Al Qaeda Threatens U.S., Britain

Bush Dismisses Warning, Says 'We Will Stay On The Offense'

(CBS/AP)  "What you have seen in New York and Washington, you Americans, and the losses you see in Afghanistan and Iraq — despite all the media blackout are merely the losses from the initial clashes," he said.

"If you go on with the same policy of aggression against Muslims, you will see, God willing, what will make you forget the horrible things in Vietnam," he said.

He declared that the Bush administration was repeating in Iraq the "same lies" of Presidents Johnson and Nixon in Vietnam, that they were "defending freedom."

"There is no exit from Iraq except in immediate withdrawal. Any delay in taking that decision means nothing but more dead, more losses," he said. "If you don't leave today, certainly you will leave tomorrow, but after tens of thousands of dead and double the number of disabled and wounded."

Bennie said al-Zawahri might have been using the video as a vehicle for reissuing an offer of a truce.

"This seems to say you have another chance to pull out and you won't be hit again," the analyst said, declaring the statement coercive and not credible.

He noted that most observers believed the March 11, 2004, Madrid train attacks, which killed 191 people, were designed to push Spaniards to vote for the Socialist opposition in elections three days later. In the voting, the Conservative government, which had sent troops to Iraq was swept from power. The new government ordered Spanish troops to return home.

"That didn't prevent a foiled attempt to bomb a high-speed train carrying a thousand people after the election. And members of the cell still had the wherewithal to blow themselves up when cornered," Bennie said.

Seven suspects in the Madrid bombings committed collective suicide on April 3. The bombers, including several ringleaders, killed themselves in a massive explosion an apartment in Leganes as police moved in to arrest them.

Bennie also noted that it was exactly two weeks ago that four other London bombers tried to repeat the July 7 attacks, setting off detonators in three subway trains and a bus. The charges attached to the detonators did not explode and no one was hurt.

"Everyone was a bit edgy today on the trains, what with it being a month after the first attack and two weeks after the second attempt. A threat (from al-Zawahri) instead of an attack is much to be preferred," he said.

In London, a sea of 6,000 police flooded the streets and the Underground, CBS' Aleen Sirgany reports, but the security hike was explained to the public as unrelated to the terror warning. The massive security operation Thursday was said to be intended to reassure the public four weeks after the July 7 bombings that killed 56 people and two weeks after the failed July 21 attacks.

Officials stressed there was no specific intelligence of a third attack, but undercover police were mingling with passengers, and officers were armed with machine guns and pistols. Police helicopters hovered above while traffic was heavier than normal.

Taahir Hoorzook, of the media relations department in Al-Jazeera, said the broadcaster received the al-Zawahri tape Thursday. "It was left at one of our offices, and we got it from there," he said, declining to name the location of the office.

The tape is about five minutes long and Al-Jazeera aired only 10 percent of the tape, he said. "The content of the rest of the tape which we didn't air, is the usual rhetoric, speaking about the Islamic lands occupied and stuff like that which we found not newsworthy," Hoorzook said.