We know that the majority of your people want this war to end and based on the substance of the polls, which indicate Americans do not want to fight Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their land, we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stand by ... a truce that offers security and stability and the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan that war has destroyed ... And there is nothing wrong with this solution except that it deprives the influential people and warlords in America from hundreds of billions of dollars - those who supported [President George W] Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars. - Osama bin Laden on tape, January 18Just a slow, composed, husky voice out of a telephone line recorded on a scratched tape (not digital; a mere cassette). No video. Just a voice - capable of sending the markets into a tailspin and the networks into hysteria, spiking the oil bourses in London and New York, resetting the global agenda, unleashing armies of US intelligence analysts scrambling to confirm if the voice is real or fake.
You had totally vanished from the face of the Earth for more than a year. You are the most wanted man in the world. You re-enter the global stage just with your voice, a mere whisper. The simplicity of it. What politician would not dream of such power?
Osama bin Laden, master media manipulator turned global politician, is back. Talk about astonishing timing.
Comment: Clever analysis. Too bad it is based on the assumption that the voice is really Bin Laden.