Bin Laden discusses attacks on U.S., gloats at damage done.

Byline: Bob Kemper

WASHINGTON _ The Bush administration on Thursday released a long-awaited videotape showing an exultant Osama bin Laden regaling admirers with first-hand details of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, laughing and boasting that the destruction and the death toll exceeded his wildest expectations.

The tape shows bin Laden sitting with other men on pillows on the floor of a drab room, talking of their "great work" and "clear victory." The men likened their joy at hearing news of the attack to that of fans whose soccer team just won.

The men who carried out the suicide mission knew they were on a "martyrdom operation" when they went to America, bin Laden said on the tape. But he said that "not everyone knew" the mission's ultimate goal until just before they boarded the four planes that later crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Pittsburgh.

The administration called the nearly hour-long, amateurish tape the "smoking gun" evidence of bin Laden's guilt. While some foreign leaders concurred, those who already opposed the U.S. hunt for bin Laden derided the tape as a fraud.

"Do the Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?" said Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of Jordan's mainstream Islamic party, the Islamic Action Front.

On the tape, a buoyant bin Laden described…