Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

Download or read book The Osama Bin Laden I Know written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osama bin Laden has haunted the popular psyche and stymied the world's mightiest military for the last five years. Despite President Bush's declaration that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," despite being one of the world's most notorious men, and despite the barrage of coverage surrounding him, Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and shrouded in a fog of anecdote and myth, rumor and fact. Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling book Holy War, Inc., offers an astounding, unparalleled portrait of bin Laden, comprised of Bergen's own interviews with more than fifty people who have known bin Laden personally, from his brother-in-law to his high school English teacher to former members of al Qaeda. The resulting collage of voices and memories affords an unprecedented glimpse into the life and the true nature of the man directly responsible for the largest terror attack in history. No journalist knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before bin Laden became a household name, Bergen met with him, and has since followed his activities closely. After an insightful introduction -- in which Bergen recounts how, at their meeting, bin Laden "presented himself as a soft-spoken cleric, rather than as the firebreathing leader of a global terrorist organization" -- Bergen stands aside to make way for the voices of dozens of people with firsthand, sometimes intimate experience with the al Qaeda leader. Current conventional wisdom seems to be that bin Laden and his organization have faded in importance, but Bergen argues urgently that that perspective is far from accurate -- indeed, each day that bin Laden remains free adds to al Qaeda's public relations triumph, for his legend only grows among his supporters. More concretely, he continues to provide broad strategic guidance for jihadists -- his many statements released on video or audio tape since 9/11, for instance, have exerted direct influence on terrorists' actions. In 2003 the world suffered more significant terror attacks than had occurred in a single year during the previous two decades -- and in 2004, the number of attacks doubled over 2003. In 2004, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Iraq's most ferocious insurgent leader, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden, a sign of the continued importance of al Qaeda's leader. How did Osama bin Laden transform himself from a shy, polite, middle-of-his-class schoolboy to commander of the world's most formidable terrorist organization? Where was bin Laden on 9/11, and what was his reaction to it? How did he escape from Tora Bora? Is al Qaeda a top-down organization or a loose ideological alliance? What is it about this man that draws hundreds of thousands of followers, and makes men willing to fly airplanes into buildings at his command? This definitive and engaging portrait gives the American public its first true, enduring insight into a man who has declared us his greatest enemy.

Download or read book Manhunt written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestselling Holy War, Inc., this is the definitive account of the decade-long manhunt for the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda expert and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen paints a multidimensional picture of the hunt for Osama bin Laden over the past decade, including the operation that killed him. Other key elements of the book will include: - A careful account of Obama's decision-making process as the raid was planned - The fascinating story of a group of women CIA analysts who never gave up assembling the tiniest clues about bin Laden's whereabouts - The untold and action-packed history of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the SEALs - An analysis of what the death of bin Laden means for Al Qaeda and for Obama's legacy Just as Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler was the definitive account of the death of the Nazi dictator, Manhunt is the authoritative, immersive account of the death of the man who organized the largest mass murder in American history.

Download or read book Osama Bin Laden written by Michael Scheuer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 9/11 almost instantaneously remade American politics and foreign policy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, water boarding and Guantanamo are examples of its profound and far-reaching effects. But despite its monumental impact--and a deluge of books about al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism--no one has written a serious assessment of the man who planned it, Osama bin Laden. Available biographies depict bin Laden as an historical figure, the mastermind behind 9/11, but no longer relevant to the world it created. These accounts, Michael Scheuer strongly believes, have contributed to a widespread and dangerous denial of his continuing significance and power. In this book, Scheuer provides a much-needed corrective--a hard-headed, closely reasoned portrait of bin Laden, showing him to be a figure of remarkable leadership skills, strategic genius, and considerable rhetorical abilities. The first head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, where he led the effort to track down bin Laden, Scheuer draws from a wealth of information about bin Laden and his evolution from peaceful Saudi dissident to America's Most Wanted. Shedding light on his development as a theologian, media manipulator, and paramilitary commander, Scheuer makes use of all the speeches and interviews bin Laden has given as well as lengthy interviews, testimony, and previously untranslated documents written by those who grew up with bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, served as his bodyguards and drivers, and fought alongside him against the Soviets. The bin Laden who emerges from these accounts is devout, talented, patient, and ruthless; in other words, a truly formidable and implacable enemy of the West. Acclaim for Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism "Pulls few punches...a fascinating window on America's war with Al Qaeda." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "No serious observer of the war on terrorism can ignore this scathing critique." --Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. "A powerful, persuasive analysis of the terrorist threat and the Bush administration's failed efforts to fight it." --Richard A. Clarke, Washington Post Book World "A fire-breathing denunciation of U.S. counterterrorism policy." --Julian Borger, The Guardian "Presents overwhelmingly persuasive evidence to buttress a host of significant and controversial arguments." --Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly "Destined to become a classic in the field of counterterrorism analysis." --Bruce Hoffman, author of Inside Terrorism

Download or read book Messages to the World written by Osama bin Laden and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda. In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology.

