From the NYT:
Christmas Bombing Try Is Hailed by bin Laden
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, spoke publicly for the first time about the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing, praising the attempt — but not explicitly taking responsibility for it — in an audiotape broadcast Sunday that was aimed personally at President Obama.
An audiotape boradcast does not check the "spoke pubicly" block for me. Any word from Fort Hood terrorist/murderer MAJ Hasan? Same words, perhaps.
Mr. bin Laden said that the bombing attempt was a heroic act meant to recall the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington. He warned that more strikes against the United States were looming because of American support for what he called Israel’s repression of the Palestinians, one of Mr. bin Laden’s recurring themes in his occasional audiotaped anti-West invectives.
Sounds like it was written by Hasan. Plus, bin Laden has a US President that one would think he would love. Obama seems to want Israelis to willingly march into the sea. Maybe not announcing that he wants them all shot is a step too short for bin Laden, so he addressed this tape to Obama.
Oh, for you terrorist embracing PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah loving types. Stop denying that you are identical to
al Qaeda, you are
the same. Okay, there are a few Marxists in your ranks, but everything else is the same. You get your funding from the same idots who think they are donating to "schools and hospitals" (honest brokers call them armories and ammunition caches). You attack civilians as your primary targets. You are all terrorists and so are the ones who support you.
“America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine,” Mr. bin Laden said. “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue.”
Mr. bin Laden said his statement was “from Osama to Obama.”
The one-minute recording, broadcast by Al Jazeera’s Arabic news channel, was the first time Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, had issued an audiotape in four months.
White House officials said they could not immediately authenticate the recording, but did not dispute that the voice was Mr. bin Laden’s. David Axelrod, a White House senior adviser, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that whatever the source, the message “contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents.”
It was not clear why Mr. bin Laden waited nearly a month to say anything about the Dec. 25 bombing attempt on Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, which was carried out by a passenger who sought to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear but was overpowered by other passengers. Federal investigators have said the suspect, a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, received training and the explosives in Yemen.
“The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes” of Sept. 11, Mr. bin Laden said.
More at the link above, to include a blurb for an al Qaeda expert quoted by the
Times saying bin Laden is not claiming responsibility, he is just praising the December bombing attempt.
Other reports across the internet and on the air report the tape as a claim of responsibility.
Amy Alkon covers this too.
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