The Freedom Tower

The world first became fully aware of Osama bin Laden 10 years ago today, The National Reports. On August 7, 1998 simultaneous car bombs exploded at the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killing hundreds, a report in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) newspaper says. “Responsibility for the atrocities was claimed by bin Laden and his al Qa’eda organization. The attacks were supposedly a protest against the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the first Gulf War, and Israel’s suppression of Palestinians with American collusion. It was precisely the type of notoriety bin Laden was looking for, having declared war on the US two years prior.
Al Qa’eda had been responsible for several other attacks meant to punish or terrorise the US, including the 1993 lorry bombing of the World Trade Center, and two attacks on American targets in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996. But the death toll and the spectacular nature of the embassy bombings put bin Laden on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

The group’s efforts continued with several more spectacles of carnage. In 2000 the USS Cole, a US destroyer, was targeted off the coast of Yemen. Seventeen soldiers and sailors were killed. And on September 11, 2001 the world was again rocked when three passenger airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands. The next day George Bush appeared before the US Congress and declared war on terror — the war that bin Laden had been looking for.
Much has happened in the first 10 years of this war, so much so that it can be hard now to recall the sense of security that prevailed in the mid-1990s, the Cold War having ended at the beginning of the decade. Real wars have taken place in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein have both been overthrown. Terrorist bombs have killed hundreds in Bali, Madrid and London – and even more in Iraq.”
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