Bin Laden: 'We are at the start of our military action on America'

The first time I met Osama bin Laden inside Afghanistan, it was a hot, humid night in the summer of 1996. Huge insects flew through the night air, settling like burrs on his Saudi robes and on the clothes of his armed followers. They would land on my notebook until I swatted them, their blood smearing the pages. Bin Laden was always studiously polite: each time we met, he would offer the usual Arab courtesy of food for a stranger: a tray of cheese, olives, bread and jam. I had already met him in Sudan and would spend a night, almost a year later, in one of his mountain guerrilla camps, so cold that I awoke in the morning with ice in my hair.

I had been given a rough blanket and my shoes were left outside the tent. Whenever we met, he would interrupt our interviews to say his prayers, his armed followers – from Algeria, Egypt, the Gulf Arab states, Syria – kneeling beside him, hanging on his every word as if he were a messiah.

On 20 March, 1997, I would meet him again. Although only 41 at the time, his ruggedly groomed beard had white hairs, and he had bags under his eyes; I sensed some infirmity, a stiffness of one leg that gave him the slightest of limps. I still have my notes, scribbled in the frozen semi-darkness as an oil lamp sputtered between us. "I am not against the American people," he said. "Only their government." I told him I thought the American people regarded their government as their representatives. Bin Laden listened to this in silence. "We are still at the beginning of our military action against the American forces," he said.

I remembered those words as I watched those aeroplanes scything into the World Trade Centre towers. And I remembered, too, how in that last meeting he had seized on the Arabic-language newspapers I was carrying in my satchel (a schoolbag I use in rough countries) and scurried to a corner of the tent to read them for 20 minutes, ignoring both his fighters and myself.

The first time we met, in Sudan, I persuaded bin Laden – much against his will – to talk about those days. And he recalled how, during an attack on a Russian firebase not far from Jalalabad, a mortar shell had fallen at his feet. He had waited for it to explode. And in those milliseconds of rationality, he had – so he said – felt a great sense of tranquillity, a sense of calm acceptance, which he ascribed to God.

One of his armed followers in Afghanistan took me up the "bin Laden trail", a terrifying two-hour odyssey along fearful ravines in rain and sleet, the windscreen misting as we climbed the cold mountain. "When you believe in jihad [holy war], it is easy," the gunman informed me, fighting with the steering wheel as stones scuttered from the tyres, bouncing down the valleys into the clouds below. It was two hours more – this was in 1997 – before we reached bin Laden's old wartime camp, the jeep skidding backwards towards sheer cliffs, the headlights illuminating frozen waterfalls above.

Bin Laden is a tall, slim man and towers over his companions. He has narrow, dark eyes that stared hard at me when he spoke of his hatred of Saudi corruption. Indeed, in my long conversation with bin Laden in 1996 – on that hot night of mosquitoes – the Saudi kingdom and its apparatchiks probably consumed more time than his views of America.

History – or his version of it – was the basis of almost all his remarks. And the pivotal date was 1990, the year in which Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. "When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy places, there was a strong protest from the ulema [religious authorities] against the interference of American troops.

"This big mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops revealed their deception. They had given their support to nations that were fighting against Muslims. After it insulted and jailed the ulema... the Saudi regime lost its legitimacy."

Bin Laden paused to see whether I had listened to his careful, if frighteningly exclusive, history lesson. "I believe that sooner or later the Americans will leave Saudi Arabia, and that the war declared by America against the Saudi people means war against Muslims everywhere..."

He also told me that "swift and light forces working in complete secrecy" would be needed to oust America from Saudi Arabia. In the following two years, bin Laden was to form his al-Qa'ida movement and declare war on the American people – not just the government and army of the United States.

Even in his omissions, the loathesome Robert Fisk cannot hide his moral depravity. In column after column (such as "Brace yourself for Part Two of the War for Civilisation", the classic lefty self-hate piece "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war", and "We are the war criminals now"), Fisk rails and rants against the United States, the West, and what he sneeringly calls "civilization." His bile and venom splutter forth in every paragraph, and even a sound thrashing by ignorant tribesmen cannot divert him from his burning hatred of his native culture.

Yet here, he meets and socializes with one of the greatest murderers of our age. He breaks bread with him. He makes note of his piety. He mentions -- admiringly? -- his asceticism, his dedication. His tone is neutral, at best, but the lack of condemnation is a thunderous silence. A man who holds such spleen for America, yet cannot muster an ill word for Osama bin Laden, is indeed a foul and corrupt creature in his own right. From anyone else, I would regard this as a meaningless recollection; from Fisk, I regard it as the last nail in the coffin.

