The Most Wanted Face of Terrorism
By KATE ZERNIKE and MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN
Nw York Times, May 2, 2011
Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan on Sunday, was a son of the Saudi elite whose radical, violent campaign to recreate a seventh-century Muslim empire redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.
With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Bin Laden was elevated to the realm of evil in the American imagination once reserved for dictators like Hitler and Stalin. He was a new national enemy, his face on wanted posters, gloating on videotape, taunting the United States and western civilization.
“Do you want bin Laden dead?” a reporter asked President George W. Bush six days after the 9/11 attacks.
“I want him — I want justice,” the president answered. “And there’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’”
It took nearly a decade before that quest finally ended in Pakistan with the death of bin Laden during a confrontation with American forces who attacked a compound where officials said he had been hiding.
The manhunt was punctuated by what culminated in a December 2001 battle at an Afghan mountain redoubt called Tora Bora, near the border of Pakistan, where Bin Laden and his allies were hiding. Despite days of pounding by American bombers, bin Laden escaped. For more than nine years afterward, he remained an elusive, shadowy figure frustratingly beyond the grasp of his pursuers and thought to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan and plotting new attacks.
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Related:
Bin Laden’s Death is a Historic Triumph, But What Does it Really Mean for al-Qaida? - National Journal
Osama's son also killed in the aid - Reuters
WikiLeaks reveal bin Laden's post-9/11 movements - AFP
Osama Bin Laden Killed in U.S. Operation - Bloomberg
Full Remarks: President Obama on the Death of Osama Bin Laden - TIME
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