He was pure evil.
Osama bin Laden died as the world’s most-wanted man, a remorseless mass murderer who’d made it his mission in life to bring death and destruction to the United States.
“We declared jihad against the US government because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical,” bin Laden said after the 9/11 attacks, urging Muslims to rise up and join a global battle between “the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels”
He had long seen slaughter as a perfectly appropriate tool — one he wielded with abandon over the past 20 years in Somalia, Kenya, Afghanistan and Iraq.
READ OBAMA’S FULL STATEMENT ON BIN LADEN’S DEATH
“There are two types of terror, good and bad,” he rationalized of his bloodlust. “What we are practicing is good terror.”
His “good terror” led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC, on Sept. 11, 2001, an atrocity he gloated about in videotaped messages.
“Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs,” he said.
Despite failing health, an international dragnet and a $25 million bounty on his head, bin Laden eluded capture for a decade.
Photos of him, in Arab headdress or in camouflage fatigues with a Kalashnikov rifle at his side, circulated around the world.
But pressure from the US manhunt left him a marginalized figurehead who would release occasional taped diatribes on a range of topics, from the war in Iraq to US politics, the subprime mortgage crisis and even climate change.
When he made the FBI’s most-wanted list in 1998, the 6-foot-6 bin Laden was identified with eight aliases, including “the Prince” and “the Director.”
Much of his background is still shrouded in mystery. The first CIA report said he was born in 1955, but it was later determined that he was born in 1957.
He was either the 17th — or 25 — of Saudi billionaire Mohammad Awad bin Laden’s 52 — or 54 — children, and grew up in the Red Sea port of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.
When he was 10, his father died in a helicopter accident — apparently due to an error by his American pilot. Much of what happened in his teenage years is in dispute.
One version says he was quiet, studious and devout, with a white Chrysler as the only sign of his wealth. Another said he was womanizer and drinker, who frequented casinos and bars when he visited Lebanon in the early 1970s.
At 22, he left Saudi Arabia for Afghanistan to help the mujahedeen guerrillas fight back invading Soviet troops.
He saw himself as a guiding spirit in a holy war.
“In this jihad, the biggest benefit was the myth of the superpower was destroyed, not only in my mind but in the minds of all Muslims,” he said.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, bin Laden returned to his day job in his father’s construction firm — but continued with his calling.
He had been creating a network of radical allies since 1979, but beginning with his return to Jiddah, he actively recruited Afghan war vets looking for the next jihad.
Some eventually went on to Chechnya, Kosovo and the Philippines and became charter members of “The Base” — or, as it was known in Arabic, al Qaeda.
He was outraged when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 — and more so when Saudi officials, fearing they were next, invited American troops to protect them under Operation Desert Shield.
Saudi authorities had rejected bin Laden’s offer to lead a Muslim army into Kuwait, and became so alarmed by his connections to anti-government elements, they expelled him in 1991.
He called for a jihad against the United States, despite the fact that it had spent billions of dollars bankrolling the Afghan resistance in which he had fought.
Bin Laden found a new home with exiled Egyptian radicals in Sudan, taking much of his fortune with him. The Saudi government froze the rest of his assets.
Most of his huge family disowned him and he seemed to be another virtually unknown exile — until he claimed responsibility for trying to blow up US soldiers in Yemen in 1992.
The following year, al Qaeda registered its first major successes. In February, six Muslim militants with links to bin Laden orchestrated the bombing of the World Trade Center. The building did not collapse, as the plotters hoped.
Bin Laden was the prime suspect in bombings of US servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, as well as attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224.
In October 2000, al Qaeda suicide bombers rammed the USS Cole warship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
Bin Laden made a chilling “Mein Kampf”-like introduction when he appeared in an interview on CNN in March 1997.
He presented himself as a new Saladin, who would lead the world’s 1 billion-plus Muslims against the infidels.
The United States “wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us based not on what God has revealed,” he said.
A year later, he issued a second fatwah, saying all Americans, including civilians, should be killed.
Graduates of the Afghan camps tried to emulate him — but failed.
One of them, an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam, said his explosives training helped him prepare a bomb that was to go off at the LA airport during millennium observances at the end of 1999. But the plot was aborted.
Bin Laden was believed to be spending $50,000 a day on al Qaeda, and his fortune was evaporating. Yet his greatest crime, the Sept. 11 attacks, cost less than $20,000, according to estimates.
The World Trade Center was still burning when US officials identified bin Laden as the most likely suspect.
“There is only one group that has ever indicated that it has this kind of ability, and that’s Osama bin Laden’s,” former NATO commander Wesley Clark said hours after the attacks.
Within weeks, US forces and their Afghan allies had routed bin Laden’s Taliban protectors and were closing in on him.
On Nov. 15, 2001, he got into his Corolla before it merged into a huge convoy of cars, trucks and armored vehicles that left Jalalabad for the caves of Tora Bora, 30 miles away.
One of the last times he was seen was Nov. 26, when he appeared there to rally the troops. “Hold your positions firm and be ready for martyrdom,” he said, then walked off into the foothill forests — and vanished.
Although he suffered kidney disease, an enlarged heart and other ailments, bin Laden is believed to have fled by foot into Pakistan, with a few loyalists.
Since then, there had only been rumors about him — that he had died of disease, had been killed by an earthquake or was trapped in a Pakistani hideout — and occasional, defiant videos.
As it turned out, he’d been hiding in a mansion north of Islamabad for an undetermined amount of time before being gunned down by US forces yesterday.
One of his estimated 23 children was with him and slain as well. He had four wives.
“His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity,” President Obama said.