From Osama to Obama - New Threats

Osama bin Laden endorsed the failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day and threatened new attacks against the United States in an audio message released Sunday that appeared aimed at asserting he maintains some direct command over al-Qaida-inspired offshoots.
However, U.S. officials and several researchers who track terrorist groups said there was no indication bin Laden or any of his top lieutenants had anything to do with or even knew in advance of the Christmas plot by a Yemen-based group that is one of several largely independent al-Qaida franchises.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said al-Qaida's core leadership offers such groups strategic guidance but depends on them to carry it out.
"He's trying to continue to appear relevant" by talking up the attempted attack by an affiliate, the spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said.

The one-minute message was explicit in its threat of new attacks. Like the airline plot, bin Laden said they would come in response to America's support for Israel.
"God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support for the Israelis continues," bin Laden said in the recording, which was released to the Al-Jazeera news channel.
"The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the Sept. 11," he said of the Nigerian suspect in the Dec. 25 botched attack.
"If our messages had been able to reach you through words we wouldn't have been delivering them through planes."
Directing his statements at President Barack Obama -( "from Osama to Obama," he said )- bin Laden added: "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine."

The message, which White House officials said could not immediately be authenticated, raised again the question of how much of a link exists between al-Qaida's top leadership along the Afghan-Pakistani border and the handful of loosely affiliated groups operating in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and Iraq.
The al-Qaida leader, who was last heard from in September, seemed intent on showing he remains more than an ideological figurehead, as most analysts have suggested he has become during the terror network's evolution into decentralized offshoots. But some questioned whether al-Qaida's core leadership was involved.

"They weren't putting the final touches on this operation," said Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator for the New York-based NEFA Foundation, which researches Islamic militants.
Still, the Saudi and Yemeni leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, have a long history of direct personal contact with bin Laden. It is plausible that - if they were able to - they would have informed bin Laden of the airliner plot and sought his approval, Kohlmann said.
There was no way to verify the voice on the audio message was actually bin Laden's, but it resembled previous recordings attributed to him. U.S.-based IntelCenter, which monitors militant messages, said the manner of the recording's release, its content and other factors indicated it was credible.
White House adviser David Axelrod told CNN's "State of the Union" that whatever the source, the message "contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents."