U.S. intelligence experts are busy analyzing the video message arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden sent to coincide with the sixth anniversary of his Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the American people.

 

But while the experts explore for hidden meanings in bin Laden's message, there are enough of his ideas out in the open for us to get the gist of it.

 

For one thing, in choosing to crawl out from under his rock for the first time in about three years to deliver his statement, Bin Laden was clearly timing his video to influence U.S. public opinion on the eve of Gen. David Petraeus's report to Congress on the surge response.

Without knowing in advance what the general would say, however, bin Laden could only boast – wrongly – that the latest U.S. strategy was not working. Furthermore, he hinted, he plans to initiate his own surge to kick the forces of "the Great Satan" out of Iraq.

 

Despite being forced to live in hiding while being hunted relentlessly by the U.S. and kept from mounting another attack on the scale of 9/11 for the past six years, bin Laden somehow believes he has the upper hand. He wants the world to know that he will defeat America in Iraq just as the mujahedin defeated the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

 

Strangely enough, the three main points of bin Laden's nearly half-hour speech were global warming, the mortgage crisis in the United States, and the Democratic Party's failure to stop the war in Iraq – all of which he attributed to the evils of capitalism, plus American democracy's stubborn insistence on separating religion and state.

Bin Laden: "The entire human race is in danger because of global warming caused in large part by emissions from the factories of large corporations … Many of you are buckling beneath high-interest debts, insane taxes, and mortgages … As for why the Democrats have failed to stop the war, I state that it is the same reason former President Kennedy was unable to end the war in Vietnam -- those with real power and influence are the capitalists ..."

 

His answer to what ails the Great Satan – Americans must convert to Islam: "Islam will deprive [the war profiteers and large corporations] of the chance to swindle the people out of their money through arms deals and such, for Islam has no taxes and only limited alms that stand at 2.5 percent." Are the evils of capitalism the best answer the world's most infamous perpetrator of Islamofascism can come up with after meditating in his cave hideouts for some half a dozen years? Is this his new fusion – the Qu’ran and the Communist Manifesto?

 

Some say bin Laden's gracious offer to permit the citizens of the United States to convert to Islam and thereby avoid destruction is a requirement of the Qu’ran to give an enemy the opportunity to convert before attacking him. But I don't recall receiving such an offer before 9/11.

 

Besides displaying the evident lunacy of bin Laden's political/religious thought, the new video was also examined for clues about his physical health. Mansour Dadullah, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan, said in a video released August last month that bin Laden is "extremely healthy and active.''

 

We can all see one obvious change from previous tapes of the terrorist mastermind: he has apparently been dyeing his formerly gray beard to a dark black. I'm sure that among the 16 spy agencies in Washington that bring us those periodic intelligence estimates there is an office specializing in the analysis of terrorist facial hair. Why did Yasser Arafat prefer not to shave, for example, or why does bin Laden hate that gray?

Mass murderers have egos, too. The continuing challenge of bin Laden's anniversary message to America is to keep fighting his lethal attempts to convert the world to his simple-minded idea of a solution to its problems.