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Bin Laden: I Won’t Be Taken Alive
AP)
Osama bin Laden promised never to be captured alive and declared the U.S. had resorted to the same “repressive” tactics used by Saddam Hussein, according to an audiotape purportedly by the al Qaeda leader that was posted Monday on a militant Web site.
The tape appeared to be a complete version of one that was first broadcast Jan. 19 on Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel, in which bin Laden offered the United States a long-term truce but also said his al Qaeda terror network would soon launch a fresh attack on American soil.
“I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived,” bin Laden said.
In drawing the comparison to American military behavior in Iraq to that of Saddam, the speaker said:
“The jihad is continuing with strength, for Allah be all the credit, despite all the barbarity, the repressive steps taken by the American Army and its agents, to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam.”
With the implied criticism of Saddam, bin Laden appeared to be denying assertions by the Bush administration that the former Iraqi leader had ties to al Qaeda — ties that were given as one rationale for invading Iraq.
The tape’s release in January came days after a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan that was targeting bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and reportedly killed four leading al Qaeda figures, including possibly al-Zawahri’s son-in-law. There was no mention of the attack on the segments that were broadcast.
In the full tape that was posted Monday, bin Laden engaged in renewed propaganda, mocking President Bush’s aircraft carrier declaration in April 2003 that major conflict in Iraq had ended.
Speaking directly to the American people, the speaker said:
“You can rescue whatever you can from this hell. The solution is in your hands, if their (U.S. troops’) situation matters to you at all.”
The initial excerpts had been the first tape from the al Qaeda leader in more than a year — the longest period without a message since the Sept. 11 2001 suicide hijackings in the United States.
The CIA last month authenticated the voice on the initial recording as that of bin Laden, an agency official told The Associated Press at the time. The al Qaeda leader is believed to be hiding in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Wild Thing’s comment…..
Hey Osama, do you really think most of us want you taken alive? Dream on turbin head. Hahahaha
Besides Ramsey Clark is busy being a traitor defending Saddam anyway.
I wonder if the slug Bin Laden even matters much anymore, except to lefties who claim that the WOT is a failure because “we haven’t gotten Bin Laden”. The WOT has moved past him.
All his assumptions have been proven wrong, and his most egregious miscalculation was that Americans won’t fight. That, in fact, was the first principle of all his policies…Americans would run away. The idiot also used Somalia as an example, which proved more than any other operation how tenacious American soldiers are.
Rhod your right and it is so funny that he keeps thinking we all want to hear from him.