TERROR chief Osama Bin Laden last night tried to derail George Bush’s election campaign — days before America’s crucial vote.
The al—Qaeda leader claimed in a video that the President was deceiving the US people. He admitted responsibility for the September 11 attacks for the first time — but insisted they would have been less severe had Mr Bush been alert. And Bin Laden threatened a NEW attack — claiming the US administration resembled “corrupt” Arab governments. The footage, the first of fugitive Bin Laden for more than a year, was aired on Arabic Al-Jazeera TV. He said the “best way to avoid another Manhattan” was to avoid provoking Arab anger. And speaking of the 9/11 outrage he said: “We fought you because we are free people who want to regain the freedom of our nation. The way you waste our security, we waste your security. “We decided to destroy towers out of frustration over America’s pro-Israeli Middle East policies.”
He said: “We agreed with the commander-in-chief, Mohammed Atta, may God’s mercy be upon him, to carry out the whole operation within 20 minutes — to do it before Bush and his administration became aware.
“It never occurred to us the commander in chief of the country would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they badly needed him. “It seems that to him, being busy with what the child said about a goat and its butting is more important than being busy with the planes as they butt skyscrapers. “That gave us three times the time we needed to carry out the operation.” Bin Laden was referring to Bush visiting a school during the attack. He then warned: “Despite entering the fourth year after Sept 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you — and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.” Bin Laden said he had first thought of attacking the United States after seeing Israel bomb tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.
