In my view, what the message doesn't contain is as significant as what it does. This is the first message from Osama to fail to contain a threat of belligerence, to fail to contain a call to jihad, and to fail to ask for more willing martyrs to join the fight. What it does contain is a thorough scolding of the American fifth column within. It's as if Osama sees the war in Iraq as a failure, and not only that, a failure in need of a scapegoat.
From the beginning we have ascribed more power to these people than they possess, is it possible we are mis-reading a fairly formal surrender here? I have said before there would be no formal surrender in this war, perhaps I was wrong.
There is definitely defeatism throughout the diatribe. It reminded me of the Una-bombers essay that was printed in the paper many years ago. Terrorists apparently thrive on defeatism. Do not believe there was an actual surrender there though. He is mostly claiming that the peaceniks within the west failed to stop the war in Iraq. Obviously he wants it stopped. The mujahadeen were successful eventually within Afghanistan against the Soviets. Bin Laden probably thinks that by fighting he will also eventually be successful against the US there again. Iraq however is a different story. The US presence is massive now and Osama simply does not have the assets to kick the US military out. The only way he could win in Iraq was if the US peaceniks forced a troop withdrawal. He is now acknowledging their failure. Apparently the fall back position is to try to convert as many moonbats as possible to Islam and hope that some of these will become mujahadeen (similar to the homegrowns recently arrested in Germany). The problem Osama has now is that he is trying to convert a bunch of illiterate sexual deviants to a religion that is 1,300 years old. Not gonna happen. We will however probably see quite a few Unabomber and McViegh clones pop up every now and then.