http://www.unknownnews.org/060214a-Barrett.html

Bin Laden tapes are as phony as Sept. 11's connection to Islam

by Kevin Barrett, The Capital Times [Madison, WI] Feb. 14, 2006

As a Ph.D. Islamologist and Arabist I really hate to say this, but I'll say it anyway: 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape.

The trouble is, it's all based on a Big Lie. Take the recent "bin Laden" tape, please! That voice was no more bin Laden than it was Rodney Dangerfield channeling my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently helped translate a previously unknown bin Laden tape, a real one from the early '90s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy's flowery religious rhetoric. The recent tape wasn't him.

The top American bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies department, has just published a book of translations of bin Laden's speeches. He says that the recent tape is a fake and that it is possible bin Laden is not even alive.

Fake bin Laden tapes, "verified" by the CIA, are nothing new. Every supposed bin Laden statement since 2001 has been blatantly bogus. The last we heard from the real bin Laden came in his post-9/11 statements to Pakistani journalists:

"I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation. ... I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. ... I had no knowledge of these attacks."

Then on Dec. 13, 2001, as George Bush was whining about the "outrageous conspiracy theories" that were spreading like wildfire, the first and shoddiest of the "bin Laden speaks from beyond the grave" tapes appeared. The video's sound and picture quality were horrible.

It showed a big guy with a black beard, doing a passable imitation of bin Laden's voice, claiming foreknowledge, if not responsibility, for the 9/11 attacks, and chortling over their success. The trouble was, the big guy clearly was not bin Laden. He was at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier, and his facial features were obviously different.