[News] Full text of Bin Laden Tape

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Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech
by
Saturday 30 October 2004 11:28 AM GMT


Bin Ladin directed his message at the American people

Following is the full English transcript of Usama bin Ladin's speech in a 
videotape sent to Aljazeera. In the interests of authenticity, the content 
of the transcript, which appeared as subtitles at the foot of the screen, 
has been left unedited.


Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and commanded 
them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the 
oppressor in kind. To proceed:

Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America this talk of 
mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan, 
and deals with the war and its causes and results.

Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of 
human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to 
Bush's claim that we hate freedom.

If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? 
And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of 
the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We 
want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. 
So shall we lay waste to yours.

No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes 
himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster 
strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent 
it happening again.

But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the 
events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception 
and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there 
for a repeat of what occurred.

So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell 
you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you 
to consider.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the 
towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and 
tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine 
and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when 
America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth 
Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and 
injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and 
children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants 
and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our 
home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless 
except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that 
doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't 
respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, 
but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, 
and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind 
that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy 
towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so 
that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional 
killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. 
Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and 
intolerance.

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr 
did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever 
known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and 
explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in 
order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in 
the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of 
September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be 
blamed for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable 
terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, 
repeatedly, for years before September 11th.

And you can read this, if you wish, in my interview with Scott in Time 
Magazine in 1996, or with Peter Arnett on CNN in 1997, or my meeting with 
John Weiner in 1998.

You can observe it practically, if you wish, in Kenya and Tanzania and in 
Aden. And you can read it in my interview with Abdul Bari Atwan, as well as 
my interviews with Robert Fisk.

The latter is one of your compatriots and co-religionists and I consider 
him to be neutral. So are the pretenders of freedom at the White House and 
the channels controlled by them able to run an interview with him?  So that 
he may relay to the American people what he has understood from us to be 
the reasons for our fight against you?

If you were to avoid these reasons, you will have taken the correct path 
that will lead America to the security that it was in before September 
11th. This concerned the causes of the war.

As for it's results, they have been, by the grace of Allah, positive and 
enormous, and have, by all standards, exceeded all expectations. This is 
due to many factors, chief among them, that we have found it difficult to 
deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to 
the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and 
the other half which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents.

Our experience with them is lengthy, and both types are replete with those 
who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of 
wealth. This resemblance began after the visits of Bush Sr to the region.

At a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by America and hoping 
that these visits would have an effect on our countries, all of a sudden he 
was affected by those monarchies and military regimes, and became envious 
of their remaining decades in their positions, to embezzle the public 
wealth of the nation without supervision or accounting.

So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they 
named it the Patriot Act, under the pretence of fighting terrorism. In 
addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors, and 
didn't forget to import expertise in election fraud from the region's 
presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this 
administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the 
furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, 
in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, 
economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of 
note other than some benefits for their private companies.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and 
the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the 
mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced 
to withdraw in defeat.

All Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of 
bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.

That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against the 
administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in 
this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinises the results, 
one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those 
spectacular gains.

Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war 
fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether they be working in 
the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has helped al-Qaida to achieve 
these enormous results.

And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House 
and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United 
States, even if the intentions differ.

And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British 
diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute 
of International Affairs. [When they pointed out that] for example, 
al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and 
its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest estimate - more than $500 
billion.

Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the 
permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.

As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical 
numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin 
recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in 
Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the 
bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's permission.

It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, 
it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which 
anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush 
administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, 
will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is ... you.

It is the American people and their economy. And for the record, we had 
agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa, Allah have mercy on him, 
that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before 
Bush and his administration notice.

It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed 
forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face 
those great horrors alone, the time when they most needed him.

But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the 
little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than 
occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers, we 
were given three times the period required to execute the operations - all 
praise is due to Allah.

And it's no secret to you that the thinkers and perceptive ones from among 
the Americans warned Bush before the war and told him: "All that you want 
for securing America and removing the weapons of mass destruction - 
assuming they exist - is available to you, and the nations of the world are 
with you in the inspections, and it is in the interest of America that it 
not be thrust into an unjustified war with an unknown outcome."

But the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he 
gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America.

So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and 
Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future. He 
fits the saying "like the naughty she-goat who used her hoof to dig up a 
knife from under the earth".

So I say to you, over 15,000 of our people have been killed and tens of 
thousands injured, while more than a thousand of you have been killed and 
more than 10,000 injured. And Bush's hands are stained with the blood of 
all those killed from both sides, all for the sake of oil and keeping their 
private companies in business.

Be aware that it is the nation who punishes the weak man when he causes the 
killing of one of its citizens for money, while letting the powerful one 
get off, when he causes the killing of more than 1000 of its sons, also for 
money.

And the same goes for your allies in Palestine. They terrorise the women 
and children, and kill and capture the men as they lie sleeping with their 
families on the mattresses, that you may recall that for every action, 
there is a reaction.

Finally, it behoves you to reflect on the last wills and testaments of the 
thousands who left you on the 11th as they gestured in despair. They are 
important testaments, which should be studied and researched.

Among the most important of what I read in them was some prose in their 
gestures before the collapse, where they say: "How mistaken we were to have 
allowed the White House to implement its aggressive foreign policies 
against the weak without supervision."

It is as if they were telling you, the people of America: "Hold to account 
those who have caused us to be killed, and happy is he who learns from 
others' mistakes."

And among that which I read in their gestures is a verse of poetry. 
"Injustice chases its people, and how unhealthy the bed of tyranny."

As has been said: "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

And know that: "It is better to return to the truth than persist in error." 
And that the wise man doesn't squander his security, wealth and children 
for the sake of the liar in the White House.

In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands 
of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No.

Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with 
our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.

And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. 
All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.


Aljazeera
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm




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