Al Qaeda’s No. 2 Resurfaces on New Videotape
Seventeen days after a U.S. airstrike in eastern Pakistan missed Al Qaeda’s second in command, a feisty and angry Ayman Zawahiri showed up in a videotape with a fresh taunt for President Bush.
“Bush, do you know where I am?” Zawahiri said in the tape aired Monday on the Al Jazeera satellite TV channel. “I am among the Muslim masses, enjoying God’s blessing of their support, care, generosity and protection.”
He mocked Bush as a failure and called him a butcher for killing civilians in the airstrike, and he threatened a new attack in the United States.
The video provided the first concrete evidence that Zawahiri was alive after the Jan. 13 strike, which is believed to have killed at least four associates of Zawahiri and at least 13 villagers. Zawahiri’s tape says the attack killed 18 civilians, and he called Bush “the butcher of Washington.”
“Bush, you are not only defeated and a liar, but, with God’s help and might, a failure,” he said.
A U.S. counter-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the video.
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