Bin Laden's jihadi spring: "It often comes as a surprise to people to discover that bin Laden has never claimed that al-Qaeda can or would defeat the US, much less that al-Qaeda's goal was to destroy the 'American way of life' or 'Western civilization'."

They could only be surprised if they took seriously the pronouncements of the Anglo-saxon governments, a mistake that no informed observer should be making by this time.

"He is not a man given to grandiose pronouncements and has limited his goal to incrementally increasing the pain inflicted on the US and its allies to force them to disengage from the Middle East to the greatest extent possible. If achieved, bin Laden believes, this would then allow al-Qaeda and its allies to focus on its main targets: the tyrannies that rule most Arab states, and the State of Israel."

Bin Laden's jihadi spring: "It often comes as a surprise to people to discover that bin Laden has never claimed that al-Qaeda can or would defeat the US, much less that al-Qaeda's goal was to destroy the 'American way of life' or 'Western civilization'."

They could only be surprised if they took seriously the pronouncements of the Anglo-saxon governments, a mistake that no informed observer should be making by this time.

"He is not a man given to grandiose pronouncements and has limited his goal to incrementally increasing the pain inflicted on the US and its allies to force them to disengage from the Middle East to the greatest extent possible. If achieved, bin Laden believes, this would then allow al-Qaeda and its allies to focus on its main targets: the tyrannies that rule most Arab states, and the State of Israel."