A new tape from al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden hit the internet earlier today, and the Tall Sheikh apparently wants everyone to know that he's keeping up with the news. In fact, he decided to offer testimony, albeit belatedly, in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Osama announced that Moussaoui had no connection to the 9/11 plot, and if Osama thought Club Fed's latest guest had any knowledge of their plans, he would have cancelled the operation immediately:

Osama bin Laden purportedly said in an audio tape Tuesday that neither Zacarias Moussaoui — the only person convicted in the U.S. for the Sept. 11 attacks — nor anyone held at Guantanamo had anything to do with the al-Qaida operation.

"He had no connection at all with Sept. 11," the speaker claiming to be bin Laden said in the tape posted on the Internet. "I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers and I never assigned brother Zacarias to be with them in that mission," he said, referring to the 19 hijackers. ...

"Brother Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before the events, and if he had known something — even very little — about the Sept. 11 group, we would have informed the leader of the operation, Mohammad Atta, and the others ... to leave America before being discovered," Bin Laden said.

That doesn't sound like the greatest endorsement of Moussaoui's credentials as a terrorist -- but then again, Moussaoui made his lack of skill fairly clear in his clumsy attempts to take flying lessons here in Eagan, MN. He managed to make himself the only AQ terrorist to get captured before the attack, even if the FBI didn't quite know what they had at the time. Osama only underscores the point by his attempt to provide reasonable doubt for an idiot who already confessed.

Osama also made an unusual claim about the inmates at Guantanamo. He insisted that the roundup of Muslims served only to justify the cost of the war, proving that bin Laden spends time at International ANSWER's website. The AP does not make clear whether Osama actually names Halliburton in his statement, but he does insist that the existence of Gitmo is a ruse to explain the "hundreds of billions of dollars" spent by the DoD and other government agencies. One would think that the 9/11 attacks provided plenty of justification, attacks for which Osama himself takes credit in this tape as in others before it.

But even while he repeated the memes of the left, he made one disclaimer that should raise some eyebrows. While stating that the Gitmo detainees have no connection to 9/11 (a strawman -- no one claimed they did), he admitted that two of the prisoners did have some connection to the plot. "All the prisoners to date have no connection to the Sept. 11 events or knew anything about them, except for two of the brothers," bin Laden said, although he did not make clear how much they knew.

If Osama is to be believed, Gitmo holds two accessories to the 9/11 attacks.

One other interesting point about this tape: it will be the third this year, if it is proven authentic. That has some significance. Until recently, Osama seemed comfortable with allowing Ayman al-Zawahiri to tape statements for release, preferring to remain more mysterious and to give the rare public statement from himself more impact. Why all of a sudden has Osama become more involved in PR? It may be that this is the only method left to him to have any real impact on global terror. The US and its allies have done heavy damage to AQ command and control, and some analysts have wondered whether Osama retains any operational control at all.

If Osama gets energized by defending Zacarias Moussaoui, it's good prima facie evidence that he has little else occupying his time.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Moussaoui's Character Witness:

» Who Let The Bro's Out, Who, Who, Who, Who? from Liberty and Justice
I am glad that Bin Laden supports his 'brothers', but uhm, I don't think anyone takes videos like this very serious. What's next: Zarqawi is not the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, if he was he could handle a machine gun? A musical based on the song 'Let M... [Read More]

Tracked on May 24, 2006 5:02 AM