Osama tells Americans to renew policies

Among other injustices, US support to Israel motivated 9/11

Titled ‘Message to the American People’, the video — released on Sunday by the As-Sahab media production branch of al-Qaeda — features a still image of bin Laden and an audio statement, said IntelCenter, based outside Washington.

It came two days after the US marked the eighth anniversary of the attacks by bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network in which hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Bin Laden said among “some other injustices,” the US support to Israel motivated al-Qaeda to launch the September 11 attacks, IntelCenter reported. He also stated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were driven by the pro-Israeli lobby in the White House and corporate interests, and not by Islamic militants. “If you think about your situation well, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups,” he said, according to IntelCenter. “Rather than fighting to liberate Iraq —as Bush claimed — it (the White House) should have been liberated.”

He was referring to former US president George W Bush, who ordered the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime. If Americans want to end their confrontation with al-Qaeda, bin Laden continued, they must reconsider their attitude toward the Jewish state.

“Put the file of your alliance with Israelis on the discussion table,” he stated, according to IntelCenter’s translation of the address. Ask yourselves to determine your position: is your security, your blood, your children, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation dearer to you than the security of the Israelis, their children and economy?

“If you choose your security and cessation of war, and this is what the polls have shown, this requires you to work to punish those on your side who  play with our security,” Laden said.

“We are ready to respond to this choice on aforementioned sound and just bases.”
According to Laden, current US President Barack Obama is powerless and unwilling to change the course of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama’s retention of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and other individuals from the Bush administration is confirmation of the president’s weakness, the al-Qaeda leader said.

“It will become clear to you in days that all you have changed in the White House are faces,” he is quoted by IntelCenter as saying. The bitter truth is that the neo-conservatives continue to cast their heavy shadows upon you.”