Download or read book No Easy Day written by Mark Owen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Owen is a pseudonym for Matt Bissonnette.

Download or read book The Osama Bin Laden I Know written by Peter L. Bergen and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented oral history of Osama bin Laden's rise to revered leader of al Qaeda. Terrorism analyst Bergen takes the reader onto the battlefields of Afghanistan as bin Laden goes from a shy, quiet teen to a leader; he brings you into Osama's intimate family life as he lives under the radar in Sudan, then Afghanistan; he puts you right in the room for al Qaeda's very first meeting; and he uses eyewitness accounts to relate what bin Laden said, and thought on 9/11 as he watched the twin towers fall. Derived from Bergen's interviews with more than 50 people who know bin Laden personally, from his high school teacher to an early al Qaeda member who later became a US informant, this book recounts individual experiences with the man who has declared the U.S., and its allies, his greatest enemies.--From publisher description.

Download or read book Osama bin Laden written by Elaine Landau and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost exactly ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, An elite team of U.S. special forces stunned the world with a dramatic and daring feat. In this fascinating account, learn more about the leader of the al-Qaeda network And The U.S. efforts that finally brought the world's most feared terrorist to justice.

Download or read book The Killing of Osama Bin Laden written by Seymour M Hersh and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.

Download or read book The Finish written by Mark Bowden and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller: The true behind-the-scenes story of the manhunt for the 9/11 mastermind is “a page-turner” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). From the author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968, this is a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Mark Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda—a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track—demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war—the fusion of intel from various agencies and on-the-ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. Bowden shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the president had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish. “In-depth interviews with Obama and other insiders reveal a White House on edge, facing top-secret options, white-knuckle decisions, and unforeseen obstacles . . . Bowden weaves together accounts from Obama and top decision-makers for the full story behind the daring operation.” —Vanity Fair “The most accessible and satisfying book yet written on the climactic event in the United States’ long war against al Qaeda.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book The Osama Bin Laden I Know written by Peter Bergen and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Encyclopaedia Britannica written by Hugh Chisholm and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 1016 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Exile written by Adrian Levy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Startling and scandalous, this is an intimate insider's story of Osama bin Laden's retinue in the ten years after 9/11, a family in flight and at war. From September 11, 2001 to May 2, 2011, Osama Bin Laden evaded intelligence services and special forces units, drones and hunter killer squads. The Exile tells the extraordinary inside story of that decade through the eyes of those who witnessed it: bin Laden's four wives and many children, his deputies and military strategists, his spiritual advisor, the CIA, Pakistan's ISI, and many others who have never before told their stories. Investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy gained unique access to Osama bin Laden's inner circle, and they recount the flight of Al Qaeda's forces and bin Laden's innocent family members, the gradual formation of ISIS by bin Laden's lieutenants, and bin Laden's rising paranoia and eroding control over his organization. They also reveal that the Bush White House knew the whereabouts of bin Laden's family and Al Qaeda's military and religious leaders, but rejected opportunities to capture them, pursuing war in the Persian Gulf instead, and offer insights into how Al Qaeda will attempt to regenerate itself in the coming years. While we think we know what happened in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, we know little about the wilderness years that led to that shocking event. As authoritative in its scope and detail as it is propuslively readable, The Exile is a landmark work of investigation and reporting.

Download or read book Countdown Bin Laden written by Chris Wallace and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the final months of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long wars with al-Qaeda and its descendants, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive

Download or read book Holy War Inc written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CNN's terrorism analyst examines Osama bin Laden's global terrorist network, al-Queda, discussing its operations and mission, the planning and execution of specific terrorist acts, and future threats from militant Islamic movements.

Download or read book Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden written by Morgan Spurlock and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and director Morgan Spurlock, who volunteered his body as a guinea pig for the fast food industry in the hit documentary Super Size Me, now sets his sights even higher in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? Spurlock is a jittery father-to-be with a simple question: If OBL is behind 9/11 and all the ensuing worldwide chaos, then why can’t we just catch him? And furthermore, why is his message so compelling to so many people? So the intrepid Spurlock kisses his anxious wife goodbye and–armed with a complete lack of knowledge, experience, or expertise–sets out to make the world safe for infantkind and find the most wanted man on earth. After boning up on his basic knowledge of OBL, Islam, and the Global War on Terror–and learning how to treat “sucking chest wounds” in a “Surviving Hostile Regions” training course–he hits the Osama trail. He zigzags the globe, drawing ever closer to the heart of darkness near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where OBL is rumored to be hiding. Along the way he interviews imams and princes, refugees and soldiers, academics and terrorists. He visits European ghettos where youth aspire to global jihad, breaks the Ramadan fast with Muslims in Cairo, rides in the bomb squad van in Tel Aviv, and writes his blood type on his Kevlar vest at a U.S. base outside of Kandahar. And then the fun really starts. Companion to the acclaimed documentary, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? delves even deeper. What readers come away with is possibly the first-ever funny book about terrorism, as well as a greater understanding of a conflict that has cast a shadow across America and the world. www.whereisobl.com