Bin Laden’s No. 2: Muslims will destroy America
Osama bin Laden’s deputy warned Wednesday that America faces not individual terrorists or groups but an international community of Muslims that seek to destroy it and its allies. He was delivering a 28-minute videotaped eulogy to slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida’s longtime No. 2 and considered the network’s operational head, also sought to cast a role for the terror group in the popular uprisings shaking Arab world.
“Today, praise God, America is not facing an individual, a group or a faction,” he said, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaned on a wall behind him. “It is facing a nation than is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad.”