John Avison: Osama Bib Laden as a symbol of evil

Dec 10 2009 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

WHERE’S Osama? Osama Bin Laden is the man who admitted setting up the 9/11 attacks on New York but probably had a hand in numerous earlier bombings of American targets abroad.

Nobody knows where he is, though the CIA has been pretty sure for several years now that he’s hiding in an area not much bigger than Scotland on the borders of north-west Pakistan and south-east Afghanistan.

Like Scotland, this is a hilly place full of bearded men who want independence from the country that foots their infrastructure bills.

Unlike Scotland, this area in the general vicinity of Kabul and Peshawar is dry, dusty and full of goats.

And while Scotland has Alex Salmond, he is no match for Osama in elusiveness and as a target for Establishment hatred and does not have to live in a cave.

There are a good few computer games you can play where Osama pops up in an unpredictable way at a mass of cave mouths and you have to take a shot at him.

It’s a game of skill and rapid reactions, but however good you are and however many times you hit him he comes up for another round of hide and seek when you start the game again.

Is Osama still somewhere on the axis of evil?

The problem with an axis – and I sure George W Bush didn’t realise this – is that an axis is like a piece of string, as long or as short as you want.

I think Bush thought that all you had to do was find this axis and drop a guided bunker bomb on it.

He would have been better saying that Osama was at the singularity of evil or even at the axle of evil with the world’s other bad boys spinning round him.

It’s possible that Osama is dead of a kidney disease, that he was killed in action or in an earthquake.

All these rumours have circulated but no-one seems to be able to nail them.

The wicked apostle of death has become the subject of legend.