“The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired…on Friday, October 29 included a specific threat to ‘each U.S. state” designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words ‘ay wilaya’ (which mean ‘each U.S. state’) to mean a country or nation other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state.
The Islamist website Al—Qala explained…This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately…it means that every U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush…has chosen to fight us…and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us…By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies to Islam and the Muslims, and those who will fight for us…The Sheikh reminds the West in this tape of the great Islamic civilization and pure Islamic religion, and of Islamic justice.”

"Oh the American people, I address these words to you regarding the optimal manner of avoiding another Manhattan, and regarding the war, its causes, and its consequences. But before this, I say to you: Security is one of the important pillars of human life, and free men do not take their security lightly, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. Let him explain why we did not attack Sweden, for example. Clearly, those who hate freedom have no pride, unlike the 19 [suicide hijackers of 9/11], may Allah have mercy on them. We have been fighting you because we are free men who do not remain silent in the face of injustice. We want to restore our [Islamic] nation's freedom. Just as you violate our security, we violate yours.
"But I am amazed at you. Although we have entered the fourth year after the events of 9/11, Bush is still practicing distortion and deception against you and he is still concealing the true cause from you. Consequently, the motives for its reoccurrence still exist…
"We agreed with the general commander Muhammad Atta, may Allah have mercy on him, that all operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration would become aware. We never imagined that the Commander in Chief of the American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face this great horror alone when they needed him most. It seemed to him that a girl's story about her goat and its butting was more important than dealing with planes and their 'butting' into skyscrapers. This allowed us three times the amount of time needed for the operations, Allah be praised.
"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al-Qa'ida. Your security is in your own hands, and any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

WHY I’M SUPPORTING MR. BUSH INSTEAD OF MR. KERRY, PART III

First, let me respond to some comments Elizabeth made on my last post:

• I think that Mr. Bush’s statement that we can’t win the war was taken out of context somehow, though I can’t find the entire quote.
• This war involves shadowy, elusive enemies enmeshed in a web of vague, shifting alliances; this is going to make victory much harder to define, let alone achieve. Even if we have to keep dealing with new terrorist threats, however, I think we can win a series of victories if we firmly crush each new movement by capturing or killing the hard core of fanatical leaders, destroying its bases, and cutting it off from its support networks. So we could be facing a series of smaller wars rather than one large one, as we put out one fire at a time. And we’d have to be resolute without becoming paranoid…
• I’m not fond of the idea of pre-emptive war either, and would not have suggested it if our enemies did not have a chance of getting WMDs. And if we CAN deal with future threats using diplomacy and law enforcement, well, I won’t argue – war is always the last resort. I just think that we need to keep all options open, and let others know that we're doing so.
• Yes, we need to work on homeland security, but I don’t think law enforcement alone, while it is absolutely necessary, is going to be enough, because it deals with capturing criminals after the fact more than preventing crime in the first place. With military strikes, on the other hand, hopefully we can deal with terrorists before they can strike here, or anywhere else, for that matter. Besides, while the hard core fanatics can’t be deterred or reasoned with, there’s always the hope that others who aren’t as committed to the fantasy ideology behind their movement might be frightened enough to change their minds. And the states that support terrorists, unless they’re in the grip of a fantasy ideology themselves, should definitely be deterrable. Of course, if we hit civilians indiscriminately, this would backfire (and, even more important, would be morally wrong!), so we’d need to be as careful and precise as possible – we really, REALLY do need to get better intelligence.

Now, let me try to answer some objections:

But Mr. Bush is so…so…unilateral! Don’t we need a President with Mr. Kerry’s diplomatic finesse and nuance, to win more allies?

• Well, I wouldn’t call spending several months trying to convince the United Nations to support their resolutions against Iraq unilateral…
• We have a number of allies in the war; Britain, Australia, Japan, Italy, Poland…And I don’t really think Mr. Kerry showed too much finesses when he referred to them as – what was it? – the coalition of the bribed and coerced. IMHO, that really sounds like a better description of Saddam’s partners in the “Oil for Food” scandal. And come to think of it, Mr. Kerry wasn’t showing too much nuance when he didn’t bother to show up for the President of Iraq’s speech before Congress, and later all but called the man our puppet.

Iraq is a quagmire!

• Yes, we have made mistakes – who doesn’t in a war? The main point is to learn from them, and go on.
• Much of the violence is happening, as I understand it, in the “Sunni Triangle”, and part of the problem there comes from the fact that we weren’t able to sweep down from Turkey at the start.
• I think the mainstream media have, understandably, been concentrating on the violence, which, after all makes more exciting headlines than schools reopening or power stations being repaired.

Finally, 2 quotes as “food for thought”:

Tom Junod, no Bush supporter, asks his fellow anti-Bush partisans an uncomfortable question:

“As easy as it is to say that we can’t abide the president because of the gulf between what he espouses and what he actually does, what haunts me is the possibility that we can’t abide him because of us – because of the gulf between his will and our willingness. What haunts me is the possibility that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we his call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion…”

Yeah, Yeah, I know: nobody who opposes Bush thinks that terrorism is a good thing…Sure Saddam was a bad guy. Sure the world is a better place without him. But…

And there it is: the inevitable but…it sits squirming at the end of the argument against George Bush for a very good reason: it can’t possibly set at the beginning. Bush haters have to back into it because there’s nothing beyond it. The world is a better place without Saddam, but…but what? But he wasn’t so bad that we had to do anything about him?…

We might as well credit the president for his one great accomplishment: replacing but with and as a basic for foreign policy. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, and we got rid of him.”

(“The Case for George W. Bush: ie, What if he’s right?” Esquire, 8/1/04, available at KeepMedia.)

Sarah Baxter, former political editor of the New Statesman, “life-long labor voter in Britain and registered Democrat in the United States,” explains why she’ll be voting for “W”, in spite of “a fair amount of gritting of teeth:”

“I do not want the global jihadists and women-hating fundamentalists to be celebrating Bush’s defeat. They do not deserve to win, even if Bush deserves to lose, a position I am not quite willing to concede…

I am determined my children will grow up in a world of increasing democracy where terrorists are captured, tyrants overthrown.

When Bush said in last week’s debate, ‘We can be safe and secure if we go on the offense against terrorism and if we spread liberty around the world,’ I felt he spoke with conviction. When Kerry said he was going to “hunt and kill” the terrorists, I heard a politician’s sound bite…

On foreign policy, Bush is the idealist and Kerry the conservative, afraid to disturb the status quo (who) is giving Iraqi insurgents who…relish killing their own people most of all – every reason to step up their attacks in the hope of sabotaging their own elections and replacing Bush in the White House. It is the behavior of a politician with more ambition than conscience.”

(“I’m a Democrat for Bush”, Times Online, 10/17/04)

Well, there a more questions I could have looked at, but time is running out, so I’ll at least post this much, and hope that I’ve made my case.

Everyone please be sure to vote tomorrow!