Voters -- Osama bin Laden won't sway us

[JME2]

From Yahoo

NEW YORK (AFP) - American voters say Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s sudden re-appearance has not changed their minds about the upcoming election, according to a report by the New York Times, which said it conducted dozens of interviews in five key states after the broadcast of a new message by the Al-Qaeda chief.

Some thought bin Laden, whose group was blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks, was trying to tip Tuesday's election toward Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites); others said he was angling for four more years for President George W. Bush (news - web sites).

Some said his message, broadcast Friday by Al-Jazeera television, would remind voters of Bush's failure to capture him. Others said it would scare up more votes for the incumbent.

Many theorized that the tape could influence voters, but said that their own convictions remained unshaken.

The bin Laden message was just one more item in a flood of campaign news and advertising in the countdown to the campaign, according to David Hill, a musician of Denver, Colorado.

"I don't think people are really responding anymore," he said. "We're shell-shocked."

"People I know are so polarized, it doesn't make any difference," said his wife, Jan Hill.

"Wow, it's perfect timing for him to come out of the woodwork," said warehouse worker McKinley Olds of Cleveland, Ohio. "It doesn't make any difference to me, I'm still voting for Kerry."

"It's more of the same, basically, about what you'd expect from this group," said Rex Reeve of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I'll definitely be voting for Bush."

Tyler Lisenbee, a property manager in Denver who was leaning toward Kerry, said bin Laden was unlikely to affect the election at all unless he was captured before Tuesday.

"Then I'd probably vote for Bush," he said.

Seeing how voters appeared to have shrugged off bin Laden's latest salvo, the article's author went on to assert that the terror kingpin may have made himself "irrelevant."

"With passions raised to such a pitch by this election, and with many people already committed to their choices, Mr bin Laden and his blustering postures may have achieved a strange and remarkable feat: making himself irrelevant, despite the analysis of some political operatives that his tape could affect the election, to Mr Bush's benefit in particular," the Times said.

The Washington Post for its part printed an editorial Sunday on "The Osama Surprise," assessing bin Laden's "appeal to Americans" as if he were a US politician making a speech.

"It was not a picture of great strength that Osama bin Laden offered Friday," despite proving that he is alive, healthy and in command of an organization, the Post said.

Bin Laden seemed "defensive," his tirades clunky and his proposals preposterous, the Post said.

"Something is clearly troubling Osama bin Laden: Could it be the millions of Afghans who eagerly turned out to vote in the country's first democratic elections this month and who overwhelmingly supported the moderate, pro-Western Hamid Karzai for president?

"Or the growing support for democratic government in Iraq (news - web sites), especially from senior members of the Islamic clergy?" the Post asked.