Arab reaction to UBL tape: blow to conspiracy theories

BakuTODAY.net:
"Expert on Islamic affairs and columnist for the the al-Ahram newspaper [semi-official, Cairo] Fahmy Howeidi says Osama bin Laden's statement has two main goals.
"'He is hoping for two things,' he said. 'Number One, he wanted to tell the people that he is still there. He is still challenging [President] Bush and all his allies in the area. Number Two he is trying to convince people that, if they do not vote for [Mr.] Bush they will be more safe, more secure.'"

Set this reaction from Egypt against comments in my immediately prior post.

The article quotes another Arab authority saying that UBL explicitly taking credit for 9/11 for the first time on the tape is a severe blow to those who insisted that the attacks had been the work of Israeli and/or US intelligence agencies. Of course, Walter Cronkite's remarks on Larry King provide a way around this problem by putting Bush in charge of the whole thing: UBL, 9/11, Israel, the CIA; sort of a "grand unified conspiracy theory" - that could be Michael Moore's 2005 movie.