I found this article on Slate that gives an introductory course on the countries of the Middle East, Europe, etc. and their feelings towards bin Laden and the US. I thought it was fairly enlightening in determining "who's who" and "who's with who" in this mess. http://slate.msn.com/pol/01-09-19/pol.asp
Thanks for the article, DoD - very interesting stuff. A couple of things i got from it, one of them being; Bin Laden is a smart man. He realizes the weaknesses and soft spots in other countries and uses it to his advantage. Case in point; he knows Pakistan is at war with India, so he helps send his troops to fight for kashmir. This in turn gets him support in an otherwise moderate and liberal Islamic country. He does the same for Bosnian Muslims in their war with Yugoslavia. Muslim countries he does not have good relations with (ie. Egypt); he trains and sends more troops with the aim of eventually strengthening them to the point where his extremists can overthrow the local governement (ie. Taliban in Afghanistan). He is undoubtedly strenghening and multiplying his network of guerilla's and troops each day to the point where it will be a force to be reckoned (if not already). Furthermore, he is targeting young muslims (ie. Palestinians) and influencing them to adopt his extremist values and therefore claim the future of the Muslim world in the hands of his extremists followers. Ultimately, he wants all the Muslim countries to be run by extremist governments and rally together to fight the rest of the world. I wonder if this guy has actually read the quran; it behooves me that someone who claims to be fighting for the religion can have such a distorted and demented view of Islam. Lets pray that he will be stopped and so that people will stop being brainwashed by him and his network. Azim da Dream
