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Bin Laden stays tuned to CNN
It may seem a rather trite observation considering the numbing frothiness of King's CNN talk show compared with the gravity of all that surrounds the world's most hunted terrorist.But it may reveal much about the role al-Qa'ida's leader sees the Western media playing in his bloody war against the infidel. In a new book by terrorism expert Peter Bergen, there is a passage in which Hamid Mir, bin Laden's Pakistani biographer, recalls seeing the September 11 mastermind, in his hideaway, glued to CNN. "When I met him after 9/11, he said: 'I was watching you on the Larry King show a few days ago, and you told Larry King that when Osama bin Laden talks on religion, he is not convincing, but when he talks on politics, he is very much convincing. So today I will convince you on some religious issues'," Mir tells Bergen. "So I said, 'OK, you watched the Larry King show?'. "He said, 'Yes, I am fighting a big war, and I have to monitor the activities of my enemy through these TV channels'." Remember, it was the CNN pictures of the corpses of US troops being brutally dragged through the streets of Mogadishu - and the subsequent retreat ordered by then president Bill Clinton - that gave bin Laden the belief that the US did not have the stomach for war. And so when bin Laden speaks, like any media-savvy politician with an agenda, it is worth examining what might lie beyond his words. Yesterday's news reports of the contents of a bin Laden tape were not news at all. The audiotape had been released last month and dutifully reported. But clearly someone felt it had not been sufficiently absorbed in the Western world, so an al-Qa'ida group reposted it yesterday, in its entirety - helpfully translated into English - probably knowing that news agencies would quickly pounce. They were right. The gist of the previously unreported message was that bin Laden would rather die than be captured - neither is this news, as martyrdom is his ultimate goal - and, more importantly, a likening of the US in Iraq to the regime of Saddam Hussein. "The jihad continues, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the US army and its agents (which has reached) a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality," bin Laden is heard saying. It seems that bin Laden wants to remind the world that, contrary to the Bush administration's assertions, he and Saddam were never in league. It seems to be part of al-Qa'ida's general psychological operations strategy which offers, on the one hand, the prospect of a truce and reasonableness while warning of more attacks on the soil of the US and its allies, including Australia. Of course, he has said it all before. But repeating slogans - staying "on message" - has never been President George W. Bush's weak point, either. Bergen's book provides ample evidence that bin Laden had no love for Saddam and was hardly likely to be working with a regime he considered apostate from Islam - the gravest charge he could lay against a fellow Muslim. Mir tells Bergen that bin Laden "gave me such kind of abuses that it was very difficult for me to write". "(He called Saddam) a socialist motherf..ker," Mir says. "(Bin Laden said) the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is f..king his mother." Perhaps the more intriguing question is why bin Laden has suddenly become camera-shy? He has relied only on audiotapes for almost two years. Is it because of security fears or, considering the frailty in his voice in this latest tape - probably recorded in December - that he is too ill? Posted by: tipper 2006-02-22 |
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