Turns out #4 is wrong. At least wrong about the destruction of the giant Buddhas.
source
On March 18, The New York Times reports, that a Taliban envoy said the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation. The New York Times also added, however, that other reports "have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated."
Then Taliban Ambassador-at-large, (and current Yale student) Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out during the famine in Afghanistan after a Swedish government earmarked money to be provided to restore the statues and refused to allow it to be used to aid Afghan Children. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues" [4].
On April 19th 2004, in an interview to a Pakistani journalist Mohammad Shehzad, Mullah Mohammad Omar said the following, "I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings -- the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas' destruction."
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