Former secretary to Osama bin Ladin, Nasser “Hathaway” al-Wahishi, left behind his collection of notes surreptitiously titled “the well tempered bombadier”, a collection of notes on the solo terrorist featuring the ideal of ‘if it isn’t baroque, don’t fix it’.

Known in the early years as “wishy washy wahishi” because of his tendency to change his mind when under duress, it was no surprise to any of his contemporaries when he attached himself to that rising star known as Osama bin Ladin. While most great men of the time would have said “I am lost without my Boswell”, Osama thought it was to counterculture (for an Islamist) and decided instead to call Nasser “my Hathaway”. Not understanding until later in life who Jane Hathaway was, it was to late and the nickname has persisted to this day.

Items of note in “the well tempered bombadier” include not only the basics of bomb making (including the failed attempt of the ‘suicide yak’) but also how to win the hearts and minds of those you want to conquer. He expounds at length on the subject of diaper allocations: huggie vs pampers vs natural cloth, and the impact on the environment. An entire chapter on ‘environmentally friendly Jihad’ lends itself to the importance of the carbon footprint of Jihad and the economics of carbon offsets. In a critical self examination of the attempt to blow up a Detroit bound flight in 2009, the unassuming ‘Hathaway’ remarks “what kind of idiots were we to think that keeping anyone from getting to Detroit would be a bad thing”.

aug 10, 2013