2004 Osama bin Laden video

[2] Bin Laden appears wearing a turban and a white robe partially covered by a golden mantle, standing in front of an almost featureless brown background and reading his comments from papers resting on a lectern.

He moves both of his arms (dispelling rumors that one of them is limp after having been wounded) and looks healthy as far as can be told, but a bit older and greyer than in his former tapes.

His remarks, in Arabic but addressed to citizens of the United States, instruct them that "the best way to avoid another Manhattan" (a reference to the September 11, 2001 attacks), is to not threaten the security of Muslim nations, such as Palestine and Lebanon.

All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there and cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.He dismisses as rhetoric claims by U.S. President George W. Bush that the attacks occurred because Islamic extremists "hate freedom", saying: "If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example.