Bin Laden threatens France in new message

AP ^ | 1/21/11

[markomalley]

l-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called on France to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in exchange for releasing French hostages being held by affiliates of the extremist group, according to a new audio message broadcast on an Arabic news channel Friday.

"The exit of your hostages out of the hands of our brothers depends on the exit of your troops from Afghanistan," bin Laden said in the message broadcast by al-Jazeera.

Bin Laden reminded the French people of President Nicolas Sarkozy's refusal in November to withdraw the French troops from Afghanistan and to negotiate with al-Qaida over the hostages.

[The Pack Knight]

What do the words of a President of the world’s superpower mean. Nothing much apparently, just hot air

“Poster in the old west....wanted dead or alive”.

He did say that, but he certainly never even pretended that capturing or killing Bin Laden was the overriding goal of our operations in Afghanistan. On the contrary, the Bush Doctrine stood for the opposite proposition - that our war was against terrorists and states that sponsor terrorism wherever they are, not against any one man or one organization.

Not having caught him is or not acknowledging his death is a daily, daily motivator for the jihadis.

They have plenty of motivation whether they believe Bin Laden is alive or dead. Do you really think news of Bin Laden's death will cause any real jihadi to pack up and go home?

It is egg on Uncle Sam’s face. The architects of the worst attack on the American mainland have not been accounted for.

That I don't disagree with. Like I said, it IS important in that we make Bin Laden pay for his crimes - assuming he didn't already die of natural causes, which I think is most likely.

Pathetic and pitiful is what it is.

I don't know about that. It has always been difficult for a nation-state to fight a war against one man - we learned that well enough in Mexico in 1916. That's why we haven't defined this war as a war against Bin Laden or even Al Qaeda, but rather as a war against Islamic terrorism and the states who support it.

If Bin Laden is alive, it is because he has made staying alive and uncaptured his top priority and has left the actual prosecution of his war to others. It is a lot more difficult to find such an enemy than it is to find enemies who are exposing themselves by actually carrying on operations against us. We've killed and captured plenty of the latter.

By comparison, Eric Robert Rudolph was able to hide from authorities for five years after a high-profile terrorist campaign. And that was in the mountains of North Carolina, not halfway around the world surrounded by a society that is friendly to him and hostile to us and in a place where we have very limited freedom of operation.

If you don’t think it emboldens jihadis, imagine how things would be if the bodies of Osama and Zawahiri were laid out like Saddam’s sons.

I don't think things would be any different than they are today. Laying out the bodies of Saddam's sons and hanging Saddam himself did little to deter insurgents in Iraq. Why would it be any different with Osama and Zawahiri? Whether they are live "heroes" or dead "martyrs", they hold the same symbolic value.

In today’s psychopop terminology, America would’ve had closure.

Yes, it's just that - "psychopop". There is no such thing as "closure". Even if there was, I don't think a sense of closure would be such a good thing in this case. It might lead people to think that the war is over and the threat from terrorism ended, ideas which are both untrue and dangerous right now.

I think we ought to kill Bin Laden because he deserves to die and because justice demands it. However, I don't think we should be telling ourselves the lie that Bin Laden's death will in any way diminish the overall terrorist threat.

[Slippery Jim]

Bin Laden threatens France

How do you surrender to a ghost?

[Slippery Jim]

Audio is probably easy to fake. Video would have taken more work.

Yep. Moderately noisy audio can be faked up with no way to definitively expose the fakery.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

They must’ve been channeling his skeleton that’s in a cave full of black burn marks.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks hennie pennie.

[foxfighter]

Osama Bin Dead hasn’t been able to threaten anyone since December 2001. He is the booga booga used to scare the sheeple. Better tell the kids to look under their beds befor they go to sleep because he may be hiding there to terrorize them in the night.

[RasterMaster]

Back in the day, I said he’s a stain along the Kandahar Highway. There were reports at the time that mullah omar’s suburban was obliterated in an airstrike while heading out of Kandahar. Since then, I have only found articles relating to a convoy being followed to a building...

“The Predator identified a group of cars and trucks fleeing the capital as a convoy carrying Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.”

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2002/November%202002/1102airwar.aspx

There is also the Chinese report that omar and osama were assassinated...

October 24, 2001: Chinese News Website Claims Bin Laden, Mullah Omar Assassinated

“The Chinese internet news site Zhongxin Wang publishes a detailed account of the purported assassination of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, according to James S. Robbins, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University’s School for National Defense Studies. According to the account, both men were killed by associates at an underground base near Kandahar on October 16. The associates shot them twice in the back, and one of bin Laden’s sons and two of Omar’s were also killed. The report will be picked up by a Japanese daily and the National Review Online, which will cite some circumstantial evidence it says supports the claim.”

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mullah_omar

The site details reports of omar sightings as late as 2007. There are also reports that the ‘Bin Laden’ in Tora Bora was a son of osama:

Al-Qaida forces and their families were thought to be sheltering in other caves, said Haji Musa, the brother-in-law of provincial military chief Hazrat Ali.

“We don’t have any confirmed information about Osama bin Laden, but his son is still in the caves,” he said, adding that tribesmen were within 500 yards of al-Qaida units as warplanes roared overhead.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november01/military_11-16.html

[RasterMaster]

Here’s what Biden said:

“In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

http://newsbusters.org/node/6305#ixzz1BjJuJmBp

[Munz]

I remember democrats DEMANDING Bush find BinLaden .. they made big headlines every time that they disagreed with a war situation.

Why are we not screaming for Binladen ourselves?

Obama promised to capture him .. so where is he?

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

“Whose leader is more worthy of ridicule now? Theirs or ours?”

We have a leader? Who knew? Who is our leader?

[kennyboy509]

I concur with the affore mentioned statement.

Thank you berry berry much.

Kennyboy 2/509 ABN Lee Barracks Mainz Gonzemheim 71-74

[HiTech RedNeck]

Will they CESM?

[foxfighter]

He is in a grave where he has been for ten years. He is D-E-A-D, dead!

[SunkenCiv]

You were there?

[KTM rider]

...so OPEC’s mercenary pokes his little legendary pinhead out agin

[Munz]

Doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t. What matters is that when Bush was in office the democrats were constantly harping on him that he still had not been found. We were at war and where was Bin laden.

Obama PROMISED to find him.

It is time we started asking where he is and why Obama has not done as promised.

[Frank_2001]

“He’s dead Jim.”

France will surrender anyway, just as a precaution;)

[Rich21IE]

Threatening France? He’s coming for their Cheese?

[DuncanWaring]

A century ago, the French were mean SOBs.

It would appear they never recovered from the Great War.

[ExSoldier]

I'll give them this, too: They sure did run a MEAN prison in Devils Island. The Legion aren't wimps, but they're also not strictly froggy, either.