Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who has added his own voice to the US presidential campaign at the last minute, explained for the first time the motives for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
The broadcast Friday night by Al-Jazeera television of a video tape believed to be of the al-Qaeda boss was remarkable for its timing, coming days ahead of the US presidential election and being the first images of him speaking since May 2002.
The intervening time has seen several audio tapes from bin Laden emerge as well as a video of him walking silently in a mountainous area along with his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
In Friday's footage, bin Laden appears relaxed and in good health, holding forth on the US elections and on the reasons for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US, in the clearest admission yet of his involvement in the hijackings in which 3,000 people died.
Bin Laden's usual camouflage garb was replaced by an elegant white tunic and turban and a straw-colored cloak. That was in keeping with a more political message than usual and somewhat deflating to Washington's preferred image of a man cowering in a dark cave somewhere.
Washington's most wanted man, said as recently as Friday to be staying with Pashtun friends somewhere in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, compared the administration of US President George W. Bush to corrupt Arab regimes governed "by the offspring of kings and presidents."
He accused Bush of an incompetent reaction to Sept. 11 because "it was more important to preoccupy himself with the talk of the little girl about her goat ... than with the planes and their strike on the skyscrapers," in reference to the president's reaction to news of the attacks.
But he also said there was little difference between the two main presidential candidates.
"Your security is not in the hands of [Senator John] Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any [presidential] mandate which does not play havoc with our security would automatically ensure its own security."
Bin Laden also said that reasons to repeat the Sept. 11 attacks remain, because US policy has not changed and "Bush is still misleading you."
While repeating his claim that the attacks were motivated by "the arbitrariness of the Israeli-US alliance," for the first time, bin Laden mentioned the US-approved Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as a reason for the attacks.
"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me that the unjust should suffer the same, that the towers in America must be destroyed so that America gets a taste of what we went through, so that it will stop killing our children and women."
At the time, bin Laden was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, in a proxy war financed by the US Central Intelligence Agency.
US political analysts said that the impact of the tape would likely be positive for Bush as such belligerent words would make some voters "not want to change horse during battle."
Both main candidates reacted swiftly to the tape, with Kerry promising to "hunt down and destroy" bin Laden if he is elected on Nov. 2 while Bush said the American people would be "neither intimidated nor influenced" by the al-Qaeda number one.
While it was unclear exactly when the tape was recorded, references to 1,000 US military dead in Iraq and being "into the fourth year after Sept. 11" date the recording to within the last two months.
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