ANOTHER Osama Video Turns Up!

[Shadowhawk]

New bin Laden videotape aired

Exiled Saudi extremist praises Sept. 11 attacks as ‘blessed strikes’

Dec. 27 — The United States summarily dismissed excerpts of a previously unseen videotaped speech by Osama bin Laden as “terrorist propaganda” ahead of the complete broadcast of the tape later Thursday. In the tape, apparently recorded within the past two weeks, bin Laden hails the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States as “blessed strikes” and claims responsibility for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, the first time he has done so publicly.

IN THE VIDEO, bin Laden compares the Kenya embassy bombing with the U.S.-led airstrikes on Afghanistan. Noting the larger size of U.S. bombs used in Afghanistan, he says, “In Nairobi, when our people carried out their attacks, they used bombs that are only two tons, yet they called [that] terrorism.”
Bin Laden previously has praised the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, both of which occurred Aug. 7, 1998, killing 224 people, 12 of them U.S. citizens. But bin Laden, who is under indictment in New York in connection with the bombings, had not previously acknowledged any responsibility for either of them.
He apparently did not mention the Tanzania bombing in the brief excerpts aired Wednesday, which U.S. experts said they were analyzing.
“I don’t know if it’s real, if it’s new, if it’s old,” Richard McGraw, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said moments after al-Jazeera began showing the tape.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the tape as “nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we’ve heard before.”

WHEN, WHERE STILL UNCLEAR
It was not clear when or where the videotape was recorded, but the fugitive al-Qaida leader speaks of an attack on a mosque in Khost “a few days earlier,” an apparent reference to the accidental bombing by U.S. warplanes of a mosque in the Afghan city Nov. 16.
NBC News and other U.S. networks did not immediately air the excerpts of the videotape featuring the camouflage-clad, gaunt-looking exile, heeding Bush administration warnings that the tapes could include secret communications intended for his loyalists around the globe.
The chief editor of al-Jazeera, Ibrahim Hilal, said his station had received the tape “a couple days ago” by an air courier service from Pakistan. The sender was anonymous, he said.
Hilal said the entire tape ran 33 minutes and would be shown Thursday in full on al-Jazeera. The last tape of bin Laden the station aired was Nov. 3.
Translators hired by networks and news services said that on the excerpts aired Wednesday night, bin Laden accused the United States of bombing Afghanistan and killing thousands of civilians without any proof that he or al-Qaida is responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City and near Washington.
In the excerpts, bin Laden, looking tired, stands before a brown cloth or paper backdrop that hides his location, a rifle propped next to him. He appears stiff as he speaks. Although he is left-handed, he gestures only with his right hand, keeping the left still.
U.S. officials said earlier this month that they believed bin Laden was trapped in his mountain hideout in the Tora Bora region of the eastern White Mountains, but recently they have acknowledged that they do not know whether the Saudi-born militant is dead or alive or has fled Afghanistan.

REFERENCE TO MOSQUE BOMBING
One excerpt referring to the bombing of the mosque in Khost could prove crucial in dating the tape recording. U.S. Central Command has reported that an errant U.S. bomb damaged a mosque in Khost on Nov. 16.
On the tape, bin Laden says, “All that you hear about mistaken strikes is a lie and a sheer lie,” according to a translation by The Associated Press.
“Several days ago, they bombed as, they claimed, ‘positions of a Taliban base in Khost’ and sent a missile to a mosque and said it was a mistake and after investigation it was clear that some religious scholars were praying,” the AP quoted bin Laden as saying.
According to comments provided by translators for MSNBC and the AP, bin Laden also claims that:
“Our terrorism is against America. Our terrorism is a blessed terrorism to prevent the unjust person from committing injustice and to stop American support for Israel, which kills our sons.”
He is speaking three months after the date “when the blessed strikes against the head of the infidels took place, the head of the infidels, the U.S.”
The U.S. bombing is proof that Americans are jealous of the Muslim world and hate Muslims. “The West loathes Islam and Muslims,” he says.
U.S. intelligence sources, from electronic intercepts to trusted human reporting, have been silent on bin Laden’s whereabouts since the height of U.S. bombing in Tora Bora about two weeks ago, when U.S. forces picked up a short-range radio broadcast of a voice believed to be bin Laden’s, giving orders to his troops in the Tora Bora area.
While officials acknowledged that the transmission, which was not recorded, might have been a ruse, it was seen as a major clue to his whereabouts.
If bin Laden had been killed, either by U.S. bombings or by his own followers as a martyr, someone probably would have talked about it by now over communications channels monitored by military and intelligence agencies, officials said. In November, U.S. officials initially learned from intercepted communications that Mohammed Atef, a top bin Laden lieutenant, had been killed.

CHANGE OF PLANS
The excerpts of the bin Laden videotape were played hours after U.S. military planners indicated that they were no longer planning to send a contingent of Marines to join the search of the former al-Qaida stronghold at Tora Bora, a change of plans prompted by renewed enthusiasm for the hunt by Washington’s Afghan allies, sources told NBC News on Wednesday.
The Defense Department had said as late as Tuesday that as many as 500 Marines would be sent to help in the search of the caves of Tora Bora, where Afghan troops supported by U.S. special forces are seeking clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Maj. Robert Winchester, a Marine spokesman in Manama, Bahrain, said Wednesday that those plans had been changed. “I don’t believe the Marines have that mission anymore, and that’s as much as I can say,” he told NBC News.
There was no official explanation for the change of plans, but Defense Department sources indicated that U.S. officials were satisfied with the progress being made in the hunt by re-energized Afghan troops and had tentatively decided that the Marines were not needed. The sources said on condition of anonymity that the Marines could be dispatched quickly if necessary.
The anti-Taliban forces had previously been reluctant to return to Tora Bora in large numbers, with many saying they considered their work there done after bin Laden’s al-Qaida fighters were routed from the mountain redoubt earlier this month.
U.S. military leaders said Tuesday that fewer than 100 foreign fighters were believed to remain in defensive positions in Tora Bora.

‘DELIVER THEM TO JUSTICE’
Afghanistan’s interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, echoed the U.S. optimism Wednesday that al-Qaida had been vanquished, telling the AP that “terrorism is largely defeated” in his nation.
“There are remnants in the form of individuals or small groups,” said Karzai, who was sworn in Saturday. “Those should be looked for and arrested and put to trial.”
He added, however, that there was still a need for U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan and airstrikes on suspected mountain hideouts.
“They need to fight terrorism right now physically inside Afghanistan, to bring them out of their hideouts and to deliver them to justice, to international justice and to Afghan justice,” Karzai said.
Separately, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said pockets of al-Qaida fighters loyal to bin Laden were still holding out in southern Afghanistan, particularly in the southern reaches of Kandahar province, the final Taliban stronghold before its surrender on Dec. 7.
He also made a point of saying al-Qaida forces were still operating in southeastern Paktia province, site of the U.S. bombing of an Afghan caravan last week that local residents said was carrying only Pashtun tribal leaders.
U.S. military officials have insisted that the convoy was transporting al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, and observers said Wednesday that Abdullah may have been signaling that the United States was justified in carrying out such airstrikes in Paktia.
The hunt for al-Qaida fugitives appeared to have struck paydirt Wednesday in Pakistan, where coast guard officials said they arrested 43 Afghan nationals with suspected ties to bin Laden and the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Maj. Mohammad Akram said the men were taken into custody near the port city of Karachi and were being interrogated.

[Manu]

I am sure more and more of these will turn up as time goes on...

[86Dude]

I Osama is so contained, then how do these videos keep getting out?