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ビンラディンのテープは米国政府高官が期待するほどの効果は得られないだろう。と鋭く切り捨てる。
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Never Incontrovertible
U.S. Officials Put Hopes on Bin Laden Tape, But Are They Warranted?
By Andrew Chang and Deb Amos
Dec. 13 — The videotape of Osama bin Laden found in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, could be as much of a source of debate as it could be of proof.
U.S. officials have called the videotape the "smoking gun" that proves bin Laden's direct responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed more than 3,000 people.
"For those who see this tape, they'll realize not only is he guilty of incredible murder, he has no conscience and no soul," President Bush said on Monday.
The video reportedly shows the alleged terrorist mastermind at a dinner meeting with his top associates on Nov. 9, describing how he acted upon learning of the attacks nearly two months earlier.
Bin Laden allegedly recounts how, when broadcasters reported the attacks on the World Trade Center, he was surprised that the assaults caused both towers to collapse. He also is said to express amusement that some of the hijackers did not know they were going to die.
U.S. officials hope the tape will justify America's pursuit of bin Laden, and convince his supporters of the righteousness of the case against him.
But some say these expectations may be overblown. The existence of the tape, the consequences of his comments and the circumstances of its production may amount to nothing, they say.
A Patchwork of Questions
People in heavily Muslim areas of the world like Sudan and Egypt, where supporters of bin Laden are likely to be found, have already expressed doubt about the tape.
Their suspicions are not likely to be assuaged by the quality of the video, which is said to be amateurish. The tape starts and stops, and bin Laden's voice is hard to hear.
The emergence of such a video two months into an attack on Afghanistan, and the subsequent delay in releasing it after its discovery, could also give reason for skepticism.
"It didn't surface through normal channels," said Thomas J. Badey, a terrorism expert at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.
Even if the tape is authentic, there will be other questions, such as, why was it made at all?
The Media Machine
Bin Laden's al Qaeda network has long been known to have a "media wing" — but most experts said it was unlikely that the current tape was made as propaganda.
Previous releases to the media have been much more polished and have been efficiently dispatched, they said. "If he wanted to state his responsibility for it formally he would have done so with a big bang," said Badey.
However, al Qaeda's media wing is also known to have assembled productions for internal use, and experts said it might have been made to buoy its own supporters, or as part of a historical record of bin Laden's efforts to create an Islamic world.
The tape might be used "to claim an incredible success at the very moment that morale may be falling," said Roxanne Euben, a political science professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Or, she said, "it could be devotees of Osama bin Laden preserving an important moment for posterity, knowing that he could be a martyr."
The day of a major attack on the world's only superpower would certainly be a red-letter day, and videotaping reaction would be a particularly special way of marking it.
Tapes have been turning up in former al Qaeda bases across Afghanistan, documenting executions, terrorist training exercises, and the destruction of the ancient Buddahs in the Afghan city of Bamiyan.
Some suggested said the tape might have been made for mundane reasons as well, as a matter of course and possibly to serve as a model for future actions.
Other al Qaeda tapes discovered by conquering opposition forces have also shown everyday activities like building new hospitals and handing out aid from Islamic aid agencies.
No Accident
One explanation for the tape that most experts ruled out, though, is that bin Laden was unaware that he was being taped.
Bin Laden would have been particularly attentive to video cameras, says Badey — especially after the assassination of famed Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood.
Two suicide bombers killed Massood days before the Sept. 11 attacks by pretending to be journalists to get close to him and setting off a bomb hidden in a video camera.
"There's no way of filming him accidentally," Badey said.
It's also very likely that bin Laden doesn't care if the West obtains evidence against him, others said.
The United States is already pursuing bin Laden, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has expressed his preference for apprehending the exiled Saudi dissident — dead.
Whether or not he killed innocents still does not diminish bin Laden's political appeal, said Lou Cantori, a lecturer for the State Department and professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Bin Laden's sympathy for the Palestinians, his concern about sanctions on Iraq that are blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of children, and criticism of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia — those causes generate support for him in the Muslim world, regardless of the videotape, Cantori said.
"That's the kind of thinking that gets to the people and the T-shirts they're wearing," he said.
And then there's the issue of whether or not the tape has been translated with an appropriate cultural and linguistic sensitivity.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday that four translators were working on interpreting the videotape — but many experts were not optimistic about changing the opinion of bin Laden's supporters.
"From the perspective of those in the Arab 'street' who have never been convinced of Osama bin Laden's complicity, this is not going to convince them in the least," Euben predicted.
ABCNEWS' Hoda Abdel-Hamid in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.
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A Gruesome Mix of the Modern and Medieval
Dec. 13 — For a regime that has intentions of bringing the world to the seventh-century ideal of an Islamic state, al Qaeda had a surprisingly modern media operation.
As part of its media wing, it had a unit that collected articles from the Internet, in Arabic, of events linked to al Qaeda.
Folders of articles discovered in Kabul, Afghanistan, were titled "Variety of Achievements," and are accounts of attacks on the USS Cole, the U.S. battleship attacked in Yemen last year.
Some of the scenes the group recorded on video might as well have been taken from the medieval times al Qaeda so exalts.
The most graphic video viewed by ABCNEWS is a series of executions.
One of the killings is particularly grisly as it is carried out in front of thousands of people in Kandahar's famous stadium, which was a favorite killing ground for the Taliban.
The tape begins with a man wrapped mummy-style being carried into an open space. The man's feet and hands are bound and he is further restrained in what looks like a blanket or sheet.
A small woman, completely covered in a blue burqa, approaches the restrained man. She bends over him and with a sawing motion, uses a knife to cut off the man's head. It takes some effort, and the execution takes some time.
When it is over, the crowd disperses.
— ABCNEWS.com
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●どうやらビンラディン本人がビデオに撮られていることに気付いていないような映像だ、との指摘もあり。画像があまりに不安定で兵士達に配給された「プロパガンダもの」と解釈するには無理がある。他いろいろ。結局、こんなものでは彼を信奉する人々には何らの衝撃も与えることなど出来ないのではないのか？ と極めて冷めている。
●ま、当然の反応でしょう。「これが決定打！」などと吼えるやつの脳味噌はスポンジですな。
●そろそろ公開されるはずですが....どれどれ？ 早く早く
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。