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AP; Reuters. 13 December 2001. Poor Sound Quality Fuels Suspicions in the Arab World of a U.S. Scheme; Many in Arab World Call Bin Laden Video a Fake. CAIRO -- Poor sound quality and reliance on U.S. government translations significantly lessened the impact of the latest Osama bin Laden videotape in the Arab world and fueled suspicion of a U.S. scheme to blame Muslims for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Is that possible! I can't believe bin Laden did it. The translation is wrong and we hardly heard his voice. America just wants to implicate Muslims," said Nadia Saqr, an Egyptian mother of two. In the tape released Thursday by the Pentagon, there was no finger-waving or grandiose threats and bin Laden referred to the Sept. 11 attacks in a casual tone. Over dinner with his aides in the tape released Thursday, bin Laden recited a poem about freedom and struggle and teased his spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, because he had known nothing about the Sept. 11 attacks. "Not everyone knew," bin Laden said in the tape. It was a striking contrast to previous tapes. Coupled with poor sound quality and U.S. government translations, the tape released by the Pentagon instead of the Al-Jazeera station, left many Arab skeptics. In Jordan, political analyst Labib Kamhawi said, at most, the video shows bin Laden praising the attacks, but "does not prove that bin Laden was responsible for" them. In a recruiting video released after the October 2000 suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, bin Laden praised the deadly bombing but did not claim responsibility. "I think this recording is forged ... I don't believe this tape is authentic," said Sheikh Mohammad Saleh, a Saudi cleric. Ali, a Saudi civil servant, concurred. "The picture is real but the voice is not. It could be a voice over," he said. He had to watch the videotape on a regional satellite station as Saudi state television failed to broadcast it. "Do the Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?" asked Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of Jordan's mainstream Islamist party the Islamic Action Front. "In my view this tape has been fabricated by Washington to condemn bin Laden and conceal America's ugly crimes in Afghanistan," said Yousef Abdul Hamid, an Amman taxi driver. A less skeptical Bahraini man said: "If the recording was real, it only adds that bin Laden was aware of the incident but not necessarily that he had planned it.'' "It is possible that another group was behind it but had informed bin Laden about their plan," he concluded from the muffled tape, which was accompanied by an official U.S. translation which some Arabs described as inaccurate. U.S. forces are bombing an area in Afghanistan where bin Laden and followers are believed holed up. "If the tape says anything it says the Americans are still looking for evidence, but evidence should come before and not after," a Gulf academic said. "The whole thing seems far-fetched." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
