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Robert Fisk: Bin Laden Had Lost Relevance

Source: TVNZ

Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had lost relevance, and the chance of reprisal attacks following the terrorist leader’s death are slim, says veteran journalist Robert Fisk.

Fisk, who interviewed bin Laden three times before the September 11 terror attacks, says he was little more than “a name and an icon”.

“He was never a hands-on person, he never planned operations,” Fisk told TV ONE’s Close Up programme.

“Secondly, he was a middle-aged man. He’d become rather vain, clearly. In his videotapes he began to wear embroidered clothes I noticed. He used to dress much more humbly.” read more

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What next after bin Laden death?

Source: Al Jazeera

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s death is politically momentous for US president Barack Obama – witness the cheering crowds which gathered outside the White House even before his speech on Sunday night.

Its impact on al-Qaeda, though, is harder to measure.

Peter Bergen, an American journalist, said on CNN that bin Laden’s death marked “the end of the war on terror”. But many other analysts would disagree: Al-Qaeda, after all, is a very different organisation in 2011 than in 2001, with a new cadre of leaders and a wider range of affiliate groups. read more