To many Americans, bin Laden, 47, is a mysterious figure: thin, bearded and over 1.8m tall.
The US links him to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 terrorist attacks on two US embassies in east Africa and last October's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
Few are ready to criticize Bush or his advisers for using strong language, given the enormity of the slaughter of innocents that French President Jacques Chirac has called "beyond crime ... there are no words to qualify it."
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