Cave Dweller Speaks

George Michael, translator of Diplomatic Language Services; Dr. Kassem M. Wahba, Arabic language program coordinator, School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University (and coordinator/profressional/lecturer in the English programs) translate the Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden (herein known as "Osama") tapes:

Osama: "then he said: those who were trained to fly didn't know the others. One group of people did not know the other group" (someone in the crowd asks Osama to tell the Shaykh about the dream of Abu-Da'ud) "They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building so I said to him, be patient. Not everybody knew, the brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they were there and just before they boarded the planes. Then he said: those who were trained to fly didn't know the others. One group of people did not know the other group. We calculated in advance the number of casualities from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. Due to my experience in the 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 and all the floors above it only. This is all we had hoped for."

A linguist hired by the United States government to translate the tape prepared an Arabic transcipt. But the Pentagon didn't release the Arabic transcriptor a version of the tape with Arabic subtitles. The Bush Administration officials gave no explanation for the decision.

Given the past incidences of the Bush administration, who really knows how authentic these words of Osama are. Often, if not, all the time, I question any of the so called facts of the Bush administration, and this transcript is no exception.

I do know that the Bush administration and/or any past and future administration needs the big bad bogeyman like Osama out there to play off. The Hegelian Dialectic has worked so well for the Bush administration, Bush should change his name to George H. Bush (George Hegel Bush).