Osama bin Laden Expresses Hatred for United States
In videotaped remarks broadcast on Sunday, he swore that the United States would not live in peace until Palestinians did, and praised the September 11 attacks that killed about 6,000 people.
"America has been filled with horror from north to south and east to west, and thanks be to God what America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted," he said.
"Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more 80 years," he said, describing U.S. President George W. Bush as the "head of the infidels".
"God has blessed a group of vanguard Muslims to destroy America...and may God bless them and allot them a place in heaven," he said. "I swear to god that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine."
--- Fighting Soviet Occupation ---
Bin Laden made his name fighting with Arab volunteers against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s in a war partly funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
A Muslim militant and a multi-millionaire, he turned against his erstwhile sponsors during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Denouncing the United States as the enemy of Islam, he condemned the presence in his native Saudi Arabia of American troops sent to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and called for jihad, or holy war, against America.
"The call to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the Crusade against the Islamic nation,sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mmosques (Mmecca and Medina)," he said in remarks to supporters filmed by u.s. network ABC in 1998. "the truth is that the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America at the united nations," he added. Arab journalists who have interviewed him and his aides say his men often talked of plans to hit U.S. targets.
Bin Laden, 44, has been sheltered by the Talisman since Sudan expelled him in 1996. Saudi Arabia stripped him of citizenship two years earlier for his activities against the royal family.
Video footage sold in the bazaars of Pakistan shows a tall, gaunt and curiously gentle-looking man with a grey streaked beard, Arab head-dress and flowing robes, smiling as he fires an AK-47, weapon of choice of guerrillas around the world.
The United States, which has put a $5 million bounty on his head, has linked Bin Laden to a string of attacks -- including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen.
--- Global Tentacles ---
Today, intelligence officials say, his Al Qaeda network -- Arabic for "the base" -- stretches across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia to Europe and North America.
After the suicide-hijack attacks on New York and Washington, Bush said the United States wanted him "dead or alive" and told the Talisman they would be held to account for giving him refuge.