Correct transcript provided by the U.S. Government:

The following is a translated full transcript, provided by the U.S.
government, of Osama bin Laden's videotaped message aired on the al-
Jazeera satellite television network.

The prohibited month, for the prohibited month, and so for all things
prohibited, there is the law of equality. If then any one
transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye likewise
against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who
restrain themselves.

Praise be to Allah who created the Creation for His worship and
commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate
the oppressor in kind.

To proceed, peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.

People of America this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal
way to prevent another Manhattan and deals with the war and its
causes and results. Before I begin, I say to you that security is an
indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit
their security contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so,
then let him explain to us why we didn't strike -- for example --
Sweden. And we know that freedom haters don't possess defiant spirits
like those of the 19. May Allah have mercy upon them.

No we fight you because we are free men who don't sleep under
oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Nation and just as you
lay waste to our Nation, so shall we lay waste to yours. No one
except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes
himself believe he will be secure whereas thinking people when
disaster strikes make it their priority to look for its causes in
order to prevent it happening again. But I am amazed at you even
though we are in the 4th year after the events of Sept 11th. Bush is
still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real
causes. And thus the reasons are still there for a repeat of what
occurred. So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events
and I shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the
decision was taken for you to consider. I say to you Allah knows that
it had never occurred to us to strike the towers, but after it became
unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the
American Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and
Lebanon it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when
America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American
Sixth Fleet helped them in that. The bombardment began and many were
killed and injured and others were terrorized and displaced I
couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood, and severed limbs, women
and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their
occupants and high-rises demolished over their residents rockets
raining down on our homes without mercy the situations was like a
crocodile meeting a helpless child powerless except for his screams.
Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a
weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but didn't respond. In
those difficult moments, many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my
soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of
tyranny and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.
And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my
mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should
destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we
tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and
children. And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and
the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a
deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy
while resistance is terrorism and intolerance. This means the
oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr. did in
Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever
known and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and
explosives at millions of children -- also in Iraq -- as Bush Jr. did
in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to
assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages. So with
these images and their like as their background, the events of
September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs.

Should a man to be blamed for defending his sanctuary? Is defending
oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind objectionable terrorism?
If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us. This is the message
which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed repeatedly for
years before September 11th. And you can read this, if you wish in my
interview with Scott in Time Magazine in 1996 or with Peter Arnett on
CNN in 1997 or my meeting with John Weiner in 1998. You can observe
it practically, if you wish in Kenya and Tanzania and in Aden. And
you can read it in my interview with Abdul Bari Atwan as well as my
interviews with Robert Fisk. The latter is one of your compatriots
and co-religionists and I consider him to be neutral. So are the
pretenders to freedom at the White House and the channels controlled
by them able to run an interview with him so that he may relay to the
American people what he has understood from us to be the reasons for
our fight against you? If you were to avoid these reasons, you will
have taken the correct path that will lead America to the security
that it was in before September 11th.

