NationStates Jolt Archive

"Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military’s unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil."
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/33063.htm

Why after these years of fighting this war, when UBL admits his cause is wounded, does the american press ignore it?

Because they are afraid it might encourage any terrorists potentially in this nation, is not good for ratings, or would make Bush look good.

What surprises me is that Fox News, at least what I saw of it, didn't do much beyond make Bush look bad with it. Then again, I may have missed something.

Most likely because the American press realizes that UBL is attempting to sway the election, and doesn't want to give him that power.

Seriously. Think about this all from Bin Laden's viewpoint. If his cause was wounded, would he want to admit that? Of course not; it would drop off his supply of new recruits. On the other side of things, if Bin Laden wanted to get one or the other candidate in office, what would he do? Reverse psychology--the automatic reaction in America is to oppose anything Bin Laden says is good, and to support anything he says is bad. The idea that he would tell the truth in such a video is simply out of the question, unless he had decided to stop fighting and give himself up for some reason. The man's screwed up in the head in a big way, but he's shrewd enough to have kept alive and free this long. He's not about to make the huge mistake that truthfully reporting the state of his organization would be.

As such, it can be inferred that Bin Laden is enjoying the fresh wave of recruits that current American foreign policy is bringing him (as evidenced by the increase in global terrorist attacks), and wants to ensure that that policy doesn't change for another four years.