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December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
December 10, 2001
Robert
Dunham
Race
and the Death Penalty:
Partners in Injustice
Andy Kershaw
Chamber of
Horrors
Near the Garden of Eden
John Touchie
Isaac's
on Chomsky
December 9, 2001
Jo Dillon
Journalist:
The CIA Wanted
Me Killed
John Chuckman
High-Tech
Puritanism
December 8, 2001
Laurence Tribe
Military Tribunals
Undermine the Constitution
Patrick
Cockburn
The
End of a Strange War
December 7, 2001
John Troyer
Blacklist Me!
Sen. Edwards
v. Ashcroft
Military
Tribunals
George Naggiar
Occupation
as Terrorism
Hugo von
Sponek
and Denis Halliday
Iraq
the Hostage Nation
David Vest
The Coen
Brothers'
Minstrel Show
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon
or Arafat:
Who's the Terrorist?
December 6, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Hampshire
College the First
to Condemn the War
Robert
Jensen
University
Teaching After
September 11
Jack McCarthy
Does
Tom Friedman Read
the New York Times?
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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December 14,
2001
The
Camera That Couldn't Shoot Straight
Osama Gump?
By Yusuf Agha
After days of anticipation, television viewers
the world over witnessed the grand premiere of the mystery tape
in which, according to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw,
"bin Laden confirms his guilt" and consequently "totally
vindicates the action that we, the U.S. and the international
coalition have taken in Afghanistan."
The tape, the proverbial smoking gun,
was found late November in a house in Jalalabad under circumstances
enshrouded in mystery. The Pentagon which, apparently, spent
two weeks agonizing over its release, proffered the tape to the
networks with a translation of the material.
The Pentagon gives us the setting for
the tape. "In mid-November, Osama bin Laden spoke to a room
of supporters, possibly in Kandahar, Afghanistan."
A paraplegic Sheikh visits bin Laden.
"We came from Kabul", he tells his host. "We asked
the driver to take us, it was a night with a full moon."
Later, he places the conversation in context to "this holy
month of Ramadan". The full moon of Ramadan occurred around
the 30th of November, not mid-November - exactly around the time
the tape was allegedly found.
The transportation service in war-ravaged
Afghanistan must be extraordinary. First, the tape moves from
Kandahar to Jalalabad at a speed that would make Fedex envious!
Then, our paralyzed tourist, who regrets
he could not move between mosques in Mecca to gauge reactions
because "My movements were truly limited," conveniently
transports himself from Kabul to Kandahar at a most inconsiderate
time for travelers. The Northern Alliance surrounds Kabul looking
for 'Arab Taliban', and as the on November 30th edition of Dawn
(Pakistan) reports: "Near the southern city of Kandahar,
more marines and equipment have been ferried in to bring their
strength to slightly more than 1,000, (Pentagon's) Clarke said
in a Thursday briefing."
But the marvels of Afghan communication
do not cease there. Ten thousand bombs have had little effect
on the luxuries in the valley, for as Sulayman (Abu Guaith) tells
us: "I was sitting with the Shaykh in a room, then I left
to go to another room where there was a TV set. The TV broadcasted
the big event." Osama tunes in to the radio, Sulayman is
on the TV. Maybe Ali was on the internet? Ah! Thank goodness
for AT&T Broadband!
Mazar-i-Sharif has fallen, Kabul has
been captured, and the world reacts with horror at the great
massacre at Qala-i-Jhangi. But while both CNN and Fox blurt out
24 hours on news of the war, Osama appears calm and unruffled
- and the historic conversation does not drift to the war at
all!
And then comes the glaring confession
- the Christmas wrapped pronouncement that will allow Mr. Ashcroft
to nail bin Laden to the military tribunal door.
Osama narrates from the prosecutor's
dream script: "We calculated in advance the number of casualties
We calculated that the floors that would be hit ... I was the
most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) Due to my experience
in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the
plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse
the area where the plane hit ..."
Lead the prisoner out, General, the firing
squad is ready!
The damnation continues: "We were
at (...inaudible...) when the event took place. We had notification
since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that
day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on.
It was 5:30 p.m. our time."
"Our time!" An editorial comment
so as not to confuse the average American reader, who will be
confused that the attack commenced at 8:30 AM EST.
Ask yourself this: Have you ever created
a home video where the effects were this bad? Here is OBL with
his billions of dollar funds, and all he gets for Christmas is
this Video Camera that can't shoot straight!
"The tape was of such poor quality
and Bin Laden's words so difficult to discern that viewers took
away from it what they wanted," writes Michael Slackman
for the LA Times. He continues with a quote from one Rashwan
from the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies
in Cairo. "'It's a real scandal,' he said, laughing. Bin
Laden is a multimillionaire, a man said to posses extraordinary
technological capabilities, a man who released previous videos
that were slick and well produced, he said, so how could this
be his work? "
He continues: "But Rashwan also
saw other problems in the tape: When a visitor from Saudi Arabia
arrives, his voice is clear and there are frequent close-ups.
But Bin Laden's voice is always muffled and the camera never
zooms in on him."
Truly, the sound is atrocious. In many
parts, the transcript reads: "OBL: (...Inaudible...),"
and to add to the poor quality of audio, a persistent cough permeates
the background. Hafiz al-Mazari of Al-Jazeera TV, appearing on
ABC's nightline, talked about problems of voice and video synchronization.
Mr. Mazari also mentioned that he had
interviewed Mr. Ashcroft three days prior to its release, but
the Attorney General admitted he had not seen the tape. Apparently
it did not pose enough interest to America's chief prosecutor!
To add further confusion to the already
murky audio, video and poor translation, the sequence of the
events is reversed on the tape. It begins with the end of the
visit, a helicopter site visit occupies the middle, and the ending
sequence of the tape brings up the beginning of the visit!
And then there is the constant riddle
why the tape was left lying around so carelessly, after all the
pains to film it at a moment of siege, by a man reported to be
so paranoid, and rightly so, that he does not sleep in the same
place twice.
Indeed, those who were convinced of bin
Laden's guilt from the day Mr. Bush declared he was wanted 'Dead
or alive', find their belief strengthened by the mystery tape.
As Judith Miller of the NY times writes, "What now seems
indisputable after the release of the tape is Mr. bin Laden's
responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks."
Those caught in between, are still doubtful.
Charles Shoebridge, reporting in London's Guardian believes "The
video is not quite the smoking gun the Americans claim it to
be."
Can it be entirely coincidental that
the tape was found so shortly after the US government sought
the cooperation of Hollywood to assist it in its War on Terror?
The Australian daily The Age poses the question: "If computer-generated
graphics can fake Forrest Gump shaking President John F Kennedy's
hand and the late John Wayne hawking beer, how can viewers be
sure that a videotape of Osama bin Laden bragging about the September
11 attacks is real?"
If this was indeed a Hollywood production,
one cannot but regret that instead of modeling its magnum opus
on visual effects of The Matrix or The Mummy (quite appropriate
in the Arab context of bin Laden), they chose the Blair Witch
Project instead.
Yusuf Agha
lives in Boston, MA.
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