who live in the red states think that I agree with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because I agree with some of the things that Osama bin Laden said in his latest video, I will state for the record, once again, that I'm against anyone killing anyone unless it's in clear self-defense or in the clear defense of others who, without intervention, would face imminent death.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 upon the United States do not meet that test -- and neither does the BushCheneyCorp's illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialistic invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Both were terrorist attacks and the perpetrators of both terrorist attacks should be brought to justice.
12:08:06 PM 
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