Word: taping
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...Those meant to see it must have been delighted at the tape's atmospherics- the air of relaxed enjoyment, the camaraderie and kissing, the excited praise by the sheik ("A plane crashing into a tall building was out of anyone's imagination. This was a great job"). Bin Laden seemed on top of the world. Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, has interviewed the al-Qaeda leader and noticed a change in the man he had met five years ago. "I was watching his body language," says Atwan...
...what was the tape's purpose? Professional bin Laden watchers- the sort who know how to read a loosely knotted turban- shrug off the conspiracy theorists who maintain that the recording must have had some mysterious ulterior motive. This was the Hindu Kush version of "What I did on my vacation." Magnus Ranstorp, an al-Qaeda expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, speculates that the visiting Saudi wanted to immortalize his meeting with bin Laden and was planning to keep the tape private. Mustafa Alani, a Middle East security scholar at London's Royal United Services Institute...
...analysts of terrorism, the tape held rich pickings. Bin Laden confirmed what has been suspected by law-enforcement officials: that there was a clear hierarchy among the Sept. 11 hijackers and that they operated under a strict need-to-know code. Though all those who died knew they were engaged in a "martyrdom operation," said bin Laden, most of them were ignorant of the precise target of their mission until the morning it took place. Alani says, "The degree of secrecy they established was unbelievable. Only five or six people had a full picture of the whole operation." (They...
...Islamic world, the tape's effect was muted. It may help those- such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan- who would like to argue that the war in Afghanistan is being waged against terrorists, not against Islam. But the tape was released on the eve of Eid ul-Fitr, a major holiday marking the end of Ramadan, when Arabs tend to family festivities rather than the news. Besides, the hot political issue in the past few weeks has been not the war in Afghanistan but the renewed violence between Israel and the Palestinians...
...Some of those who bothered to watch muttered about body doubles and voice manipulation, but most newspapers and TV stations in the Middle East played the story straight, accepting that the tape was authentic. That doesn't mean it will change the minds of those who oppose the war. "I don't believe it will have a huge impact on the Muslim world," says Atwan, the editor of al-Quds. "It's too late. It's like accusing somebody of murder and executing him, and then saying 'Now we found the evidence.'" For Atwan and many other commentators, the point...