US passed on hitting bin Laden to hit villagers?

CNN:

A purported message from Osama bin Laden to Europeans urges them to distance themselves from the United States, noting that Americans are losing the war in Afghanistan.

The brief message in Arabic, which appeared Friday on radical Islamic Web sites, has subtitles in English and German.

Bin Laden issued his last message on September 13, two days after the eighth anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks in the United States.

The authenticity of the message could not immediately be established.

Al Qaeda has recently released threatening videos aimed at Germany, where voters are scheduled to go to the polls Sunday. The militant group has warned Germans not to choose leaders who support the war in Afghanistan.

"It won't be long until the dust of war clears in Afghanistan, at which point you won't find a trace of any American," he adds.

"You are aware that oppression topples those who commit it and injustice has unhealthy consequences for the unjust, and that one of the greatest forms of injustice is to kill people without right, yet this is exactly what your governments and soldiers are committing under the umbrella of the NATO alliance in Afghanistan," bin Laden warns.

He rails against the United States for attacks that he says are aimed at the Taliban and al Qaeda but that kill and wound civilians.

"An intelligent man doesn't waste his money and sons for a gang of criminals in Washington, and it is a shameful thing for a person to be in a coalition whose supreme commander has no regard for human life and intentionally bombs villagers from the air, and I am witness to that," he says.

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I don't really think the US would pass up a chance to kill bin Laden to kill innocent villagers instead. Why would he stand by and let something like that happen when he could save the villagers by giving up or at least giving up his actual location? Is bin Laden really saying that we have come that close to him? I hope so. I think he is really confessing to using human shields.

As for his claims that he is winning in Afghanistan, that can be easily disproved. If he were really winning he would be in Afghanistan holding a news briefing rather than trying to sneak a video out of his hidey hole.