Talk:Osama bin Laden/Archive 5

fatwa

 * Also in 1998, he issued a fatwa, or religious/legal edict, declaring it the religious duty of all Muslims "to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military ... in any country in which it is possible."

bin Laden is not a religious leader (right?) and cannot issue a fatwa. What this sentence is referring to is a statement released by an organization bin Laden is associated with. DanKeshet 16:51 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * In an ABC News interview, the reporter asks "Mr. bin Laden, you have issued a fatwah calling on Muslims to kill Americans where they can, when they can. Is that directed at all Americans, just the American military, just the Americans in Saudi Arabia?"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html


 * bin Laden discusses the fatwa without challenging the assertion that it is his. So unless there's evidence otherwise, he believes it his fatwa and he believes that he issued it.


 * Zippy 23:41 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Picture
''[8] Picture of Bin Ladin and two brothers on a visit to Oxford in 1971. Story on BBC.'' I seem to remember reading in the newspaper that one of the 1970s pictures published supposedly of Osama bin Laden were found out to actually be of his brother. I think this was the one in question.

Dated February 15, 2003 by User:203.109.254.54


 * You think the FBI might already know that? This is the same photo that they use for their 10 most wanted. --mav


 * The FBI uses a photo of a 14-year-old on its most wanted list? That would explain why they haven't caught the bastard yet ;-). --Eloquence 16:42 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

"explaining revert"
Sorry, I hit "save" too soon: I reverted because "raghead" is common insult against Arabs, not specific to Bin Laden or his turban. Vicki Rosenzweig 00:14 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Page protected and unprotected (August 2003)
Protected page thanks to edit war from User:JoeM Tompagenet 17:53, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * Now that User:JoeM is on auto-revert, I'm happy to unprotect this page whenever people want - if it's felt that the problem with JoeM has not finished left then we can leave this as it is for the moment Tompagenet 16:24, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Unprotecting page as it's been several days with no calls to keep it protected. We can protect it again if it becomes a problem. --Zippy 23:35, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Deficiencies" of this article
Deficiencies of this article:
 * The first paragraph gets the order of events wrong. It was mere hours after the attacks on September 11 that the White House decide it was Al Qaeda that attacked.  The tape was not "found" in Afghanistan until after the invasion.  The present order incorrectly implies that the Taliban had seen this tape and rejected it, because it doesn't give the date of the US invasion.
 * On a plate on a wall in Riyadh, the family business is named "BINLADIN". Is this the new spelling?  If so mention it, and provide a link to the family, which deserves an article of its own, being among the most prominent in Saudi.
 * Beyond any doubt, bin Laden's group was a US ally and beneficiary of CIA aid - he went to Afghanistan to build roads to aid the Mujehadeen in that war, and the money was coming from somewhere. The weapons, notably the rockets used to shoot down Soviet Hind armored helicopters, were certainly shipped in by the US.  At that time, textbooks were being distributed that were actually written and printed in the USA, to children, that showed math problems in terms of numbers of hand grenades thrown at infidels.  The USSR could have claimed all the same things about the US provocations at this time as now the US claims about the Saudis for their support of Taliban schools.  All this deserves some note.
 * The man is highly educated and has an engineering degree apparently. His early life needs some note, and his qualifications.
 * The incident in Sudan during the Clinton Administration, where he was apparently offered up to be handed over but Clinton refused, should be noted, it's a matter of record.

Aside from all that, the purported 'deal' between Musharraf and Bush that let bin Laden evade capture ought to be investigated - this has only come out recently

Dated August 24, 2003 by User:142.177.6.157