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Are There bin Laden Doubles?
Monday, November 19, 2001
By Tony Karon / TIME

Will the real Osama bin Laden please stand up?

Kill one bin Laden and a hundred will stand up to take his place -- that's been the boilerplate slogan among the Saudi terror mogul's worldwide supporters these past six weeks. But if the latest boast from al-Qaeda is anything to go by, they may mean it in more than just the I-am-Spartacus sense. The London-based Arab newspaper Al Hayat last Saturday quoted an al-Qaeda spokesman claiming that bin Laden has recruited at least ten lookalikes over the years, preparing them to play decoy in the same way that Saddam Hussein has reputedly done over the years.

"Even if the American attacks against Afghanistan succeeded in finishing the Taliban movement, they would not succeed in arresting bin Laden," one 'Abdul Noor' told Al Hayat on behalf of the terror network. "Not merely because that is difficult, but because bin Laden has 10 lookalikes. Two of them are north Africans and they all are in Afghanistan." The only physical differences between them, the al-Qaeda man reportedly warned, were birthmarks on their backs.

Bin Laden is no easy clone. He's reputedly six-foot-four, although like NBA centers, terrorists may turn out to be a few inches shorter than their legends. Even at six-two, that would make him stick out like Shaq in downtown Kandahar. Not to mention the fact that he's reputedly traveling with three wives and various offspring in tow. Still, bin Laden's height doesn't exactly make him a freak in the parts of the world from which he hails -- remember, his father was Yemeni rather than Saudi, and al-Qaeda could conceivably have recruited scores where bin Laden was born.
(More: TIME.com News Source)
2001 © Time, Inc.

Not sure about how the arsenal is holding out, but I think we still have -- ‘scores’ of bullets,
Dan