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Will the Real
Osama Stand Up?
By: Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
09/09/07 "ICH" -- -- It
took a few minutes to sink in – the new tape of Osama Bin Laden
that was shown and analyzed on MSNBC’s Keith Oberman show on
Friday, September 7, 2007. Perhaps the most striking thing was
his black beard. From all accounts, what sets OBL apart from
others, even his most devout followers, is his devotion to
Islam*. While Islam allows the trimming of the moustache, it
calls for fully growing the beard in full. Henna, a known dye,
is permissible in Islam as not only does it have medicinal
qualities, but it may be used to enhance beauty – in women.
How likely is it that OBL who is a strict adherent of
fundamental Islam, would dye his beard and trim it to appear in
front of a camera in order to meet the expectations of the
‘Western terrorist specialists’?
What was said was even more
suspicious. OBL was said to have been surprised that the
democrats were not able to bring the troops home. The intended
message by ‘OBL’ was that Democrats may have House majority, but
they are as impotent as they have always been and clearly the
Cheney/Bush team are the emperors running the world.
I was even more shocked to hear
him endorse books by two American authors, one of them being
Noam Chomsky’s “American Imperialism”. Here my head started
spinning. It was far graver than Mr. Bush addressing the APEC
audience OPEC. American Imperialism was authored by non other
than Michael Scheuer, a superhawk who was the top CIA agent for
years tracking OBL. Chomsky wrote “Hegemony or Survival;
America’s Quest for Global Dominance” 2004. oops – Is the word
‘intelligence’ an oxymoron in this country or what?
Given the benefit of the doubt,
or lost in translation, I have to wonder how ‘OBL’ being on the
run and being pursued by the world’s greatest military, the only
superpower, and while hiding in a cave with a bounty of $50m on
his head, got the book in the first place? Perhaps if we
followed DHL to some place in Bora Bora, we may catch him dying
his beard while reading Chomsky. My guess is that this was a
smear campaign to connect Chomsky to al-Qaeda. Here is a
brilliant intellectual who speaks to the truth and spills the
beans on American foreign policy, what better way to destroy his
reputation than to have America’s number one enemy, the leader
of al-Qaeda, endorse his work?
And finally, there is the fear
factor. As a judge slams down parts of the Patriot Act as
unconstitutional, it would seem that Mr. Bush has found a way to
remind the American public that they should remain petrified.
Nothing intimidates a nation better than fear, not even
ignorance. Mr. Bush
said the message was "a reminder
of the dangerous world in which we live". CIA director
Michael Hayden, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York on Friday, warned that al-Qaeda was plotting new
attacks on the US. "Our analysts assess with high confidence
that al-Qaeda's central leadership is planning high impact plots
against the American homeland," he said. “[i]
Fear will allow more liberties
to be taken away. Not only will there be justification for the
troops to remain in Iraq, as planned, but there will be
justification for another war – Iran. The options are in the
air – the nuclear armed B-52 bombers, all that is needed is a
panicked populace. There was never a link between al-Qaeda and
Iraq. With persistent lies, this White House committed genocide
in Iraq. With the same lies, they are planning genocide next
door.
* Osama Bin Laden framed his
anti-US arguments in the language of Islam, but what he was, and
continues to voice, is anti-colonist sentiments. The banner of
Islam broke the geographical boundaries to fight and imperial
power that had sprawled all over the Moslem world.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has
lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, and the US. She
obtained her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from
the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is
currently pursuing her education in Middle East studies and
Public Diplomacy. Soraya has done extensive research on US
foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear program. She can
be reached at
sorayau@earthlink.net
NOTES
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