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April
18, 2002 8:45 a.m. |
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he
latest Osama bin Laden video, which ran yesterday on the Saudi-funded,
London-based MBC network, answers unequivocally the question whether bin
Laden was behind the September 11 (or as they call it, "blessed Tuesday")
attacks, that is in case anyone was still asking. Yes. He did it. He was
proud of it. He loved it. It was a dream come true.
Sulayman Abu-Ghayth, spokesman for al Qaeda, states in the video that "we have done what Almighty God ordered us to do. We did not invent anything. Nor did we invent any words. However, we implemented what Almighty God ordered us to do. Almighty God ordered us to perform jihad, and therefore we performed jihad." Bin Laden's segment dealt mainly with the monetary costs of the attack to the U.S. economy, and clearly dates the taping to sometime last fall: "The capital in circulation in this market amounts to $4 trillion. If we multiply 16 percent by $4 trillion to find out the losses that their shares suffered, we find that it is $640 billion. This is their loss in shares, and credit goes to God Almighty. This number is equivalent to the budget of Sudan, for instance, for 640 years." The 16 percent bin Laden refers to is the drop in the stock market — which of course was not a permanent loss, we recovered all the Sudan years of that value by December. He goes into minutia like 170,000 airline and 20,000 hotel employees being laid off, pretty tame outcomes for jihad when you think about it. "The repercussions are so great, enormous, and are spreading out that no one can estimate them in cash, and they are on the rise, praise be to God." He's really grasping at straws. I'm reminded of his earlier video boast about the increasing number of people in Holland getting interested in Islam since 9/11 — not much to show for the effort.
Then the viewer has a chance to compare the temporary economic effects of the attack to the permanent manpower costs to his organization. The video, produced by an al Qaeda media establishment, shows scenes of the effects of U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan. It identifies members of the terrorist organization killed by the bombings, and reveals their nationalities — Egyptian, Saudi, Yemeni, Qatari, Iraqi, and natives of other Arab and Islamic states. If true, this is useful intelligence for our side, but you have to wonder if they slipped in some names of people they would like us to think dead who in fact aren't.
Yet there is nothing in the compendium to indicate that bin Laden is still alive. In fact the recent "basement tapes" compilations that have been coming out — odds and ends thrown together in rough edits — argue that bin Laden is long gone. It's like when a musician dies and you begin to see CDs of demos, alternate takes, remixes, and so forth. There's no new material coming out so it's the only way to keep people interested. Same with Osama. Were he alive, he or someone in his organization would figure out a way to communicate it unambiguously. This new tape in particular, in which the al Qaeda leadership admits what it never admitted in public before (i.e., that they did it), seems to have the quality of a memorial, a tribute to the act that could never be revealed while bin Laden was alive.
OK, so I'm speculating — but if the Washington Post can make national news on what Secretary Rumsfeld called the "pinnacle of relatively modest knowledge" why not me? If bin Laden is alive, someone isn't minding the store for him very well. This video cinches the case. Those diehards in the Muslim world who were holding desperately to the double-think that bin Laden was innocent and they were glad he attacked the U.S. — or those people in France buying that book about the 9/11 "fraud" — or those denizens of the fever swamps who blame the whole thing on Mossad — will just have to face reality. Bin Laden did it. Just like we knew he did.
— James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.