Bin Laden Warns of Attacks but Offers Truce!

Al-Jazeera on Thursday aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, who says al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce "with fair conditions." The audio tape broadcast lasts a full 10 minutes and it began: "This message is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end those wars."

The tape's release came days after a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan that was targeting bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and reportedly killed four leading al-Qaida figures, including possibly al-Zawahri's son-in-law. There was no mention of the attack on the segments that were broadcast.

Certainly the fact that we struck and hit al Qaida operatives means that those in the area who thought they were safe, now have to be looking over their shoulder some more, adding more stress to their daily lives.

And the more they have to worry about security, the less time there is to plan murder, as Ben Laden’s tape indicates.

Almost immediately after the strike, the Arab Media channel al Arabiya declared that Zawahiri was still alive according to their "sources". If this turns out to be true, one has to wonder who their "sources" are? They would seem to be pretty good if they could get word from remote regions of Pakistan that fast.

In fact, one would have to wonder if they are directly plugged in to the terrorist network.

BTW: One of my inside sources informed me that the US intel is pretty good on this one, perhaps only surpassed by al Arabiya.

FYI: My interest in this is pastoral. I pray over each fallen soldier and their families as their names are made public. And I’m wrestling with the condition of war on our planet. My eldest son recently loaned me his copy of “The Kingdom of God is within you” by Leo Tolstoy, to help in the conceptual process of coming to terms with the broader issues.

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures (James 4.1-3).