OSAMA BIN LADEN21st Century Boogey Man

Osama bin Laden

Father Mohammed bin Laden was born in Yemen and was struggling farmer and beekeeper.

Fortunes changed when he won a contract in 1948 to build a palace for Kind Saud

A devote Muslim, he prayed 5 times a day (salah) and remained humble despite meteoric rise of wealth.

Mother was Syrian and not accustomed to the strict Saudi household. She and his father grew apart.

Osama bin Laden

She became an outcast amongst the other wives and was nicknamed “al-Abeda” which means slave

Her status was extended to her son, Osama, who was taunted and nicknamed “Ibn al-Abeda”

He grew up shy and introverted

His father instilled the the teachings and traditions of Islam in all of his kids which he credit for his financial success

Osama bin Laden

He was a moderate student in school and only excelled in Islamic studies

While reserved in the rest of his classes, he would immediately answer and was very engaged in his Islamic classes

He began to travel to Beirut in 1973, he went to nightclubs and enjoyed the more relaxed lifestyle

He leaves when civil war breaks out in 1975

Osama bin Laden

He eventually returns to Saudi Arabia.

He leaves Saudi Arabia at age 22 to join the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

The Mujihadeen movement was based in Pakistan and received financial support and Stinger missiles from the CIA

Al-Qaeda was formed formed from the Majhideen

Mujahideen

1980-1989 CIA and British SAS train Mujahideen and UBL

Fearing a diplomatic incident, CIA and other US agents rarely ventured into Afghanistan.

Soldiers from the British elite Special Air Service (SAS) work with and train the mujaheddin instead.

The SAS provides weapons training in Afghanistan until 1982 when Russian soldiers find the passports of two British instructors in a training camp.

After that, mujaheddin are trained in secret camps in remote parts of Scotland. When the US decides to supply Stinger missiles to the mujaheddin in 1986, it is the SAS who provide the training in how to use them

1980-1989 CIA and British SAS train Mujahideen and UBL

But the SAS are taking orders from the CIA.

The CIA also indirectly gives weapons to Osama bin Laden and other mujaheddin leaders.

One former US intelligence official will say in 1999, “[US agents] armed [bin Laden’s] men by letting him pay rock-bottom prices for basic weapons.”

The relationship will later prove to be embarrassing to bin Laden and the CIA.

Did the US meet with UBL in the mid-1980s?

Journalist Simon Reeve will claim in the 1999 book The New Jackals that US officials directly met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He will write, “American emissaries are understood to have traveled to Pakistan for meetings with mujaheddin leaders… [A former CIA official] even suggests the US emissaries met directly with bin Laden, and that it was bin Laden, acting on advice from his friends in Saudi intelligence, who first suggested the mujaheddin should be given Stingers.”

Did the US meet with UBL in the mid-1980s?

The CIA begins supplying Stinger missiles to the mujaheddin in 1986.

After 9/11, the CIA will state, “Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Osama bin Laden. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with bin Laden.”

[US State Department, 1/14/2005]

1986 Stinger Missiles Arrive

Worried that the Soviets are winning the war in Afghanistan, the US decides to train and arm the mujaheddin with Stinger missiles.

The Soviets are forced to stop using the attack helicopters that were being used to devastating effect. Some claim the Stingers turn the tide of the war and lead directly to Soviet withdrawal. Now the mujaheddin are better trained and armed than ever before.

Stinger Missile

The Stinger missile provides forward, short-range air defense against low-altitude airborne targets.

The Stinger system consists of a Stinger round encased in its launch tube and a separate gripstock assembly.

The "fire-and-forget" Stinger missile employs a passive infrared seeker to home in on its airborne target. A passive infrared seeker emits no radiation that a target aircraft can detect, and, instead, guides on the infrared energy (heat) emitted by the target.

Mi-24

Mi-24

Role: assault transport, gunship

External stores are mounted on underwing external stores points.

A representative mix when targeting armor formations would be eight AT-6 ATGMs, 750x 30-mm rounds, and two 57-mm rocket pods.

Armored cockpits and titanium rotor head able to withstand 20-mm cannon hits.

Every aircraft has an overpressurization system for operation in a NBC environment.

Early 1989: US Supplies Sniper Rifles to Bin Laden’s Mentor

The US government sends 25 high-powered sniper rifles to a group of fighters in Afghanistan that includes bin Laden. The armor-piercing weapons have range-finding equipment and night-vision scopes.

The president of the US company that made the rifles will later state that the rifles “were picked up by US government trucks, shipped to US government bases, and shipped to those Afghan freedom fighters.” The rifles are considered ideal for assassination.

[Associated Press, 10/16/2001]

The CIA will deny being involved in the transfer.

Early 1989: US Supplies Sniper Rifles to Bin Laden’s Mentor

The timing is also significant since the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in 1988 and complete the pull out in February 1989, around when these rifles are sent.

1990 Pakistan sends Stingers to North Korea

Pakistan sends a Stinger missile to North Korea. Pakistan obtained the Stinger from the US, which provided them to Pakistani-backed rebels during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s.

The missile is partly intended as a gift for the North Koreans—an incentive for the revival of co-operation between the two countries, which has been stalled for some time.

In addition, the Stingers held by Pakistan are becoming useless, because their batteries are failing, and the Pakistanis hope that the North Koreans will be able to help them reverse engineer the batteries.

1993 Blackhawk Down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn8fu23JOIU&feature=related

When did this all start?

Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States on August 23, 1996.

1998 Tanzania Bombings

A series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the US public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.

1998 Tanzania Bombings

The bombings are widely believed to have been revenge for American involvement in the extradition, and alleged torture, of four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) who had been arrested in Albania in the two months prior to the explosions

All four were all renditioned from Albania to Egypt, with the cooperation of the United States; the four men were accused of participating in the assassination of Rifaat el-Mahgoub, as well as a later plot against the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo.

Bin Laden’s beef

Three of the major components of bin Laden's indictment of the United States and its allies are as follows:

Washington is the leader of a Christian-Jewish crusader effort to damage and ultimately destroy Islam.

The West is intent on occupying oil-rich Muslim countries and exploiting their resources.

Third and similarly, the West is intent on creating agent governments in Muslim lands who will do its bidding in terms of oil supplies.

YEMEN

Some al Qaeda members settled in Yemen in the middle 1990s, although not in large numbers. They usually married Yemeni women, lived and worked in local communities, and remained involved in al Qaeda's logistical, financial, and administrative activities. This cadre also established safe houses for al Qaeda cadre transiting Yemen or sent there for rest and relaxation.

EGYPT

Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic jihad.

Al-Zawahiri's group used Yemen for the same purposes as al Qaeda, and his men participated in a joint operation with al Qaeda, which was a botched bombing attack against U.S. forces transiting Aden for Somalia in December 1992.

EGYPT

Throughout the 1990s, and almost certainly up until this day, Islamist fighters belonging to al Qaeda and the Egyptian jihad have had strong relationships with Yemen's major Islamic leaders and scholars, especially Sheikh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani.