the word fascinating rarely sprints to my mind after watching a documentary - perhaps I am too harsh of a critic, perhaps it is always challenging to imagine what a truly fascinating documentary would be like. unlike a movie where the main elements of success such as camera work or depth of lead roles are generally agreed upon, there is a lack of even a basic consensus of what the purpose of a documentary should be. as a genre, documentary is similar to freestyle music, it is not considered prizeworthy because it obeys by established rules of cinematography but precisely because it does not. Is a stellar documentary one that claims to show 'reality' either fundamentally by changing or confirming our perception of it or one that, aka michae moore, does not pretend to be 'objective' - one that is truthful to its angle, or one can say its bias. being a sceptic that i am, i dont believe in bias free documentaries. or for anything else bias free for that matter.

preables aside, the CNN documentary in the footsteps of osama bin laden was nothing but excellent. not for its camera work, and not for the rarity of its perspective but simply for the fact that it showed one of the most sought after man of our times not as an enigma, eternally sought after and inaccessibe, but someone has been inaccessible to the international intelligence community only. from circles within the saudi regime, to insiders within multiple mulsim regimes ranging from africa's sudan to pakistan and afghanistan, osama bin laden has been openly operating until the end of 1990s. what's more, he has been frank with a number of journalists, western and muslim, in pursuit of his brilliantly executed media campaign. time and time again, he has given excusives to cnn and abc journalists, in fact it is almost surprising he has not gotten to the neo-con media like fox news a chance to convince its audience. i guess mr bin laden thought he would be preching to the converted and there he would probably be right again.

the documentary is also excellent because it does not show osama as a ideologically blind, but as rational.
Unlike the radical Egyptian clerics of Muslim Brotherhood of the likes of Qutb, by whom he has been allegidly influenced, Osama appear nothing like a rabid fanatic spewing hatred. On the contrary, it made me think that in the absence of context of 9/11, of khandahar, and pakistan, walking down the street, he would seem like a man of peace. And this brought me to wonder whether being ideologically defunct and radical can be reconciled with being rational. looking at osama's interviews with his cooly determined face and his almost smiling eyes certainly conveys an image of somene rather rational. a man who has put together a training manual for jihad and established vacation schemes for al qaida is as rationally calculated as it gets. he is not the sheikh bakhri, nor the mohmmed khomeini of our times. funny thing, could it be that in war as in business it is the same qualities that matter, the variable being the ideology. if so, osama could be a profitable businessman. by exploiting other's religious ideas, he achieves his own. substite some words here, and mr. bin laden is not so far from the western pursuit of logic as we would like to believe - could it just be the same equation with different variables?