In a videotape aired by Al Jazeera on October 29, 2004, “bin Laden explained how al-Qaeda was exploiting America’s political gullibility, economic power, and corporate interests for its own purposes and how unintentionally cooperative the Bush administration had been. It is easy, said bin Laden, ‘for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin [jihadists] to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies… So we are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. …That being said…when one scrutinises the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains.’ “
– Ian S. Lustick, Trapped in the War on Terror, Pages 134-135