Pacific Views

Osama bin Laden.

He's not dead yet.

We just watched CNN's broadcast of the video originally broadcast by Aljazeera. In a message aimed at the US people, bin Laden looked healthy, and sounded like a politician, rather than a terrorist. He said that the security of the US isn't up to Dubya, Kerry, or al-Qaeda. Instead, it depends on the decisions made by the people of the US. According to bin Laden, only countries who attack al-Qaeda have anything to fear from it.

Our guess is that this tape isn't going to be a good thing for Dubya. It amplifies Kerry's criticism of the administration's failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora, and puts an end to speculation that bin Laden is dead. (The tape appears to have been made sometime since the anniversary of 9/11.) It also seems to put the lie to the threats against the US made in the unauthenticated tape that emerged in the past few days — in fact, our guess is that part of the reason that the bin Laden tape is appearing now is to debunk those threats.

The US networks are airing the tape as we write this. Aljazeera promises to have a subtitled version of the tape up here very shortly.

More: Aljazeera's complete transcript of bin Laden's remarks is here.

Posted by Magpie at October 29, 2004 01:40 PM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |