Posted on 06/24/2002 5:21:12 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jun 24, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Osama bin Laden and his No. 2 man are both alive and well and their al-Qaida network is ready to attack new U.S. targets, bin Laden's spokesman said in audiotaped remarks aired Sunday. The message also claimed responsibility for a deadly April fire at a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia.
The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television network, which has in the past aired videotaped messages of bin Laden and his top lieutenants, said that it received a recorded audiotaped message from Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the Kuwaiti-born spokesman for bin Laden.
There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the remarks. The Bush administration has said that it does not know whether bin Laden is alive or dead. There was no immediate reaction Saturday from the White House.
It was not immediately clear when the tape was made or how Al-Jazeera obtained it. No comment from the station was available.
Similar remarks, purportedly made by Abu Ghaith, appeared days earlier on an Arabic-language Web site that issues daily updates on the war in Afghanistan. The tape and the Web site had some of the same quotes and statements, including that bin Laden would soon make a televised address to the Muslim world.
"I want to assure Muslims that Sheik Osama bin Laden ... is in good and prosperous health and all what is being rumored about his illness and injury in Tora Bora has no truth," according to excerpts aired Sunday.
The tape, which was monitored in Beirut, Lebanon, appeared recent. Referring to recent U.S. warnings about imminent al-Qaida threats, Abu Ghaith said the group will choose the right time, place and method.
The warnings were "a cover-up for the ugly face of the onslaught by the Democratic Party against the Republican Party after the American president announced he was aware of the Sept. 11 operations and because of the economic problems the American government was suffering from," Abu Ghaith said.
"I say 'Yes' to what American officials are saying ... that we are going to carry out attacks on America," he said.
"I want to assure Muslims that Sheik Osama bin Laden ... is in good and prosperous health and all what is being rumored about his illness and injury in Tora Bora has no truth," according to excerpts.
Abu Ghaith said al-Qaida still has "the capability to threaten America and execute such threats. The few coming days and months will prove to the whole world, Allah willing, the truth of what we are saying."
He called the Sept. 11 attacks a "great historic victory that broke the backs of the Americans, the strongest power in this world," and referred to previous successes against the Americans: The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 strike against the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.
Abu Ghaith also claimed al-Qaida was behind the fuel tanker explosion on the Tunisian island of Jerba, in which 15 people died, 10 of them Germans.
"This is an operation that was carried out by the al-Qaida organization (by a man) ... who could not see his brothers in Palestine being killed, slaughtered, their blood spilled and honor violated and he looks around him and sees Jews in the city of Jerba wandering and enjoying and practicing their rituals at will," Abu Ghaith said.
The audiotape included Abu Ghaith denying reports that Ayman Al-Zawahri, bin Laden's No. 2 man in al-Qaida, was hurt in Tora Bora, an eastern Afghanistan mountain region where U.S. and allied forces pursued remnants of al-Qaida and former rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban.
"I can say that 98 percent of the leadership of al-Qaida are safe and are running their affairs perfectly," the voice on the recording said.
An Al-Jazeera presenter quoted Abu Ghaith as saying that fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who had protected bin Laden, is also alive.
Abu Ghaith, a former teacher and mosque preacher who was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after the Sept. 11 attacks, also said al-Qaida had been prepared for the U.S. campaign and that its military, security, economic and media network was unaffected.
Al-Qaida, he said, "is now monitoring, detecting and observing new American targets other than the targets previously monitored, which we will strike at in a period that is not long."
Don't you think it's time to either reduce this station to a pile of rubble or at least infiltrate the place and nab one of those unknown couriers who just seem to appear and deliver these tapes and messsages. Huh?
Many wondered why we did not destroy the radio trasmitters for Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose in World War II. Lord Haw Haw was an Englishman who had gone over to the German side in WWII. He broadcast taunts to our Troops in WWII. Tokyo Rose was a U.S. citizen who did the same for the Japanese.
A very important goal in every war is leave the enemy with a means to communicate with their followers and the outside world.
There are two primary reasons. Let me continue to use WWII as an example.
First the Voice of America Broadcasts were beamed into enemy territory in WWII. VOA was very honest. In the Battle of the Buldge and in other set backs we suffered, we reported it truthfully on VOA. The Germans the Japanese lied to their citizens and the world. Eventually the people in the nations we were fighting came to realize their leaders were lying to them. Much before that the rest of the world came to the conclusion they were lying. Today there is a world wide media that makes it far more easy for all observers to come to believe who is lying.
Leaders have a hard time holding world opinion and their own people's morale when both know they are being lied to about the course of the war. The destruction of morale is very important in war as is world pubic opinion. It is hard for leaders to lie to their own people and the world if their means of lying is destroyed.
Secondly an enemy needs a means of informing their followers at home and abroad of their surrender. Devout followers of both Hitler and Tojo would not believe their leaders surrendered, if they could only hear it from us. So we needed a way for the German and Japanese commanders to tell their people at home an abroad that all was lost.
It was, if you think a moment, very important to us for the faithful to believe that Hitler had a secret weapon and that Kamikazi attacks would snatch defeat from victory. The realization by their own people that Hitler and Japanese leaders lied about weapons and ultimate victory was important in their defeat. The proof that Allah will not protect Muslims from the infidel is an important factor in victory over Al Qaida. The more rapid their transistion from great hope to total despair the easier it is to control the followers after the war.
Al Jazeera, like the Goebbels propaganda machine, will in the end be a valuable asset to us.
Those are the prime reasons we allowed them to stand in WWII and we allow them to stand today. It is in our own best interests to do so.
Plant a tracking device on the courier and use his movements to compile a list of target sites for "Spooky".
The nightmare vision of Osama with a few operational Al-Qaida cells still busily plotting destruction becomes less credible now. They may still be plotting; Osama may still be alive; but he's not communicating and moving freely like before, IMHO.
If some junior commander is going to launch the next sneak-attack, he's got to worry that it's success or failure will still unleash a terrible response from us, the U.S. It's sort of like table-stakes, this next raid is for all the chips. It will reveal enough about their methods and sources, including government sponsors to largely eliminate the last two or three Al-Qaida cells.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.