Statements from Others

President Bush says, "They hate ...a democratically elected government..They hate our freedoms --Freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."President George W. Bush Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People Bin Laden says, "the White House hiding the Truth ... the reality is that we are striking them because of their evil and injustice in the whole of the Islamic World, especially in Iraq and Palestine and their occupation of the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries (Arabian Peninsula)." Previous CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer has honestly stated that politicans are lying to the American people about the terrorists motive, "The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people. We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there's a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people."

Jason Burke, author of Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, makes the point that, "Bin Laden is an activist with a very clear sense of what he wants and how he hopes to achieve it. Those means may be far outside the normal of political activity as we usually understand it, but his agenda is a basically political one, though it is couched, of course, in religious language and imagery." He says bin Laden's aim is "to end the repression of the Islamic world by the hypocrite governments and the 'Crusader-Zionist' alliance supporting and manipulating them."