Bin Laden was pretty ill by December 2001. As CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen - who met Bin Laden and studied him and his operation for several years - told CNN in 2002:
He's aged enormously between '97 and October of last year.
This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he's really, by December he's looking pretty terrible. But by December, of course, that tape that was aired then, he's barely moving the left side of his body. So he's clearly got diabetes. He has low blood pressure. He's got a wound in his foot. He's apparently got dialysis ... for kidney problems.
I mean, this is a man who has a number of health problems, apart from the fact that anybody running around the Afghan mountains is not going to be in great shape.
The guy in the newly-released videos looks healthier than Bin Laden actually looked 9 1/2 years ago, even though he sustained injury in Tora Bora, was on the run for a while, and then was holed up inside a house for years.
