The Bin Laden I have known. Right, well, hopefully that's got some attention. I thought I'd have a go at commenting on the BBC documentary last night. It wasn't a bad presentation really (ie, it was interesting). I'm always a fan of first-hand accounts. On the other hand when contributors have generally received audiences with Bin Laden at his discretion, and they included Abdel Bari-Atwan of Al Jazeera, Robert Fisk and others, one might wonder whether Bin Laden has been planning how his persona was going to be presented to the West and selecting his contacts carefully.

The main thrust of a critique would be the that the selection of material was slanted heavily towards an interpretation that Bin Laden's motivation arises out of the actions of the US and Israel. Incidents that somehow were omitted included the 1993 WTC attack and the killing of Daniel Pearl. One got the sense of a timeline based on their chosen anecdotes that required Bin Laden's grievances to be growing through the nineties. One got little sense of Bin Laden's broader thinking, beyond the desire to disable the last remaining infidel superpower.

One strange thing that came outside the stream of interviews was the implication that Bin Laden had never been to the West, let alone lived there. This was most bizarre. They said that he stayed in the Middle East and attended Jeddah university, studying economics (but what did he do in the holidays?). This tied in with the statement on the BBC website that he began life in a 'humble' manner. It's odd because everyone knows (and is not wrong) that bin Laden's family are one of the richest in Saudi Arabia- which means decadent, too. It is inconceivable that Bin Laden hasn't travelled to the West and made observations. He's probably shopped in Harrods. Elsewhere in the film they admitted that Bin Laden was wealthy, and looked upon as a financier in Afghanistan. If Bin Laden hasn't travelled then I'm a Dutchman. They pointed to the photo (well distributed on the web) of his family members in the West, and said that Bin laden was not among them and that the idea that Osama was Westernised was a myth. 'So', I found myself asking, 'he never visited his family abroad then?'

As I've mentioned this programme was overhwelmingly anecdotal, which made this non-anecdotal assertion more extraordinary still. BTW, Dan commented in a below thread about the Panorama programme last night on Saddam Hussein's time as a fugitive. I saw the opening of that programme, and it looked truly awful. When will the Beeb run a documenary on the staging of Arab demonstrations, examining whether the 'Arab Street' rises up in response largely to monetary incentives?