"War on Terror" is to remain
monolithic Special
Monday, October 20, 2003 BBC edits latest
Osama text: omits inconvient facts - conceals that
he also attacks Iraq's Baath Party  Eric
Mueller comments:
NOW here's something a little
more interesting. On Saturday, October 18, 2003,
two audio tapes of Osama bin Laden were
broadcast by al-Jazeera. One was an address directed to the Iraqi people,
the other an address to the American people.
Several hours later, the BBC
published translations of what it called "full
texts" of the tapes. On the al-Jazeera website there was a link to
the audio recording of the message to America, but
not of his message to the Iraqi people. The moderate Islamic website Islamonline later
put up a
link to an audio recording of excerpts (only)
of that message by Bin Laden in Arabic to Iraqis.
Today some Arabic websites have published a
complete Arabic transcript of Bin Laden's message
to the Iraqi people. [Arabic
text]. WHAT is interesting is that the BBC "full text"
of Bin Laden's message to the Iraqi people is
actually a translation of only the first
page of a two-and-a-half-page Arabic
message. The BBC text concludes with "God is the sole
source of our strength." But the Arabic text goes
on for another page and a half. Perhaps
significantly, the first thing Bin Laden says after
the BBC's "full text" cuts off is: "I address this appeal
to the Muslims in general and the Iraqi people
in particular, and I say to them: Beware of
supporting the American Crusader troops and
those who band together with them. Whoever
cooperates with them and with what comes out of
them, regardless of their names or labels, is an
apostate and infidel. And the same goes for
those who support the infidel political parties,
like the Arab Socialist Baath Party, the Kurdish
Democratic Parties, and the their likes." One wonders if the BBC didn't want to inform
readers that Bin Laden was launching a verbal
assault on Saddam Hussein's Baath Party,
which is currently the leading force in the
resistance to the US occupation of Iraq. The US and Britain are trying to convince the
world that they are confronting a monolithic
"global terror network." Yet here is Bin Laden
putting the Baath party in the same category as the
American-appointed governing council in Baghdad and
the Kurdish parties that are working hand-in-glove
with the US occupation. If this passage was too politically ackward for
the BBC to include in its translation, they could
at least have billed their version as an "excerpt"
from Bin Laden's message. A "full text" it most
certainly is not. Arabist Eric Mueller is this website's expert
on Middle Eastern affairs. He was a featured
speaker at the Real
History weekend at Cincinnati, Labor Day,
2003. 
Newsweek: The
Feds listen in on terrorists every day. Too
often they can't understand a word they
hear
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