Al-Qaeda Video Tape Evidence Indicts "Azzam The American" But Not Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda video tape evidence indicts “Azzam the American” but not bin Laden

http://www.teamliberty.net/id308.html

10/15/2006

October 13, 2006 – According to Associated Press writer Jeremiah Marquez in his October 11, 2006 article, U.S. Indicts American in al-Qaeda Video, ‘the charge of treason was used for the first time in the United States’ war on terrorism Wednesday, filed against a California man who appeared in propaganda videos for al-Qaeda.’

An Internet search of this article title reveals that virtually every media outlet in the United States picked up this story by either reprinting the Associated Press article or creating another version of the same content.

Indicted is a 28-year-old California native named Adam Gadahn. The indictment of treason was handed up by a federal grand jury in Santa Ana, California. In the indictment it is alleged that Gadahn, by his appearing in videos promoting al-Qaeda, “gave al Qaeda aid and comfort…with intent to betray the United States”.

The indictment goes on to say that Gadahn, who has now become known as Azzam al-Amriki, ‘announced in a 2004 video that he joined al-Qaeda’. The FBI says that it has considered Gadahn an al-Qaeda operative since 2004.

It is important to note the “evidence” used by the U.S. Government to gain this indictment. It was the al-Qaeda videotapes in which Gadahn allegedly appears.

Washington Post staff writers Dan Eggen and Karen DeYoung wrote their version of the treason story in an article titled U.S. Supporter of Al-Qaeda Is Indicted on Treason Charge. This is the same Dan Eggen that whistled the FBI’s tune as to why the Osama bin Laden Most Wanted poster makes no reference to the events of September 11, 2001, even though the bin Laden poster was updated in Novemeber 2001; two months after 9/11 and after the Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan to “smoke him out of his cave”. So it isn’t surprising that Eggen lacked the investigative curiosity and basic wherewithal to ask Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, who Eggen quotes in his October 12th article about Gadahn, how it is that the videotapes of Azzam al-Amriki or “Azzam the American” were sufficient evidence to gain an indictment by a federal grand jury on the charge of treason, yet the “confession video” that the U.S. government touted as unequivocal evidence of Osama bin Laden’s role in 9/11 has yet to produce an indictment of Osama bin Laden in connection with the 9/11 attacks.

In case you’re not aware of this fact yet, Osama bin Laden has not been indicted for his alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

On June 6, 2006 the Muckraker Report reported that a FBI spokesman said that the reason 9/11 isn’t mentioned on the Osama bin Laden Most Wanted poster is because the FBI has “no hard evidence” connecting Osama bin Laden to 9/11. However, when the same FBI spokesman went on the record with Eggen in late August 2006, he told the Washington Post that there was a “logic to it”. What’s even more disturbing is that an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, Dan Eggen, was satisfied with this response.

In regard to “Azzam the American”, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty is quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “the latest video finally proved enough evidence for him to be indicted” [emphasis added]. How then is it possible that the video tape of Osama bin Laden, the confession video released on December 13, 2001 and played around the world, the tape that the Bush Administration insisted was the final piece of evidence and conclusive validation of its invasion of Afghanistan; how is it that that video remains insufficient evidence to even achieve an honorable mention on the FBI’s Osama bin Laden Most Wanted poster? Not to mention its inability to gain an indictment of the man that the Bush Administration has used to justify virtually all of its activities since 9/11.

Can the government have it both ways? Is it really possible that the people responsible for the corporate media message do not find the trail and tale of all the alleged al-Qeada videotapes peculiar enough to mount an aggressive, thorough, and fearless investigation? So many of them just don’t seem even remotely authentic.

Should the people blindly trust these oddly discovered and suspiciously timed video releases as factual simply because the federal government is releasing them? Should we trust our government, without question, because the Bush Administration says so? Does anybody dare prove and publish why the Osama bin Laden “confession video” isn’t sufficient evidence to gain an indictment of bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, while a few videos of “Azzam the American” proved to be evidence enough to indict an American of treason?

The media, the free press, is meant to be part of the governmental accountability equation. In regard to what the Bush Administration has said about Osama bin Laden since 9/11, the corporate media has failed terribly to establish accountability. Unfortunately, the corporate media today is to the free press what the neo con movement is to the Republican Party – malignant. It just doesn’t question anything the Bush Administration has said about Osama bin Laden. It should start now.