] When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every
] state will be determining its own security, and will be
] responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state
] that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as
] president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it
] our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has
] chosen to make peace with us, and we will not
] characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization,
] Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body,
] to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people
] itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and
] those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all
] American people as if they're the same. This letter will
] have great implications inside the American society, part
] of which are connected to the American elections, and
] part of which are connected to what will come after the
] elections."

I had already decided that I was voting for Bush. But now, I get frosting on the cake. By my vote, I can clearly do something that gives the finger to Osama? Well cool, that makes my decision even easier. :)

[ Call me crazy, but I'd rather that motherfucker was dead than to have the oportunitity to "give him the finger" now.

Not to mention, i completely disagree with this analysis. My reading of the transcript was, yes, that Osama dosen't like Bush, but then, a large portion of the world community doesn't like Bush either, and they're not terrorists (or are they!). However, I saw nothing that seemed to indicate specifically that Osama has a predilection for one candidate or the other. MEMRI's own translation says "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al-Qa'ida. Your security is in your own hands, and any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security." In other words, if you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. Now, I don't buy that shit for a second, of course, and I certainly don't think either Bush or Kerry will take an official position of ignoring Osama, but nonetheless, i think it's a pretty clear statement that the likelihood of future attacks is based primarily on our foreign policy, not on which guy happens to be in the oval office.

Bush likes to bluster, and it clearly resonates well with a lot of people. "Yeah, fuck Osama, he can't tell me what to do! Up yours Osama." But that means nothing. This fucker is still running around, making tapes, and directing terrorism, and that's the best we got. On friday, in response to the tape, Bush said "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country." That sounds like tough talk until you realize it's completely retarded. We won't be influenced by our enemies? What have we been doing for the past 3 years then? Business as usual? Not precisely. All Bush had to do is stick to it and kill this asshole and he'd have been Gods own canditate, a shoo in for re-election, even if he had taken on Iraq afterwards, but Iraq was more important somehow, so Osama's still out there saying "Hey America, remember 9/11? That was me, y'all. And I'm gonna do it some more too."

Support for Bush can be achieved through certain avenues of logic, I'm sure, but success in the global war on terror just isn't one of them. -k]

MEMRI: Osama bin Laden Threatens U.S. States Not to Vote for Bush