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Terror Networks
Binny had a gun ready in case he was ever about to be captured
2005-12-07
Osama bin Laden has vowed never to be taken alive and once gave his bodyguard a pistol with two bullets to shoot him if it appeared that he might be caught, according to a new book of interviews with people who know the al Qaeda leader.

The book excerpted in the new issue of Vanity Fair, "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History" by CNN security expert Peter Bergen, also says bin Laden intensely dislikes deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein .

After the 2001 attacks on the United States carried out by al Qaeda the Bush administration made much of what it said were links between Saddam and bin Laden‘s organization, citing this as one justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq .

Bush said in a speech in October 2002 that "we‘ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases."

Bin Laden‘s Pakistani biographer, Hamid Mir, told Bergen that when he interviewed bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader "condemned Saddam Hussein ... He gave such kind of abuses that it was very difficult for me to write," he said.

In an interview with Bergen, bin Laden‘s former chief bodyguard said, "Sheikh Osama gave me a pistol and made me his personal bodyguard. The pistol had only two bullets, for me to kill Shiekh Osama with in case we were surrounded or he was about to fall into the enemy‘s hands, so that he would not be caught alive."

Bergen, who met bin Laden in 1997, interviewed more than 50 people over eight years to produce the book which will be published next month.

In the Vanity Fair excerpt, Bergen said that contrary to claims from the Bush administration, bin Laden was in the mountainous eastern Afghanistan region of Tora Bora after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001.

Reports at the time said U.S.-backed Afghan forces scoured the area in a vain bid to catch bin Laden and his top lieutenants, although there has never been any U.S. confirmation that he was definitely there.

Abu Jaafar al-Kuwaiti, an eyewitness, posted an account about the morning of December 10, 2001, on al-Qaeda‘s main Web site, writing: "We received the horrifying news! The trench of Sheikh Osama had been destroyed; the trench where Sheikh used to come out every day to check the moujahedeen situation and follow the news of the battle. God kept Osama bin Laden alive, because he left the bunker only two nights to an area only 200 metres (650 feet) away."
Posted by:Dan Darling

#7  LOL!
Posted by: Red Dog   2005-12-07 20:38  

#6  Ima feelin a ballad working it's way to the surface......oops...just indigestion. Belay the ballad.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2005-12-07 11:36  

#5  Osama bin Laden has vowed never to be taken alive and once gave his bodyguard a pistol with two bullets to shoot him if it appeared that he might be caught,

Bullshit, this is obviously an attempt to generate a legend, nobody would give a single bodyguard a single pistol with only two bullets in it unless he had no more bullets.
Since we can plainly see that Osama had a whole stockpile of ammo this article leaps instantly to the "Bullshit" category.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2005-12-07 08:26  

#4  Peter Bergen = terr symp.
Posted by: Thotch Ebbomoque7223   2005-12-07 06:55  

#3  Peter Bergen, Schwartz Fellow

NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION

Vanity Fair

He's also CNN's terrorism analyst

thoughts

Posted by: Red Dog   2005-12-07 05:54  

#2  who gives a flying fck what shooter he has - he wont use it anyway the scared little rat just like Sammy hid in his sewerage drain or as MSM called it a 'spider hole' , hahahahaha
Posted by: Shep UK   2005-12-07 04:40  

#1  Being his father was a tribesman from Yemen. Shouldn't he have had a rhino-handled dagger instead of a whimpy gun?
Posted by: 3dc   2005-12-07 03:07  

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