Peter Bergen Quotes
Bin Laden was intelligent, well-informed, and low key. The people around him treated him with great deference, calling him 'sheikh,' a term of respect.
Bergen, Peter L. Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden. Free Press, 2001.
Slogans taken from posters listing 10 people targeted by Muslim extremists. Most were people who had said or published material that some fundamentalist Muslims had decided were offensive to Islam. One was Charlie Hebdo, the French Publisher who Islamic terrorists murdered later. Note the Americanisms that the terrorist propagandists adopted. The Wanted Dead or Alive was taken from the posters of the American West of the 19th century. The "Yes we can" was lifted from the Barack Obama 2008 campaign slogan. The "Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away" is a takeoff on the American saying "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away." One of the reasons for these Americanisms was that the founding editor was Samir Khan, self-described American traitor.
36 days later, September 11, he did strike, and at the World Trade Center. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing.
36 days later, September 11, he did strike. See {617467} for some of the specific contents. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing. See {637530} and {637533} for two other Bin Laden Warnings that Bush and his team ignored.
Bush claimed he did not remember the conversation. His incoming National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was also briefed about bin Laden by the Clinton anti-terrorism director, Richard Clarke. The Bush Administration ignored the warnings until bin Laden struck on 9-11
Peter Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst, New America's vice president, and as a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, was the first time that bin Laden was interviewed by Western media.
