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CAIRO - A day before President Barack Obama is to deliver a speech here seeking goodwill with the Islamic world, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden tried in a new message Wednesday to convince Muslims they should hate him.
The message was the second from al-Qaida in as many days criticizing Obama, a PR offensive that analysts said shows the terrorist organization worries the new president will succeed in improving America's image in the Muslim world and undermine the group's jihad, or holy war.
"Obama's election is just about the worst thing that could have happened to these guys," said Tom Sanderson, a terrorism expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They knew right away that his election undermined a key part of their argument that the U.S. was anti-Islamic, that the U.S. was racist."