Reasons for War with Iraq

 
Iraqi state-controlled newspaper predicted that bin Laden would attack the United States

On September 12, 2002, Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina), in a speech before the Senate floor, pointed out an editorial that ran in the Iraqi state-controlled newspaper Al-Nasiriya two months prior to the 911 attacks. Senator Hollings read this Al-Nasiriya editorial into the congressional record.

On July 21, 2001 (less than two months prior to 911) this Iraqi state-controlled newspaper predicted that Osama bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House." The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting," and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, "New York, New York."

Congressional record PDF files containing the Al-Nasiriya article: S8525, S8526





From Al-Nasiriya, July 21, 2001

America, an Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin

By Naeem Abd Muhalhal
 

Osama Bin Ladin says that he took from the desert its silence and its anger at the same time.

He has learned how to harm America and has been able to do it, for he gave a bad reputation to the Pentagon as being weakened in more than one spot in the world. In order to follow one step taken by Bin Ladin America has put to work all its apparatus, its computers and its satellites just as the governor cowboy of Texas has done. Bin Ladin's name has been posted on all the internet sites and an amount of $5 million dollars has been awarded to anyone who could give any information that would lead to the arrest of this lanky, lightly bearded man. In this man's heart you'll find an insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with everything that is in it.

We all know that every age has its revolutionary phenomenon. In Mexico there was Zapata. In Bolivia there was Che Guevara, during the seventies came out Marcos and the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader Meinhof Gang in Germany and there was Leila Khaled the Palestinian woman and others. They all appeared in violence and disappeared quietly. During the nineties Bin Ladin came out in the open having been completely overtaken in his mind by the robbery happening to his country and its treasurers. For him it was the beginning of the revolution. For this endeavor he mobilized everything that he had of money, of investments and Sudan was his first stop. Bin Ladin ended up in Afghanistan where his revolutionary drive pushed this stubborn revolutionary to plan very carefully, and in a very detailed manner, his stand to push back the boastful American onslaught and to change the American legend into a bubble of soap.

Because Bin Ladin knows what causes pain to America, he played America's game, just as an oppressed man entertains itself with the thing oppressing him. He countered with the language of dynamite and explosives in the city of Khobar and destroyed two US embassies in Nairobi and Dar al Salaam.

America says, admitting just like a bird in the midst of a tornado, that Bin Ladin is behind the bombing of its destroyer in Aden. The fearful series of events continues for America and the terror within America gets to the point that the Governor of Texas increases the amount of the award, just as the stubbornness of the other man and his challenge increases. This challenge makes it such that one of his grandchildren comes from Jeddah traveling on the official Saudi Arabia airlines and celebrates with him the marriage of one of the daughters of his companions. Bin Ladin has become a puzzle and a proof also, of the inability of the American federalism and the C.I.A. to uncover the man and uncover his nest. The most advanced organizations of the world cannot find the man and continues to go in cycles in illusion and presuppositions. They still hope that he could come out from his nest one day, they hope that he would come out from his hiding hole and one day they will point at him their missiles and he will join Guevara, Hassan Abu Salama, Kamal Nasser, Kanafani and others. The man responds with a thin smile and replies to the correspondent from Al Jazeera that he will continue to be the obsession and worry of America and the Jews, and that even that night he will practice and work on an exercise called ``How Do You Bomb the White House.'' And because they know that he can get there, they have started to go through their nightmares on their beds and the leaders have had to wear their bulletproof vests.

Meanwhile America has started to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them Bin Ladin, while he continues to smile and still thinks seriously, with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House . . .

The phenomenon of Bin Ladin is a healthy phenomenon in the Arab spirit. It is a decision and a determination that the stolen Arab self has come to realize after it got bored with promises of its rulers: After it disgusted itself from their abomination and their corruption, the man had to carry the book of God and the Kalashnikov and write on some off white paper ``If you are unable to drive off the Marines from the Kaaba, I will do so.'' It seems that they will be going away because the revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting. That the man will not be swayed by the plant leaves of Whitman nor by the ``Adventures of Indiana Jones'' and will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs. This new awareness of the image that Bin Ladin has become gives shape to the resting areas and stops for every Arab revolutionary. It is the subject of our admiration here in Iraq because it shares with us in a unified manner our resisting stand, and just as he fixes his gaze on the Al Aqsa we greet him. We hail his tears as they see the planes of the Western world taking revenge against his heroic operations by bombing the cities of Iraq . . .

To Bin Ladin I say that revolution, the wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same thing in the heart of a believer.




 


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