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| Terror Networks |
| Bin Laden announced jihad collaboration in recovered tapes |
| 2002-08-20 |
| Just weeks before terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Osama bin Laden warned of a mission that would "result in killing Americans and getting rid of them," CNN reported Tuesday. CNN's second report on tapes it obtained from an al-Qaida archive in Afghanistan also quoted bin Laden as declaring in May 1998 that various Islamic groups were joining forces to launch a "jihad against the crusaders and Jews." On Tuesday morning in Asia, CNN aired portions of a tape it obtained of a May 26, 1998, news conference, restricted to select Pakistani journalists and one Chinese writer, during which bin Laden declared war on the West and Israel. Seems to have been Binny's obsession back in '98, doesn't it? "By God's grace, we have formed with many other Islamic groups and organizations in the Islamic world a front called the International Islamic Front to do jihad against the crusaders and Jews," bin Laden was heard saying through an interpreter. That probably refers to the signatories of the jihad document: Jihad Group in Egypt (since folded into al-Qaeda), Egyptian Islamic Group (al-Gama'at al-Islamiyyah), Jamaat-e-Ulema Pakistan (a "political party," note) and Fazlur Rehman Khalil's Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, followed, no doubt, by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which he subsequently led... At another point in the broadcast, monitored on CNN International ahead of its broadcast in the United States, bin Laden hinted at targeting Americans, just weeks before the nearly simultaneous embassy attacks on Aug. 7, 1998, in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 231 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded 5,000. "And by God's grace, the men reacted to this call and they are going on this path, and they are doing a good job," bin Laden said. "By God's will, their actions are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them." It was at that point that we should have gone to war against him, but it was Monica Time, so we had more important things to do... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |