Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S. (washingtonpost.com)

Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S. (washingtonpost.com): "Osama bin Laden boasted that the invasion of Iraq has bogged down the United States in a hopeless war that advances al Qaeda's recruitment goals and bin Laden's aim of bankrupting the U.S. economy, according to a translation of the full text of the terrorist leader's remarks on a videotape that surfaced last week.
'The thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war' about the dangers of invading Iraq, bin Laden said on the tape, according to a U.S. government transcript released yesterday. 'But the darkness of the black gold [oil] blurred his vision. . . . The war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threatened his future.'


The tape, bin Laden's first videotaped appearance since September 2003, was given to the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, which released a seven-minute version Friday. It showed bin Laden saying, among other things, that Americans would be held responsible for electing any president who persecutes Muslims.
Yesterday the network released the entire 18-minute tape, and U.S. officials issued a translation of bin Laden's entire message."