It's Oh So Quiet | Sunday, Oct. 31 The news remains fairly quiet just 36 hours before the election. It seems the PR strategists who run the world (I'm one of those people who believe they exist, but beware, I also ask comets for advice) have planned a normal-seeming election campaign. No Code Red; nothing spectacular; nothing to call attention to the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. That's a good thing, I think, because we don't need any more bad news in the world and also because -- at this point -- the less manipulated this election looks, the better it is for everyone. Let's keep the focus on those ballot machines and the legal process that will very likely follow. There is something to be said for all of us acting and voting in earnest, and experiencing this with a calm state of mind. The most interesting bit of news that's got out has been the video tape of Osama bin Laden, which appeared Friday. I am finding it entertaining how he's being turned into the subject for "three minutes of hate." However, he is worth listening to. It's always good to know what your enemy is thinking. Speaking to the American people, bin Laden said in a translation by CNN: "I wonder about you. Although we are ushering the fourth year after 9/11, Bush is still exercising confusion and misleading you and not telling you the true reason. Therefore, the motivations are still there for what happened to be repeated." This should send chills down the spine of Americans. He is saying that Bush is still creating the same situations in the Middle East that led to the Sept. 11 attacks, and skewing the reasons why they happened -- and thus leaving the United States vulnerable. In response to Bush's claim that the terrorists hate freedom, Osama pointed out that Sweden was not attacked. Osama, a former CIA operative against the USSR, says his enmity against the United States goes back to its support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when towers in Lebanon were destroyed. "As I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same -- and that we had to destroy the towers in America so that they taste what we tasted, and they stop killing our women and children." It gets more interesting. "We found no difficulties in dealing with the Bush administration, because of the similarities of that administration and the regimes in our countries, half of which are run by the military and half of which are run by monarchs. And our experience is vast with them. "And those two kinds are full of arrogance and taking money illegally. "The resemblance started when [former President George H.W.] Bush, the father, visited the area, when some of our own were impressed by America and were hoping that the visits would affect and influence our countries. "Then, what happened was that he was impressed by the monarchies and the military regimes, and he was jealous of them staying in power for tens of years, embezzling the public money without any accountability. And he moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom to his own country, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the disguise of fighting terrorism. And Bush, the father, found it good to install his children as governors and leaders." Whatever we may think of bin Laden as a philosopher, we may want to take into account some of his ideas about military tactics. He comments on the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center -- though notice he does not claim credit for the attack on the Pentagon, which appears to be unrelated to the attacks in New York: "We agreed with the leader of the group, Mohammed Atta, to perform all attacks within 20 minutes before [President George W.] Bush and his administration were aware of what was going on. And we never knew that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his people in the two towers to face those events by themselves when they were in the most urgent need of their leader. "He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events." Then he adds: "Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked." We should keep in mind that the bin Laden family was involved as investors in the Carlyle Group, Papa George's company. Astonishingly, Osama's brother was meeting with the corporate board in Washington as the attacks happened. More than 100 members of the bin Laden family, along with many other Saudis, were allowed to leave the United States in the days following the attacks when no other planes could fly. And the U.S. made no special effort to track Osama down. It is very interesting that more than three years after the attacks, he can get on American television and pre-empt the news with the power of a sitting president -- after $200 billion spent, 1,100 American and 100,000 Iraqi lives lost. I can tell you this: 99% of what we think we know about Sept. 11 is wrong. I encourage all of my readers to read the full transcript of the bin Laden video. Read the primary source documents when you can, and notice how little is actually quoted in most news stories. We will be distributing it to the Political Waves list as well. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/bin.laden.transcript/