In response to Brad Biggers’ letter, Sandra writes:
- In fact, the Al-Jazeera transcript of the entire (18 minute) speech is incorrect and wrongly omits the word “not” from the following
sentence:
“This is due to many factors, chief amongst them that we have
(not) found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of
the resemblance it bears to regimes in our countries…”
CNN correctly includes the word “not”.
Why is this sentence correctly translated by CNN? A couple of reasons:-
1. All other translations published, including those done by The Guardian,
The Independent, etc., all include the word, “not” in the sentence, thereby
making the Al-Jazeera transcript the odd one out; but more importantly, it is clear from Osama’s speech that he is stating that the Bush administration is easy to deal with, viz:-
a) He states that his war/attack on America has been successful, “As for its
results, they have been, by the grace of Allah, positive and enormous, and
have by all standards exceeded expectations. This is due to many factors,
chief among them, that we have (not) found the Bush administration difficult
to deal with….” One can hardly leave out the word “not” and still see
sense in that sentence as the chief factor for success could hardly have
been the difficulty of the US administration;
b) OBL goes on to state a familiarity with the Middle East regimes, which
resemble the first Bush administration, so again the implication is that
the US administration was familiar to Al-Qaeda and thus was not found
difficult to deal with;
c) Further, OBL states, “All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us
to provoke and bait this administration”.
Seems like he is clearly stating that Al-Qaeda can read the Bush
Administration well and do NOT find it difficult to deal with. Most
probably the Al-Jazeera transcript was simply a misprint at that point.