It Is Always An Eerie Experience To

I've Lived In The Middle East For Twenty-five Years. I Know Exactly How These Issues Come Up. Even My Landlord, Who Is A Moderate Lebanese Guy, Says, "but Bin Laden Says What We Think." These People Believe That Osama Bin Laden Is Being Targeted Not Because Of The World Trade Center And Washington; They Are Not Convinced By The Evidence That Has Been Produced. They Believe He's Being Targeted Because He Tells The Truth.

Whether Osama Bin Laden Is Doing It Cynically And Has No Interest In These Matters, Or Whether He's Doing It Out Of Genuine Conviction, His Voice Has A Tremendous Resonance Throughout The Arab World. One Editorial In A Lebanese Paper Said It Is A Matter Of Great Humiliation For The Arabs That The Only Man Who Can Outline, Truthfully, What Our Humiliations Are Is An Arab Who Has To Say It From A Cave In A Foreign Country.

I Was Very Struck By The Fact That Colin Powell Said He Would Produce Evidence Of Osama Bin Laden Fault And Then Never Produced It. Then Tony Blair Produced A Document Of Seventy Paragraphs, But Only The Last Nine Referred To The World Trade Center, And They Were Not Convincing. So We Have A Little Problem Here: If They're Guilty, Where Is The Evidence? And If We Can't Hear The Evidence, Why Are We Going To War?

The Dead Cannot Speak. But Hitherto Unknown Information Has Emerged From The Confidential Archives Of The Syrian Presidency And Foreign Ministry, Published In A New Book By Bouthaina Shaaban, Who Spent Ten Years As Hafez's Interpreter And Is Still An Adviser To His Son Bashar.

Bin Laden Is Not Well Read And He's Not Sophisticated, But He Will Have Worked Out Very Coldly What America Would Do.