Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:
"At this point -- with 95 percent of the American public hopelessly lost in his video address -- bin Laden the anticapitalist unveils the only solution that could possibly alienate the remaining 5 percent: religion. Your mistake, he tells Americans, is that "you have separated church and state." The way out of this problem is conversion to Islam.Here, bin Laden swings for the stands of transpartisan weirdness and connects, combining in a single sentence religious fundamentalism, anticapitalism, and a nontax flat tax: "Islam will deprive [the war profiteers and owners of 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."
Surprisingly, President Bush is contemplating bin Laden's offer:
"If I convert to Islam and order all of our troops to do the same," said Mr. Bush, "we can stay in Iraq indefinitely, drop the restrictive rules of engagement, save a lot of money by using cheap, unguided bombs, clear neighborhoods flat out, blow up mosques with impunity and still go to heaven -- not to mention that I’d get more favorable coverage from the U.S. news media."The president added that he might convert to Islam just to "find out what it’s like to be a man who wears a dress and a bonnet and dyes his hair like a girl."