Aljazeera.Net - Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech

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

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