Usama bin Ladin has burst into the US election campaign, issuing his first video tape in more than a year to deride President George Bush and warn of possible new September 11-style attacks.
Bin Ladin, taunting the man who has vowed to take him "dead or alive" for the past three years, said Bush had failed Americans with his Middle East policies, deceiving the nation and provoking Muslim groups like al-Qaida to strike again.
Looking healthy and defiant in a video released from hiding to Aljazeera just four days before the US presidential poll, Bin Ladin accused Bush of complacency during the September 11 attacks in 2001, mocking him for going on with a visit to a school.
"Despite entering the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened," he said, making his clearest claim yet of responsibility.
In what seemed a deliberate attempt to influence Tuesday's US election, bin Ladin used the opening line: "O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results."
But he made little mention of Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry, saying: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe."
Bush, who ordered US forces to capture Bin Ladin dead or alive after the September 11 attacks, vowed that "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country" and said "we will prevail" in the so-called "war on terror".
A US Department of State official said Washington had asked the government of Qatar, where Aljazeera is based, to prevent the station from airing the latest Bin Ladin tape.
At on point in the tape Bin Laden mockingly almost thanks Bush for being slow to respond to the 9/11 attacks, giving his hijackers more time than expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to pupils in Florida read a book.
"It never occured to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of its citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said referring to to number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.
"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and the butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,749 people at the WTC, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Pennsylvannia.
In planning the attacks, Bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed."
Bin Laden compared the Bush administration to repressive Arab regimes "in that half of them are ruled by the military and the other half are ruled by kings and presidents."
He said the resemblance became clear when Bush's father was president and visted Arab countries.
"He passed on tyranny and oppression to his son, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of fighting terror. Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the (Mideast) region to Florida to use in critical moments."
Link:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/973F1229-454F-4384-BF08-1D86A911DDF7.htm
Bin Ladin, taunting the man who has vowed to take him "dead or alive" for the past three years, said Bush had failed Americans with his Middle East policies, deceiving the nation and provoking Muslim groups like al-Qaida to strike again.
Looking healthy and defiant in a video released from hiding to Aljazeera just four days before the US presidential poll, Bin Ladin accused Bush of complacency during the September 11 attacks in 2001, mocking him for going on with a visit to a school.
"Despite entering the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened," he said, making his clearest claim yet of responsibility.
In what seemed a deliberate attempt to influence Tuesday's US election, bin Ladin used the opening line: "O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results."
But he made little mention of Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry, saying: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe."
Bush, who ordered US forces to capture Bin Ladin dead or alive after the September 11 attacks, vowed that "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country" and said "we will prevail" in the so-called "war on terror".
A US Department of State official said Washington had asked the government of Qatar, where Aljazeera is based, to prevent the station from airing the latest Bin Ladin tape.
At on point in the tape Bin Laden mockingly almost thanks Bush for being slow to respond to the 9/11 attacks, giving his hijackers more time than expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to pupils in Florida read a book.
"It never occured to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of its citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said referring to to number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.
"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and the butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,749 people at the WTC, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Pennsylvannia.
In planning the attacks, Bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed."
Bin Laden compared the Bush administration to repressive Arab regimes "in that half of them are ruled by the military and the other half are ruled by kings and presidents."
He said the resemblance became clear when Bush's father was president and visted Arab countries.
"He passed on tyranny and oppression to his son, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of fighting terror. Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the (Mideast) region to Florida to use in critical moments."
Link:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/973F1229-454F-4384-BF08-1D86A911DDF7.htm