OSAMA bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, apparently is alive and well and threatening new attacks on the United States. According to a recent intercepted satellite telephone conversation, the most wanted man in the world – there is a $US50 million price on bin Laden's head – is travelling with his lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahri, living in Afghanistan, and plotting his next move. AFP photo

bin-Laden rises from the dead and swears vengeance on little George and Sharon

It seems highly probable that little George has been unsuccessful in killing bin-Laden.  And it goes without saying that the only reason that bin-Laden is alive is because he has friends in high places.

And who can doubt that bin-Laden has appointed himself avenger of all the injustices that he had determined that America has foisted on Arabs and Muslims.

As Ariel Sharon began the Palestinian uprising with a visit to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000, little George is about to bring the suicide bombers and worse to every American city.

The reality is that regardless of all the power wielded by the United States,  all its technology and all its money, bin-Laden lives and what is worse he has proven that he can strike at the heart of America. 

little George is about to force a partnership between the secular pragmatist Saddam Hussein and the religious fanatic bin-Laden and that partnership will unite the Arab Muslim world against American interest world wide.

Armageddon is about to begin but it may well be the United States who goes down in history as the igniter of  Hell's fire on earth.

John WorldPeace
October 8,  2002

Joe Siracusa, visiting fellow at Griffith University's Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance
09oct02

OSAMA bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, apparently is alive and well and threatening new attacks on the United States.

According to a recent intercepted satellite telephone conversation, the most wanted man in the world – there is a $US50 million price on bin Laden's head – is travelling with his lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahri, living in Afghanistan, and plotting his next move.

In the conversation reported at the weekend by US and Afghan intelligence, the Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, reportedly told his former deputy prime minister Maulvi Abdul Kabir that things were going to change in Afghanistan in the next 45 days.

He also said that bin Laden had lots of cash, without explaining the source of the money. "We are in receipt of financial aid. Our benefactors have been approached and are supplying us with money," Omar told Kabir.

News of the Taliban conversation comes only days after the Arab satellite station Al Jazeera released an audiotape said to be from bin Laden in which he warns that "youths of God" are planning more assaults on the US.

"By God," declares the alleged bin Laden, "the youths of God are preparing for you things that will fill your hearts with terror and target your economic lifeline until you stop your oppression and aggression against Muslims."

There is little doubt that this is the real deal. Al-Jazeera chief editor Ibrahim Helal confirmed that "we had no doubt this was bin Laden. It was not only the tone of his voice but also the way he spoke and the logic of the message." That the message lasted only two minutes suggests that bin Laden is fully on the run.

Qatar-base al-Jazeera has become well known for its broadcasts of audio and videotapes of Al-Qaeda leaders. Last month, it aired excerpts from a videotape in which a voice purported to be bin Laden's is heard naming the leader of September 11's 19 hijackers.

Until then, bin Laden had not been heard from since shortly after the US-led bombing campaign began in Afghanistan last October.

In any case, in his brief statement, bin Laden specifically addressed the American people, whom he urged to "understand the message of the New York and Washington attacks which came in response to some of your previous crimes", unspecified but clearly implied.

Then he got to the point he really wanted to make: a blunt warning to the American people on the eve of President George W. Bush's speech about the proposed use of force against Iraq.

"But those who follow the activities of the band of criminals in the White House, the Jewish agents who are preparing for an attack on the Muslim world . . . feel you have not understood anything from the message of the two attacks," he said.

Bin Laden's final words are chilling: "So let America increase the pace of this conflict or decrease it, and we will respond in kind."

For his part, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went out of his way to cast doubt on the authenticity of the audiotaped statement attributed to bin Laden, saying that there was no way to verify whether bin Laden was still alive.

He said that he had not heard the tape, but had been told the two-minute statement gave no indication of when it could have been made. "Obviously, there would be many ways that one could easily indicate that they were alive and that the tape had been made recently," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld criticised what he called the media's "fixation" on bin Laden when the war on terrorism "is a problem that is much bigger than one individual. Needless to say, we would like to locate him and determine what his circumstance is."

Ironically, the Defence Secretary was preoccupied with another individual: Saddam Hussein. In his Monday-evening address, Bush clearly prepared the country for the likelihood that war would be the only course left if Iraq refused to disarm.

And for those who might question the relevance of September 11 and Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein – the small thug from the town of Tikrit in the Sunni Arab zone of the Tigris – Bush, for the first time, built a lengthy, if circumstantial, case that the Iraqi leader had extensive ties to the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation and that Iraq trained members of the terrorist group in "bomb-making, poisons and deadly gases".

In his half-hour indictment of Saddam, the President insisted that leading a campaign to disarm the Iraqi dictator would not detract from the war against terrorism. "To the contrary," declared Bush, "confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror."

The Bush Administration, at long last, has made bin Laden, the Islamic fundamentalist and Saddam, the secular pragmatist, who have almost nothing in common, the team they would never have expected to be.

How can we manifest peace on earth if we do not include everyone (all races, all nations, all religions, both sexes) in our vision of Peace?

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