Bin Laden boasted in his first appearance in more than a year that for every $1 al-Qaida has spent on terrorist strikes, it has cost the United States $1 million in economic fallout and military spending, including emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers," bin Laden said, estimating the deficit at more than $1 trillion.

In reality, spending in the war against terror and other factors have resulted in an expected $377 billion shortfall for 2003 - the highest deficit since World War II accounting for inflation. The total U.S. national debt is near the $7.4 trillion statutory limit.

Bin Laden dwelled on al-Qaida's economic strategy against the United States, according to the complete transcript of the 18-minute video that aired on Al-Jazeera and was obtained by U.S. intelligence. Al-Jazeera broadcast about 14 minutes of the video Friday and put the full English language transcript on its Web site Monday.

Calm and forceful

The terror mastermind whose al-Qaida network carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks credited the religiously inspired Arab volunteers that he fought with against the Soviets in Afghanistan with having "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat." He suggested the same strategy would work against the United States.

"So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," a calm and forceful bin Laden said in the tape that appeared near the end of a U.S. campaign that has focused on the war on terror as well as the foundering U.S. economy.

Bin Laden, in rhetoric that seemed to echo critical campaign headlines in the United States, accused President Bush of going to war in oil-rich Iraq simply to create business for military contractors linked to his administration.

Worth the cost?

In his message aimed at American listeners, bin Laden claimed al-Qaida was winning its war with the United States and that contractors "like Halliburton and its kind" were also benefiting, while the losers were "the American people and their economy."

Bin Laden noted reports that al-Qaida spent $500,000 "on the event" - referring to Sept. 11 attacks - while the United States has lost more than $500 billion "in the incident and its aftermath," he added, citing an estimate by a British think tank.

Evan F. Kohlmann, a U.S.-based counterterrorism researcher, said it was as if bin Laden were following the news from the United States, perhaps on satellite TV, and drawing shrewd assumptions about what concerns Americans.

"He is trying to create doubts in America's mind that this war is worth the cost," Kohlmann said.

Bin Laden's latest statement was a selective reading of history. Internal problems and U.S. help, not just the Arab "holy warriors," contributed to the collapse of the Soviet experiment in Afghanistan. The U.S. economy was experiencing trouble before Sept. 11.

Such nuances matter little to angry Muslims who see bin Laden as a hero who stands up to the West, and who were as much his audience as the American voters he addressed directly.