Bin Laden was always studiously polite: each time we met, he would offer the usual Arab courtesy of food for a stranger: a tray of cheese, olives, bread and jam.

Food for a stranger? How about food for western hating left-wing useful idiot stooge? This is the same moron who was beat about the head and shoulders by Afghani refugees last month and said he deserved it and didn't blame those who beat him. He is a consummate American hater and basher.

I take it you are not a Fisk fan? ;^)

Goodness. Does it show? ;-p

This is, after all, the UK Independant and it is a mouthpiece for the left. Don't take it too seriously...

The Telegraph far outdoes this in circulation, it's true, but the Independent and the Guardian are unfortunately read by a preponderance of policymakers and highly-educated types....so I am forced to accord it more attention than I'd otherwise like.

Sounds like Fisk is instigating noble-Osama nostalgia. So soon! He's like a Englishman safari taker, bringing home pics of calm, resting lions to show his friends, omitting the pics of the lions tearing apart a zebra. The evil of it is he knows the lions are dangerous, but such doesn't fit in the western-guilt trip he spins. So it's omitted. He also sounds a little masochistic, methinks.

I'm still perturbed that no "journalist" has sought out the people in Pakistan that beat up Fisk. Fisk's story about it is fishy, first they're nice and smiling, then they're beating him up. He offers no real explanation why the turn of events except to blame America about the bombing, which doesn't explain why the people were nice to him in the first place. I thin it would be a good story.

You know dighton, you hit the nail on the head. Again, and tersely. It IS love.

P.S. remember that Steyn article about Fisk et al.? Your comment reminded me of it. I wonder if Steyn is "telegraphing" us something about Fisk and masochism, besides making points about his mental processes.

For those here that don't remember:

...Robert Fisk, foreign correspondent, the Independent, hanging upside down in Madam Fatima's Discipline Parlour, Beirut: I was struck, quite literally - ow! - by the very unIslamic tone of the purported - aargh! - confession. That cowboy imagery about "a strong horse and a weak horse" hit me immediately - aaaai-eeeee!

Thanks - as less Saudi sounding and more Texan. Also that obsession with death, dying, killing all seems entirely foreign to the life-affirming culture of militant Islamism I know so well and smacks more - yarrooooo! a little lower, please - of the Texas penal system. [--ouch! And another for the pun!]

Furthermore, though they appear to say "Allah be praised" continually, if you rewind - aaaaaaaaaaargh! that's too tight - and turn it up, it's clear that they're really saying, "Al'll be Prez"...

Mark Steyn: Screen Test (Dec. 15)

Must concede, these British nuts are much more entertaining than are home grown ones.

I had an argument about Fisk with some British liberal, who claimed that Fisk wasn't justifying his a## kicking, he was 'understanding' the reasons why he got his a## kicked....how anyone can read that article and not see that he was justifying it is beyond me, but I did get a self righteous lecture from them about how I couldn't tell the difference between justifying and understanding....

You should talk to your friend again, politely, and ask him to reconsider. From my outisder perspective I see this brit's "justification v. understanding" dichotomy is a strawman argument and a deflection (besides being a false dichotomy). I have no problem in justifying or understanding this, why not? How about use the word "explain." The issue as I see it is whether he's telling the truth. What he offers is "understanding" or "justification" that fits his readers prejudices, semaphore for "don't look any further, your expectations are satisfied." It's self-serving.

His theory doesn't fit why the refugees were all smiles and happiness for him in the first place. Query, did he do something to incite this? Was he rude? Did he try to solicit anti-American or pro-taliban statements for his articles, thereby changing the refugees estimation of him? Were they just theives and he didn't want to sully his romantic love object? The story I see is not his explaining, but his explanation. Tell your brit friend the story smells of "bullocks" and ask him to speculate what really happened.

"I persuaded bin Laden – much against his will – to talk about those days. And he recalled how, during an attack on a Russian firebase not far from Jalalabad, a mortar shell had fallen at his feet. He had waited for it to explode. And in those milliseconds of rationality, he had – so he said – felt a great sense of tranquillity, a sense of calm acceptance, which he ascribed to God."

This story is quite similar to that of another evil demigod in WWI (i.e. Hitler). He too felt that providence had saved him during war. What a dreadful thing it is when you have intelligent and evil people who somehow survive war and rationalize any barbaric action as "fulfilling their mission."

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