Entire Osama bin Laden Statement Broadcast

Dec. 27, 2001 -- A gaunt and graying Osama bin Laden spoke to the Arab world in a 30-minute videotape broadcast on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera today, rallying Muslims to his side with anti-Western rhetoric.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that left nearly 3,200 dead should not be viewed as isolated acts, bin Laden said, but were in response to injustices perpetrated against Muslims by the United States and its allies around the world.

"The events of Sept. 11, they are just a reaction to this continued injustice against our children in Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, southern Sudan, Kashmir and elsewhere."

Bin Laden also called on Muslims to continue striking against America, especially against the U.S. economy — even while mentioning his own mortality.

"God willing, America's end is near. And it doesn't depend on my continued existence.," he said. "Whether Osama is killed or not, the awakening has begun."

Before Al Jazeera played the tape in its entirety, excerpts were released on Wednesday and earlier today. On the tape, bin Laden said those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks were "only 19 secondary school students. I ask God that he will accept them and their deeds. They shook the throne of America and struck the American economy in its heart and hit the biggest military power in its heart, by the grace of God."

Bin Laden accused U.S. officials of being criminals because of their military attacks in Afghanistan, and claimed that al Qaeda terrorism is "blessed terrorism" because it avenges oppression of Muslims, according to an ABCNEWS translation.

Today's tape was the third released by America's most wanted man since Oct. 7, when the United States began its military campaign in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and his top aides have been at large, and there has been some speculation that the Saudi terror mastermind is dead.

U.S. Officials Denounce Bin Laden, Tape

As bin Laden's tape was broadcast, rumors continued to swirl regarding his whereabouts. In an interview with Reuters today, a spokesman for Afghanistan's interim Defense Ministry said bin Laden was hiding in neighboring Pakistan.

"Osama himself is under the protection of Maulana Fazalur Rehman in Pakistan, but we don't know for sure in which part," Mohamad Habeel said. Rehman, who is currently under house arrest, is head of the Pakistani Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party and has been a long time supporter of bin Laden. Rehman today dismissed the report as "a big joke."

A day after the initial excerpts were broadcast, U.S. intelligence officials were scouring the tape for clues.

Intelligence sources told ABCNEWS they are looking for signs of bin Laden's health on the tapes, and have noted that he moves only his right arm, in contrast to previous tapes. They have wondered if is it a signal to other terrorists, or paralysis of the left arm — or nothing at all.

They are also looking to the tape for hints about when and where it was filmed.

On the tape, bin Laden says that three months have passed since the Sept. 11 attacks, and refers to 15,000-pound daisy cutter bombs the U.S. military began dropping in Afghanistan in early November, suggesting that bin Laden recorded the message in recent weeks.

In two earlier videotapes released by bin Laden since the start of the war in Afghanistan, the terror suspect appeared before a rock face background. Today's tape shows bin Laden wearing a combat fatigue jacket with a Kalashnikov submachine gun propped beside him, in front of a plain sheet, which presumably makes it more difficult for U.S. officials to determine his whereabouts.

Al Jazeera told The Associated Press that the station received the tape "a couple days ago" by an air courier service from Pakistan. The sender was reportedly anonymous.

After excerpts of bin Laden's new tape were broadcast, U.S. officials immediately denounced the fugitive's remarks as "ludicrous."

"Any statement that the U.S. is against any type of religion is ludicrous, because we're not. On the same night the bombing started, we started dropping food, because we were trying to show that we did not have a problem with the people of Afghanistan, only with the al Qaeda and the Taliban and their ruthless regime," said a U.S. Central Command spokesman.

Bin Laden Cites Muslim Oppression

At the Pentagon today, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld downplayed taped allegations by bin Laden that the U.S. military intentionally targeted a mosque in Afghanistan in mid-November, killing 150 people.

"Here's a man who has killed thousands of innocent people, so using him as the oracle of all truth is — clearlywould be a mistake. He has lied repeatedly over and over again. Hehas hijacked a religion," Rumsfeld said.

U.S. Central Command has said an errant U.S. bomb damaged a mosque inthe town of Khost on Nov. 16.

On the tape, bin Laden repeated some of his familiar themes, including a charge that the U.S.-led war on terrorism was an attack against Islam.

"It has become very clear that the West generally, but America especially, bears an indescribable amount of crusader hatred toward Islam," bin Laden said, according to the translation. "These people who claim to represent humanity and freedom, we saw here their true criminality. All you need to kill a human being is seven grams of shrapnel. … But because America hates the Taliban so much, and because it hates the Muslims, it [dropped] on our brothers on the front lines bombs that weigh seven tons each.

"[U.S. officials say] it is their right to exterminate people as long as they are Muslim, and not American," bin Laden added. "This is true crime, clear and blatant."

Citing oppression of Muslims in various parts of the world, including the plight of the Palestinians, bin Laden concluded: "Our terrorism against America is blessed terrorism."

Bin Laden also blamed President Bush for "killing more than 1 million people in Iraq," and said his son, the current president, has continued similar policies.

"The son George Bush is in power. He started his rule by violent attacks on Iraq, airstrikes," bin Laden said. "He is basically affirming the policy of injustice and aggression and saying that Muslim blood has no value. So we had a blessed response to this policy."

The United States blames bin Laden for the Sept. 11 attacks, and began a military assault on Oct. 7 against Afghanistan's former Taliban government after the Taliban ignored U.S. demands to turn over bin Laden or members of his al Qaeda organization.

In today's tape, bin Laden appears more tired and thin than he did in an earlier tape that the Pentagon says was found in a safe house in Afghanistan and dated Nov. 9. That video showed bin Laden discussing details of the Sept. 11 attacks and indicating he was involved in their planning. U.S. officials released it on Dec. 13 and said the tape proved bin Laden masterminded the hijack attacks on America.

Reaction: Official and Unofficial

Despite the virulent rhetoric from bin Laden, his words seemed to be roundly dismissed.

In the Afghan capital of Kabul today, Habeel denied bin Laden's claim that the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan was an attack on Islam.

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, said he believes bin Laden has lost the propaganda war.

"The Muslim worldwide community has not only not joined his holy war against the United States, but in fact many Muslims have been able to see through his rhetoric and did not buy his faulty goods," he told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America today.

His crippling defeat by the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, Gerges believes, has further eroded his support in the Muslim world. "This size of [his] military defeat has shattered his constructed image as a jihaddi [holy warrior] hero," said Gerges.

"Osama bin Laden is a losing horse and many Arabs and Muslims are not going to jump on the losing horse."

Still, Jim Dunnigan, a military analyst and editor of Strategypage.com, said bin Laden knows as long as people think he is alive, he will have followers and believers in the Muslim world.

"They are inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. They will accept what we consider off-the-wall statements."

Gerges also noted that bin Laden, who has been on the run since Oct. 7, looked well under the circumstances and sounded coherent.

What's more, the timing of the release, according to Gerges, was clearly aimed at showing the world that despite an onslaught from one of the world's greatest powers, the Saudi terrorist mastermind is alive and the al Qaeda network is still functioning.

ABCNEWS' John Cochran contributed to this report.