"The (U.S.) criminality has gone as far as raping women and holding them hostage before their husbands ... as for the torture of men it has now come to the use of burning chemical acids and electric drills in their joints," the speaker said in the in the 11-minute, 26-second tape.

But he added that “the jihad is continuing with strength, for Allah be all the credit, despite all the barbarity, the repressive steps taken by the American Army and its agents, to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam."

By using this language to describe Saddam, bin Laden appeared to dissociate his group from the former Iraqi leader, and deny U.S. claims that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, which was one of the reasons the Bush Administration used to justify Iraq war, that was chiefly based on allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The tape was originally broadcast by an Arabic satellite channel in January, days after a U.S. air strike in Pakistan killed more than 18 civilians. Its full version comes after the release of new pictures of prisoner abuses by U.S. forces at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail.

In the tape posted Monday, bin Laden also promised never to be captured alive. "I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," he said.

The speaker also challenged Bush administration assertions that it was better to fight terrorists in Iraq than on U.S. soil.

"The war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq as he (Bush) claims, but rather Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified forces," he said.

"What's more, the mujahideen, by the grace of Allah, have been able to penetrate time after time all the security procedures undertaken by the oppressive countries of the alliance as evidence by what you have seen, in terms of bombings in the capital of the most important European states."

Bin Laden also said that the U.S. was trying to muffle any media outlet that reports the truth about the losses of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Pentagon's figures indicate an increase in the number of your killed and injured in addition to the massive material losses, not to mention the collapse of troop morale and the increase of the suicide rates among them," the speaker said.

Speaking directly to the American people, he said: "You can rescue whatever you can from this hell. The solution is in your hands, if their (U.S. troops') situation matters to you at all."

In the January tape, bin Laden described Bush as “the butcher of freedom” and said that Al-Qaeda was preparing for more attacks in the United States.

U.S. intelligence analysts then authenticated the audiotape as a “genuine” message from bin Laden, making it the first by Al-Qaeda chief since 2004.

Bin Laden re-emerges after a long absence warning Americans on an audiotape attributed to him and broadcast on Al-Jazeera January 19, 2006, of new attacks. He also offered American people a "long term truce." on the recording.

Newspaper claims Bin Laden is dead Wednesday, October 26, 2004

A Pakistani newspaper claims the founder of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, died in June in a village near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan. The Awsaf newspaper, based in the city of Multan, reports that the Saudi terror leader fell ill in Bamiyan, the region to the west of the capital Kabul where the Taliban blew up two huge 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in 2001. His protectors then took him back to the Kandahar region, where he died and was buried in a graveyard in the shadow of a mountain, the newspaper says. Awsaf says the news of bin Laden's death is supported by........    More