The first video showed images of the planes striking the World Trade Center, calling the 19 suicide hijackers as men "who changed history." Another was a 91-minute documentary-style video in which Osama bin Laden is seen smiling and laughing with the planners of the 9/11 attacks in a mountain camp...so much for the `9/11 was a controlled demolition - BushHitler did it' crowd.
The third and longest one put the spotlight on al-Zawahiri, who warned Americans of more attacks to come.
"We have repeatedly warned you and offered a truce with you. Now we have all the legal and rational justification to continue to fight you until your power is destroyed or you give in and surrender," he said. "The days are pregnant and giving birth to new events."
He also called on his followers to attack the U.S. in response to its jailing of a prominent Muslim cleric.
"I call on every Muslim to make use of every opportunity afforded him to take revenge on America for its imprisonment of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman," he said.
Abdel-Rahman, a blind Imam from Egypt, was convicted in U.S. courts of conspiracy for his role in a plot to blow up five New York City landmarks, including the UN building in 1995.
Addressing the United States, al-Zawahri said "you should not waste your time" reinforcing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, "because they are doomed to defeat."
"Instead, you have to reinforce your troops in two regions. First is the Gulf, where you will be thrown out after you are defeated in Iraq, at which point your economic ruin will be achieved," he said. "The second is Israel, because the jihad reinforcements are getting closer to it."
He also denounced the U.N. peacekeeping force now moving into Lebanon under terms set out in a U.N. cease-fire resolution that on Aug. 14 ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. Zawahiri said suggested Muslims should prevent the peacekeepers' deployment, and referred to the peacekeepers as enemies of Islam.
"What is so terrible in this resolution ... is that it approves the existence of the Jewish state and isolates our mujahedeen in Palestine from Muslims in Lebanon," he said. "This is consecrated by the presence of international troops who are hostile to Islam."
"Anyone who accepts this resolution means that he accepts all these catastrophes," he said.
Now, here's an interesting bit: according to a report on the usually reliable MEMRI al Jazeera has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Apparently Tunisian intellectual Dr. Khaled Shawkat, director of the Netherlands-based Center for Promoting Democracy in the Arab World, attacked Al-Jazeera TV because, he says, it has become the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Al-Jazeera has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood organization - either at the wish of the channel's owners as part of a certain political game [played] by the Qatari rulers, or out of the lack of awareness of the Qatari rulers, who think that the situation is under control and that even though they have given the Muslim Brotherhood a chance to control Al-Jazeera, for local, regional, and international considerations, they can get rid of them or restrain them any time they want...
"Anyone with professional qualifications is entitled to work, to gain prominence, to create, and to become famous, regardless of his personal beliefs. Therefore, I have never had any problem with the fact that media personnel known for their Islamic tendencies work for Al-Jazeera or for any other channel. The problem emerges when the criterion of qualifications becomes less important than the criterion of loyalty [to a particular group], and when the [channel's] editorial and media line... become hostage to an agenda that is not a media [agenda], but rather the party [line] or political [line] of a small group...
"Prior to writing this article, I spoke with a number of journalists at Al-Jazeera, [both] known and unknown, some of whom still worked there and some of whom had been forced, or decided, to quit. Most of them agreed that 'loyalty' [to a group] had come to supersede 'qualifications,' and that journalists with no Muslim Brotherhood background had to choose one of two options: [either] adapt to the new work conditions and swear loyalty to the representative of the supreme guide [of the Muslim Brotherhood] at Al-Jazeera, or leave..."
Could explain a lot about Jihad TV's coverage and the increased sophistication of al Qaeda's video productions.
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