ElMondoHummus
0.25 short of being half-witted
It's pretty much a myth. For starters, reporter Peter Bergen, who's interviewed OBL several times, says he doubts that the myth is true.So did OBL need dialysis machine treatments or not?
Google Books Link "The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qaeda's Leader"When I saw him last he was in excellent health. he was walking. He was healthy. I didn't see any evidence of kidney disease. I didn't see any evidence of dialysis.
Over the next few years, bin Laden would appear alive and well in a string of audio and video tapes. In December 2004, when Gen. Musharraf again sat down with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, he all but reversed himself.
In fact, there is a mountain of evidence that bin Laden is not on dialysis.
No medical report has been produced that shows bin Laden is on dialysis.
No reporter who has actually met bin Laden has seen the archterrorist hooked up to a dialysis machine or heard him talk about it. Robert Fisk, the only Western journalist to interview bin Laden three times, makes no mention of dialysis.
Peter Bergen led a CNN team into Afghanistan to interview bin Laden in 1997. Bin Laden appeared healthy and strong; neither the reporters nor bin Laden mentioned dialysis or kidney trouble.
Even bin Laden's longtime associates dispute the kidney ailment meme. Saudi newspaper editor Khaled Batarfi has known bin Laden for two decades, ever since the two were neighbors in the Saudi port city of Jeddah. He told the Sunday Tasmanian, an Australian newspaper, that bin Laden "does not suffer from kidney disease."
Foreign government officials who have met bin Laden also insist that he has no problems with his kidneys. Bin Laden lived in Sudan from 1991 to May 1996. I interviewed political leaders and intelligence officials there who knew him. Gutbi al-Mahdi, Sudan's former intelligence chief, told me bin Laden had no health problems during his time in Sudan. In fact, every Sudanese I spoke with denied that bin Laden had any health problems, let alone a kidney ailment requiring dialysis.
Bin Laden himself is of the same opinion. Hamid Mir, an intrepid Pakistani journalist who writes for the Pakistani daily Dawn, landed one of the only two authentic post?September 11 interviews with the world's most wanted man.
In the course of the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Mir asked bin Laden about his kidneys: "A French newspaper has claimed that you have a kidney problem and have secretly gone to Dubai for treatment last year [2000]. Is that correct?" Bin Laden responded: "My kidneys are all right. I did not go to Dubai last year. One British newspaper has published an imaginary interview with an Islamabad dateline with one of my sons in Saudi Arabia. All this is false."

