November 2003 Bin Laden tape urges stopping oil to U.S.
"Go on and try to prevent
them from getting oil," "Concentrate your operations on that, especially in
Iraq"
Osama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic
guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s.He claims he can do it to the United States.
The Al Qaida leader's latest tape calls on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West
and praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil
producer.
In an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site, a man who U.S. officials believe was bin
Laden accused Westerners of subjugating the Middle East to plunder its oil. "Go
on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said. "Concentrate
your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf."
It was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape in effect called for
attacks on the oil industry. But he has flaunted the economic theme before, recalling in
his most recent video how Afghan mujahedeen "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went
bankrupt" and taunting the U.S. government over the size of its budget deficit --
which peaked at $413 billion last year.
Security and terrorism experts suggest bin Laden's claims to be undermining the United
States economically are largely propaganda, noting the flexible, market-driven U.S.
economy is a far cry from the creaky, bureaucratic Soviet giant that disintegrated in
1991.
Still, the economic argument gives bin Laden a tool he can use to rally his supporters and
inflate his aura of success by claiming damage caused by other factors as his own
handiwork.
Spurred by the new audiotape, Muslim radicals using chat rooms on Islamic Web sites
debated what weapons could be used to attack an oil tanker in the strait of Hormuz in the
Gulf.
Bin Laden "sees us as poised on this precipice, and he's going to push us into the
abyss," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corporation.
As Bin Laden put it in his video aimed at Americans just days before the Nov. 2
presidential election: "The real loser is you. It is the American people and their
economy."
The al-Qaida leader cites the experience of Afghan mujahedeen fighters "in using
guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers" to drive
the Soviets out.
Bin Laden was among U.S.-supported Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, backed with money and
weapons in hopes of weakening Russia, the United States' opponent in the Cold War.
The Soviet comparison is aimed as much at bin Laden supporters as at Americans, says Rand
analyst Hoffman. "That's how he motivates and animates people and addresses morale --
telling them, 'No one thought we could achieve that feat, and by the same token no one
thinks we can achieve this feat of defeating the United States, but we will,'"
Hoffman said.
Retired Gen. William Odom, a scholar at the Hudson Institute and an expert in the Soviet
collapse, said bin Laden's analogy is off base since the Soviet Union collapsed for
reasons other than Afghanistan, including the weakness of its state-run economy.
Bin Laden has "an excellent understanding" of economic targeting, said Magnus
Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St.
Andrew's University in Great Britain. But he would need a bigger strike to hurt the United
States -- one aimed at a critical part of the economy, such as shipping or financial
exchanges, Ranstorp said.
"Unless they strike at the stock exchange, unless they strike at the exact critical
nodes in our infrastructure, I think the economy can certainly absorb that," Ranstorp
said.
This summer, federal authorities raised the terror alert for financial institutions after
uncovering an alleged al-Qaida plot to attack the Citicorp building and the New York Stock
Exchange in New York; the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in
Washington; and the Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, N.J. The alert has
since been lifted.
Intelligence indicated al-Qaida had conducted surveillance of the buildings, U.S.
authorities said. Although the information dated back several years, counterterrorism
officials noted that al-Qaida has a record of extensive planning and plotting |
