U.S. Navy SEALS took out the worlds’ foremost terrorist when they killed Osama bin Laden one year ago. But they also scored the largest batch of senior terrorist material in history, and Thursday we saw the release of 17 of those letters, portraying al Qaeda as an organization on the edge.
The total cache of material seized in the SEALS raid includes about 6,000 documents written between 2006 and 2011, recovered from “five computers, dozens of hard drives and more than 100 storage devices” reports CNN, and include the letters just released by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.
The letters expose bin Laden as “a terrorist on the edge” according to CNN, just another aging leader, dealing with typical organizational and personal problems in extraordinary context.
He mentions using Just for Men hair dye and viagra, worrying about al Qaeda’s media image and the increasing chaos of al Qaeda’s far-flung operations.
He called for increased coordination, self-reviews from al Qaeda leaders, and apologies to fellow Muslims for internal attacks; he felt these had damaged Arab support for al Qaeda and should be addressed publicly.
Bin Laden continued to advocate for airplane attacks, and wanted to target President Obama and General Petraeus, deeming Joe Biden as unfit to lead the U.S.
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen suggested that bin Laden was an “inveterate micromanager but was also someone almost delusional in his belief that his organization could still force a change in American foreign policies in the Muslim world.”
To read more click here.
