U.S. Officials Analyzing Usama Bin Laden Video

CAIRO, Egypt — The U.S. government obtained a new video of Usama bin Laden before Al Qaeda could release it to the world to mark the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials on Friday were analyzing the tape, which could contain the first new images of the Al Qaeda leader in three years.

Soon after Washington announced it had the video, all the Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from Al Qaeda went down and were unaccessible, in an unprecedented shutdown.

The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known. Evan H. Kohlmann, a terrorism expert at globalterroralert.com, said he suspected it was the work of Al Qaeda itself, trying to find how the video leaked to U.S. officials.

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Christiane Amanpour: We're not comparing.

This morning cnn.com has a link to a Q & A with Amanpour and she blows it with the first question. Oddly, question #1, from Jack Wilson of Cannes, France is the closest thing to to a non-soft ball question that got published. Here's the question and Amanpour's answer:

Jack Wilson of Cannes, France: How can you even begin to compare Islamic extremists with Christians or Jews? How can you even put them in the same sentence?

Amanpour: We're not comparing. We're showing that each faith has their committed and fervent believers, and we're showing how each of those are active in the political sphere in today's world.

"We're not comparing" Her first three words in the Q & A are a total lie.

The segment on Christians explores BattleCry in some depth, digging at the roots of an organization that fights against some of the cruder elements of popular culture and urges teenagers to be chaste. In noting how girls at some BattleCry events are encouraged to wear long dresses, Amanpour asks the group's leader how it is different from the Taliban.

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The rest of the questions are worthless and no one calls Amanpour out on anything in the series. I can imagine the cnn editors did some serious weeding and took out anything that could expose Amanpour's reporting. Here's a sample of what the editors chose:

Susan Moore of Clayton, Georgia: ... Did you come away eased and heartened, or with the feeling that this is an insolvable, permanent human condition?

Amanpour: I don't believe it's an insolvable, permanent human condition. But I do think that we are in an age of religious politics or political religiosity, and it could last for some time. This is not to say that good politics, good policy and good diplomacy can't soften the edges of some of the extremism we see.

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Videotape supposedly shows suicide bomber 'graduation'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A videotape supposedly showing a suicide bomber "graduation ceremony" at an al Qaeda-Taliban training camp is part of a propaganda campaign from the terrorist network and the former rulers of Afghanistan, a U.S. counterterrorism official said Monday.

The video was said to have been shot June 9 by a Pakistani journalist who was invited to take pictures as the suicide bombers were supposedly sent off on their missions in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany.

The video was obtained and first aired by ABC News. CNN could not immediately verify the tape's authenticity.

One of the suicide bomber team leaders spoke in English on the tape. The video also included images of Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah. His brother, Mullah Dadullah, was a Taliban military commander who was killed last month by U.S. forces.

The U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke with CNN said the tape is "consistent with the more sophisticated propaganda" that these groups have been using, but said it is a "bit of a stretch" to conclude from the tape that people have been sent to carry out attacks.

There is "genuine concern," the official said, whenever threats are made against the West from that part of the world, however, and the training camps present a "real potential source of operatives."

The official said that there have been more such tapes recently, including tapes using multiple languages. The official said the use of multiple languages in the tapes suggests that they are for propaganda purposes.

-from CNN.com-