Why bin Laden's 'confessions' keep flopping

'How could there be any doubt in anyone's mind any longer?" asked Secretary of State Colin Powell about reaction to the first Osama bin Laden "confession" video, released in December.

Now a new tape, or rather what looks like an old tape spliced to look current, appears on Al Jazeera television. On it, there seems to be the final, indisputable confession of guilt. One of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 recites: "It is time to kill the Americans in their own homeland." In another scene, as grandmaster OBL himself strokes his beard in approval, a man declares 9/11 a "great victory."

If this were an episode of "Law & Order," the jury would gasp, the heroic DA would smile grimly, and the defense attorney would sink into his chair. Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden, et al. are, in the language of Monty Python, "incredibly guilty."

But as we read Arab and Muslim newspapers, monitor chat rooms, and discuss the 9/11 war with Middle Eastern colleagues, a dismal picture emerges.

Those who had doubts about bin Laden's guilt and even subscribed to anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories about Sept. 11, continue to concoct explanations about the content of the tape or cast doubt on its authenticity. They claim:

• The tapes are complete or partial fakes. Western technological innovation is dazzling, especially to the poor of the third world. Starship Trooper bombs and cellphones, Harry Potter movies, and DVDs reinforce an impression that images and sounds can be digitized to show anything – which is essentially true.

Accordingly, the tapes are often seen as Pixar-animés of bin Laden and his associates; or, key phrases or images have been morphed or inserted. One Egyptian stated, "Hollywood can [manufacture] anything – why not bin Laden?" Indeed, the second tape looks faked. Is that the countryside or a studio backdrop? And the editing is very choppy.

• The "confession" isn't one, but a mistranslation – and there are mistakes on the tape. Arabic is an extremely difficult language to translate accurately and unambiguously into English because of the radical differences in structure and alliteration.

The "style manual" for the educated speaker of Arabic is the Holy Koran, and bin Laden speaks the purest tones of southern Arabia. (That's why John Walker Lindh went to Yemen to learn the language.) The phrases tend to be metaphorical and metaphysical, and soar into high-minded flights of complexity. Word-for-word translation often misses the point; one missing word changes everything.

Page: 1 | 2