In bin Laden’s ‘Message to the American People,’ sent to Al Jazeera on October 30, 2004, he said: ” ‘Al Qaeda spent five hundred thousand dollars on 9/11, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost…in excess of five hundred billion dollars. …Even more dangerous for America is the way the mujahedeen recently forced [President] Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, thus proving that the plan to bleed the Americans dry is succeeding. …the real loser is you, the American people, and your economy.’ ”
– Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda In Its Own Words, Pages 74-75