Posted on 07/11/2004 1:10:02 PM PDT by NavySEAL F-16
Geneva - Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law describes him as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his own infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert.
"I'm sure Osama would not have wanted to lose his baby" by his insistence his wife use a spoon instead of a bottle, says Carmen Binladin, the Swiss sister-in-law of the alleged terrorist mastermind.
"It was not as if he didn't care about the child. But to him, the baby's suffering was less important than a principle which he probably imagined stemmed from some seventh-century verse in the Quran."
But Binladin said the respect her husband and Osama's 23 other brothers accorded him by accepting his decisions made her realise she would have to leave Saudi Arabia with her daughters. And it was part of what convinced her that the brothers haven't stopped supporting Osama despite their disavowals of him.
"My understanding of that culture and from what I have seen and what I have read, I cannot believe that they have cut off Osama completely," Binladin told The Associated Press on the eve of a visit to the United States to promote her book, Inside the Kingdom, to be published next Wednesday.
She said some of Osama's sons are still in Saudi Arabia, working for the bin Laden Group construction company the 25 brothers inherited from their father, Mohammed bin Laden. She added that she believed some of Osama's sisters also still side with him.
"It's certainly possible that Osama retains ties to the royal family, too," she said. "The bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures."
Saudi leaders have repeatedly condemned Osama bin Laden, however, and cancelled his Saudi citizenship.
September 11 'was plotted'
Carmen Binladin, who married Osama's brother Yeslam in 1974 and lived in Saudi Arabia for nine years, said she wrote the book to explain to her daughters why she returned with them to Switzerland and was engaged in a lengthy divorce - still unresolved after 14 years. Her husband, an investor and also a Swiss citizen, still lives in Geneva, but she says he tries to have no contact with their daughters.
Binladin was in Switzerland when she learned of the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Centre.
"Something in me snapped," she said. "This was no freak accident. This had to be a deliberately plotted attack, on a country I had always loved and looked on as my second home.
"As the hours passed, my worst fear came true," Binladin said. "One man's face and name was on every news bulletin: Osama bin Laden. ... I felt a sick sense of doom. This day would change all of our lives, forever."
Binladin gives a rare glimpse of life inside Saudi Arabia _ and in the bin Laden family, which lived in the 1970s in a group of houses on the outskirts of Jeddah. Women had to wear a robe covering their faces and bodies whenever they went outside the home or encountered males outside the immediate family.
"One day, Yeslam's younger brother Osama came to visit," she said.
She said she doubted accounts that Osama had been a playboy as a teenager in Beirut. "I never heard such tales about Osama," she said. "As far as I know, Osama was always devout. His family revered him for his piety."
Edited by Tisha Steyn
The Kerry campaign let someone get close enough to campaign headquarters? I'm surprised.
I don't want to know he is a good brother......I want him dead.
I don't want to know he treats his parents well....I want him dead.
/rant
In other words the man is a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic killer/father/infanticidist.
Carmen has a Swiss father and an Iranian mother. She is divorcing the al-Qaeda leader's half-brother, Yeslam.
"In other words the man is a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic killer/father/infanticidist."
Osama Bin Laden sounds like a Democrat to me.
Double ditto to that, Dog.
Wish I could get a glimpse of Bin Laden at cloe range and at a time I am ready for him.
If I could just get off a single shot . . .
I happen to believe you are in luck. That much of a megalomaniac could not go this long without surfacing somewhere just to let the great satanists know he still has them in his cross hairs. He likely died somwhere near Spin Boldak near the end of 1991.
Here's a link to the full article:
http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=225022
While I want UBL dead by whatever means available, I've wondered what would be the ideal way for him to die, ie. which way could potentially deter wannabe terrorists. I'm only considering realistic scenarios, not fantasies.
There is a visceral satisfaction to some SEALs or Delta guys cornering and killing UBL with a gunshot. Of course, this means that we had to find him, send in troops, then actually kill him.
An alternative, which might terrorize the terrorists more, is for a high-tech death. We see grainy video on CNN from an armed Predator flying high over the mountains. There's UBL sitting around after dorking a goat, relaxing with his buttboys, totally unaware of the Predator overhead. Next thing he knows we've given him a Hellfire enema.
What I like about the high-tech killing is that it sends a message to future terrorists that nowhere is safe. They can be killed at any time and not even know its coming.
You might want to post it separately. Has more info than original article.
I'm no soldier and I'm not even that good a shot. . . I'd just like to take a shot him for my own satisfaction.
And if he IS close enough then . . . .
I was just thinking the same thing. Where's a good sniper when you need one? :-)
It was shortly before Dec 13, 2001, but dog wants the bones.
;>)
No humanizing or touchey-feeley attempts of understanding the man...................
Slowly & painfully or as quick and abrupt as a homing J-DAM, it makes no difference. I just want him dead.
Someday ASA....one of us is going to be proven right...:-)
I was waiting for ..."Ah, it is not very well known that Osama was a good dancer."
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