Word: osama
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...That may be because the Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks among them have nowhere to go, save Guantanamo Bay. But their ferocity may have another cause. In the caves on the snow-covered ridges may hide some top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including, possibly, one of the big three, Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahiri. "There's no question that these people didn't just happen to all meet there," says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "There's clearly leadership involved...
...There was no time this impulse to aggrandize the bad was more evident than on September 11, when Osama bin Laden was instantly and predictably elevated into the brotherhood of the brilliantly wicked. Look! the commentators said. See how he got our attention with the first plane so the world would be watching when the second one hit? (As if two planes taking off at different times and flying different routes could have struck the buildings at precisely the same moment even if the amateur pilots at the stick had wanted them to.) Beware! the news people warned...
...only when Osama's look-at-me videos were released that Americans got a chance to take the true measure of the man. As we did, he seemed to shrink on sight, tediously repeating his deeply held belief that the world would rejoice as America burned. But America wasn't burning and the world wasn't rejoicing and wasn't Osama starting to look a bit gaunt, muttering his threats into his camcorder as his followers scattered and his sponsors fell...
...lesson of Osama - the shrunken, lower-case Osama - should have been one history had taught us already. Benito Mussolini seemed like a worthy member of the first Axis of Evil, until the country got a close look at him in the newsreels, comically soaking up the ovation of his people with his fists on his hips and his chin thrust out and that odd little party hat perched on his head. It was only then that we started to ask, Is this guy kidding or what? Nikita Kruschev was similarly supposed to scare the daylights...
...Laden, some photographs of him, a letter detailing al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and a list of local chieftains who are taking bribes. The tape was whisked off to Bagram for analysis. Does Khan think bin Laden is up in the hills? "I don't know about Osama," he told TIME, "but a lot of his friends are there...