Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian exile living in Afghanistan, is reputed to be the leader of a terrorist organization known as al-Qaeda. Evidence points to bin Laden and al-Qaeda as responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Bin Laden is also believed to have organized the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Bin Laden feels that the presence of U.S. troops on Arabian soil and American support for Israel are affronts to Islam and he has made it his mission to force the withdrawal of the American presence from the Middle East.

On October 7, 2001, the United States and its allies began bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for harboring bin Laden and...