Politics is full of examples of people and parties getting unwanted support from pariahs.

I find it easy to believe the tape is genuine, although Powell's advance knowledge of it is certainly suspicious (not conclusively so).

There is no doubt that Bin Laden wants to encourage armed conflict between the U.S. and Muslim nations; he wants to recast it as a holy war, which will enhance his status and provide all kinds of intriguing possibilities for him to recruit new operatives and start new operations all over the world. He and Al-Quaeda obviously had nothing to lose by releasing this tape. The fact that it's awkward for Saddam is no concern of his; he hates Saddam, who gets to be everyone's pawn. Saddam wouldn't align himself with Bin Laden, he is trying to avoid having his country invaded, not to make it a certainty.

But it sure makes sense that Bin Laden would particularly want to enflame the chances of a huge U.S. military invasion of a country where Al-Quaeda isn't based. I mean, duhhhhh?

The Afghani thing was a lot less convenient for him, to put it mildly. I think he's spent the past year rebuilding the A-Q network in a widely-distributed format of cells without a huge concentration in any one country.

W-O