This concerned the causes of the war. As for its results, they have
been by the Grace of Allah, positive and enormous and have by all
standards exceeded all expectations. This is due to many factors,
chief amongst them that we haven't' found it difficult to deal with
the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the
regimes in our countries half of which are ruled by the military and
the other half of which are ruled by the songs of kings and
presidents. Our experience with them in lengthy and both types are
replete with those who are characterized by pride, arrogance, greed,
and misappropriation of wealth. This resemblance began after the
visits of Bush Sr. to the region at a time when some of our
compatriots were dazzled by America and hoping that these visits
would have an effect on our countries all of a sudden he was affected
by those monarchies and military regimes and became envious of their
remaining decades in their positions to embezzle the public wealth of
the Nation without supervision or accounting. So he took dictatorship
and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot
Act under the pretense of fighting terrorism. In addition, Bush
sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors and didn't
forget to import expertise in election fraud from the region's
presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty. All
that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait
this administration. All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin
to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is
written al-Qa'ida in order to make the generals race there to cause
America to suffer human economic and political losses without their
achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their
private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in
using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical
superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years
until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All
Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of
bankruptcy. Allah is willing and nothing is too great for Allah. That
being said, those who say that al-Qa'ida has won against the
administration in the White House or that the administration has lost
in this war have not been precise because when one scrutinizes the
results, one cannot say that Al-Qa'ida is the sole factor in
achieving these spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White
House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their
various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms
or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al-Qa'ida to achieve those
enormous results. And so it has appeared to some analysts and
diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards
the economic goals of the United States even if the intentions
differ. And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the
British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the
Royal Institute of International Affairs (when they pointed out that)
for example, al-Qa'ida spent $500,000 on the event, while America in
the incident and its aftermath lost -- according to the lowest
estimates -- more than 500 billion dollars, meaning that every dollar
of al-Qa'ida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah
besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the
economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers
estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more
dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently
forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in
Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-
until-bankruptcy plan with Allah's permission. It is true that this
shows that al-Qa'ida has gained, but on the other hand it shows that
the Bush administration has also gained something of which anyone who
looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush
administration-linked mega-corporations, like Haliburton and its kind
will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is... you.
It's the American people and their economy. And for the record, we
had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Atta. Allah have mercy
on him that all the operations should be carried out within 20
minutes before Bush and his administration notice. It never occurred
to us that the Command-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces would
abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great
horrors alone at the time when they most needed him. But because it
seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl
about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying
himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers we were
given three times the period required to execute the operations. All
praise is due to Allah. And it's no secret to you that the thinkers
and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the
war and told him.

All that you want for securing America and removing the weapons of
mass destruction -- assuming they exist -- is available to you and
the nations of the world are with you in the inspections and it is in
the interest of America that it not be thrust into an unjustified war
with an unknown outcome. But the darkness of the black gold blurred
his vision and insight and he gave priority to private interests over
the public interest of America. So 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. He fits the saying "Like
the naughty she-goat who used her hoof to dig up a knife from under
the earth". So I say to you over 15,000 of our people have been
killed and tens of thousands injured while more than a thousand of
you have been killed and more than 10,000 injured. And Bush's hands
are stained with the blood of all of those killed from both sides all
for the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business.
Be aware that it is the nation who punishes the weak man when he
causes the killing of one of its citizens for money, while letting
the powerful one get off when he causes the killing of more than 1000
of its sons also for money. And the same goes for your allies in
Palestine. They terrorize the women and children and kill and capture
the men as they lie sleeping with their families on the mattresses
that you may recall that for every action, there is a reaction.

Finally, it behooves you to reflect on the last wills and testaments
of the thousands who left you on the 11th as they gestured in
despair. They are important testaments which should be studied and
researched. Among the most important of what I read in them was some
prose in their gestures before the collapse where they say "How
mistaken we were to have allowed the White House to implement its
aggressive foreign policies against the weak without supervision". It
is as if they were telling you, "The people of America hold to
account those who have caused us to be killed and happy is he who
learns from others mistakes". And among that which I read in their
gestures is a verse of poetry.

Injustice chases its people
And how unhealthy the bed of tyranny
As has been said
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure
And know that
It is better to return to the truth than persist in error
And that the wise man doesn't squander his security, wealth, and
children for the sake of the liar in the White House.

In conclusion, I tell you in all truth that your security is not in
the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qa'ida. No, your security is in
your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security,
has automatically guaranteed its own security. And Allah is our
Guardian and Helper while you have no Guardian or Helper.


--- In iwar@yahoogroups.com, "Rob Rosenberger" <junkmail@b...> wrote:
> The second-to-last paragraph was incorrectly transcribed. It
should read,
> "Your computer security is in your own hands. And every state that
doesn't
> play with our computer security has automatically guaranteed its own
> computer security." Al Qaeda is deep into cyber-terrorism, you
know...
>
> Rob

Wouldn't want to persist in error!