Richard Miniter stops by the PC Show to discuss Osama's tape
Yesterday, al-Jazeera broadcast three extracts from the poor-quality audiotape purportedly of Osama bin Laden’s voice.
Richard Miniter, terrorism expert on Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda and author of the new bestselling DISINFORMATION: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror. Miniter is also the author of New York Times bestsellers: Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror, and Shadow War: The Untold Story of How America Is Winning the War on Terror .
MINITER MAKES THE FOLLOWING INFORMED OBSERVATIONS REGARIND BIN LADIN'S LATESTS THREATS:
· This is not the first time Bin Laden has offered a truce. In 2004 he offered a truce to the Europeans. And less than a month ago, some Iraq insurgents offered a truce. As with previous offers, I would expect the Bush administration would ignore these offers and refuse to negotiate with terrorists.
· Bin Laden’s offer to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan is actually an attempt to rebuild a support among Muslim populations in those two countries, who have borne the brunt of terrorist attacks since 9/11. With Muslim opinion increasingly alienated away from Bin Laden the truce and rebuilding effort is a last chance effort by Bin Laden to win back the hearts and minds of his one-time Muslim supporters.
· Bin Laden’s threat to strike inside the United States is not as credible as it once was. More than 600 individuals linked to Islamic terrorism have been deported from the United States since September 2001. Al Qaeda cells from the Virginia suburbs to Bly, Oregon have been dismantled or disrupted. Finally, the NSA has compiled a global database of tens of thousands of phone numbers of key al Qaeda operatives. Thanks to NSA eavesdropping, we are now positioned better than ever to stop Bin Laden’s attacks. Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have killed or captured more than 5,000 al Qaeda operatives in 102 countries, and more than two thirds of its senior leadership has been killed or captured over the same period.
· Bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore. In the audio tape, Bin Laden cites polls showing dipping American support for the war in Iraq and cites news stories emphasizing the growing cost of the war. Like many anti-war activists, he contends that the loss of blood and treasure is too great for America to bear. If so, why is HE the one offering a truce? On 9/11 he used our own planes against us. Today, he is trying to use our own media against us.
· Bin Laden is trying to drive a wedge between President Bush and the American people. By repeatedly emphasizing that Bush has lied to the American people, Bin Laden hopes to summon a war weary population to turn against its president. This suggests that the anti-war tilt of America’s major news outlets is actually encouraging Bin Laden to think that he can divide America and win the war.
· The timing of this tape suggests that al Qaeda’s famed media unit is in tatters. Once the propaganda arm of the terror network could get videotapes onto al Jazeera in hours. This current audio tape took upwards of five weeks to move from Bin Laden to al Jazeera. Al Qaeda’s network is fraying and its reliance on a network of human couriers to smuggle these tapes suggests fearfulness and apprehension on their part.
· What Bin Laden doesn’t say speaks volumes. Unlike the last authentic tape with Bin Laden’s voice on it (December 27, 2004), in this recording Bin Laden does not mention Abu Musab al Zarqawi. This strengthens reports in the Arab media that Bin Laden is openly jealous of the leader of the Iraq insurgency—and desperately wants to reclaim the spotlight for himself. Again, not the mark of a strong and secure leader but one that is desperate to reassert himself and prove that he is still a player.
· This tape, if it is authentic, explodes the myth that Bin Laden died in the recent Pakistani earthquake. This tape should caution analysts who repeatedly predict Bin Laden’s demise, based solely on the fact that “we haven’t heard from him in a while”.
posted by Pat Campbell @ 9:33 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Don't forget that people like OBL hatch long-term plans with results not expected for years. This truce offer is, imho, no more than an attempt to give the Democrats an effective campaign issue in 2008. (Terrorists prefer Democrats over Republicans.) I don't doubt that the Dems will say repeatedly that W. had a chance to stop the bloodshed and begin rebuilding, but he rejected those things when he rejected OBL's truce. The truce is no more than an attempt to buy time and rebuild strength as the VC and the NVA did during ceasefires, but one cannot expect the average member of the Democrat base nor the average American moderate fencesitter to realize that the truce is not to be taken at face value.
The war in Iraq was the best thing to happen to Bin Laden it has extended his life span and allowed them to regroup. Had we sent the force of troops, equipment and money to Afghanistan we would have had him. Now we have created a shia ruled Iraq that is friendly to Iran. Saddam Hussein's secular regime was Iran's worst enemy but now he's out becuase we cared so much for the Iraqi people.
Sending more troops to Afghanistan would not have ensured OBL's capture. He slipped across the border into Pakistan, and perhaps into Iran and Iraq whenever he saw fit to do so to escape capture. Putting more boots on the ground in Afghanistan would not have prevented his border-crossing gambit.
I disagree. Had we used the tremendous resources that we poured into Iraq soon to be a trillion dollars, we would have captured him at the original fall of the Taliban regime. That kind of fire power along with thousands of more troops, airpower, and added on the ground intelligence probably would have caught this guy. If the Bush administration was smart they could have used Saddam Hussein was their trump card against Iran, as the more intelligent Reagan administration did during the '80's. This nonsense about caring for the oppressed Iraqi people is a load. We are killing more of them than Saddam did.
"We are killing more of them than Saddam did."
Nonsense.
Saddam's diversion of money from the food-for-oil program killed tens of thousands of children each year. In addition to that, Saddam tortured and murdered many thousands more each year. Today's collateral damage doesn't come close to that.
Give it time. We've only been there a short time. The sanctions were put there by the UN. It served no purpose than to starve children. Saddam never missed his lunch. The so-called collateral damage is estimated in the area of 100,000. My whole point is Saddam could have been used against Iran just as he was during the 1980's. By the way the gas used to kill Kurds was given to him by the US and only during the past few years, not during the '80s, did anybody start to feel "sorry" for the poor Kurds or complain about this act of genocide.
If the US was so concerned about gas attacks, why didn't they invade Iraq in 1986?
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