Posted on 07/29/2006 4:53:48 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
WASHINGTON - Osama Bin Laden talks tough, but other mujahedeen laughed at him in Afghanistan because he would get scared and bolt when under fire, a new documentary reveals. "When Bin Laden used to hear the explosions, he used to jump. He used to run away," his longtime friend Hutaifa Azzam says on "CNN Presents: In the Footsteps of Bin Laden."
"I still remember that me, and my elder and younger brothers, we used to laugh," says Azzam, the son of Bin Laden's mentor in radical Islam, Abdullah Azzam.
Abdullah Azzam and Bin Laden jointly created a mujahedeen support organization that later became Al Qaeda.
Azzam was assassinated in 1989, with Hutaifa's two brothers, in a bombing tied to Egyptians close to Bin Laden.
Hutaifa's CNN interview - as well as interviews of others who had known Bin Laden from childhood to when he made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list - was his first with a Western broadcaster.
The documentary, airing Aug. 23, is based on CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen's book, "The Osama Bin Laden I Know."
Bin Laden's friends describe a man who shed the materialism of a millionaire to become a survivalist.
He readied himself for a life of jihad by idolizing celluloid gunfighters like Peter Graves in the TV show "Fury" and kung fu star Bruce Lee.
"We would watch cowboy movies, karate movies ... action movies," remembers schoolmate and soccer pal Khaled Batarfi.
To toughen themselves, Bin Laden and his pals galloped across the sands of Arabia without food or shelter.
"We had our dates with us in our pockets and water - that's it. We sleep on the sand," says Jamal Khalifa, whose sister was Bin Laden's first wife.
Though heir to a billion-dollar construction firm, Bin Laden slept on the floor and shunned air conditioning and cold water, Bergen says on the program.
But not everyone in Bin Laden's family liked life on the run after he declared war on the U.S. Bergen says Bin Laden's son Omar, in his mid-20s, was so upset by the 9/11 attacks that he left Afghanistan and moved home to Saudi Arabia.
"[Omar] basically said to his father, 'These attacks were dumb, they were stupid. Now we've got this 800-pound gorilla after us,'" Bergen says. "He washed his hands of his father."
Speaking to the Daily News this week from Kabul, Bergen said Bin Laden "overreached on 9/11 and now surrounds himself with yes-men and believes his own propaganda that the U.S. is weak. ... Unfortunately, he's still perhaps the most important leader in the Arab world."
In which case the Arab world is in for a world of hurt.
"Osama, do you like movies about gladiators?"
Yet, he's managed to live to fight another day.
Osama, like all terrorist leaders are major league wusses. Because of this they have a deep rooted fear of being ridiculed and to make up for this lack of manhood, they kill innocent people and blame the boogyman.
Want to get rid of the scum? Just come out and call them women. Tell them that they have no manhood. Insult them. This is the psychological warfare that needs to be employed.
Airdrop burkhas and panties onto their compound and tell them its a gift from the women of the US military.
"He readied himself for a life of jihad by idolizing celluloid gunfighters like Peter Graves in the TV show "Fury".
That is not the Fury I recall. Peter Graves was hardly a gunfighter in that show.
LOL! I can just see Osama wearing a nice pair of frilly pink panties underneath a stylish black burka! A new disguise to keep anyone from identifying him.
Really good suggestions though- let's call him out!
I don't remember him cowering under fire, though.
He readied himself for a life of jihad by idolizing ... like Peter Graves
Do you remember a photo circulating shortly after 9/11 where someone had photo-shopped his turban into a penis? It was hilarious
Well, we already knew that he's a coward: why else send others to die for a cause he supposedly believes in, yet he scurries around and hides out instead of fighting like a real man.
He sounds like a trust-funder who is trying to have a Real (Hollywood) Life.
He does sound a lot like our domestic trust fund babies doesn't he? I had not thought about that connection before.
Got a better idea: let's get some of these "Gansta" SOB's we have in this country to write an Islamic rap tune, complete with the following images:
-Usama taking it in the backside
-Usama wearing women's underwear
-Usama as someone's prison b*tch at Gitmo
-Usama referred to in slang terms typically reserved for female genitalia
- Usama's wive's now "gettin' it on" with other men back home in Saudi in his abscense.
Make it a catchy tune. Give it an infectious beat. Play it 24/7 all over Afghanistan and Iraq. Put the video on MTV for heavy rotation, and force transmission into every Islamic dustbin on the planet. Make sure it's release coincides with the circulation of photos of Usama engaging in questionable sexual acts with an infidel or two, preferably male, or animals. Oh, and those acts all occur on top of that black rock they all walk around in Mecca.
It should have two effects: it should offend Al Qaeda so much that they will come out of the woodwork to be killed, or at least make USama an even bigger laughing stock. Secondly, if we're lucky, rap will go the way of the dodo bird once a fatwa is issued against it and no one wants to be on the receiving end of a heart-felt Islamogram.
I always did like killing two birds with one stone...
John F'n Kerry?
You're throwing a light on why orthodox Islam prohibits music!
Make sure to do your rap video in Arabic.
So, he wasn't upset because he thought the attacks were morally wrong, he was upset because he was worried they might get caught.
Nice family.
Certainly. But as we all know,human nature being what it is, that which is forbidden becomes "MUST SEE TV!".
I think there's more of an Islamic sub-culture (people far more open to the West and western ideas, but having to indulge themselves furtively and secretly) than we acknowledge, or even know about. Target that audience (half the population of the Middle East is 16 or under. Get through to as many of themn as possible, and probably within 2 generations, exploding Israeli pizza parlors just might be a thing of the past).
Nothing is guarenteed to to get to a 16 year old boy faster than the combination of rap music, explicit sexual images, and sophomoric humor, presented as a major no-no. Ensure the message contained within it is something beneficial to the West or puts the west in an attractive light, and then let them go at it with reckless abandon.
"Make sure to do your rap video in Arabic...."
Arabic, Persian, Punjabi, Turkic, and whatever else is necessary...
I thought he was talking about their hands
Yet, he's managed to live to run away another day.
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