Score: 8
"Pretty Good"
date: November 2, 2001
Ok, listen up.. The reason Bin Laden hates us boils down to one thing.. religion. Quite simply, he thinks that US troops (infidels) being stationed in Saudi Arabia is an afront to God (and also, we're in the way, he'd like to see absolute islamic law across the entire middle east, that can't happen with up propping up governments there). Never mind that they're there to keep Iraq in line, never mind that they were _asked_ to be there.
As far as Bin Laden is concerned, Saudi Arabia isn't the inflexible, islamic theocracy that it really is, he believes that it's soft and corrupt and needs a stricter implimentation of Islamic Law (think "Taliban").
His concern for the Palastinians, or the the Iraqis is nothing more than pandering, he doesn't give a damn about them and would sacrifice them all in an instant if it'd get the US out of the middle east.
Yes, some of the governments there are bad, without us around they would fall, but they'd be replaced with somthing even worse, e.g. Taliban-like governments all across the arabian peninsula.
It gets worse, with an industrial power base, they could threaten countries _outside_ the middle east, a number of times they've been heard discussing "total islamic law as far as Moscow and Washington DC".. With resources and an industrial base to build a high tech military, such threats could become serious.
Bin Laden and his cohorts aren't just madmen, they're megalomaniacs and they have a plan..