Regarding a February 16, 2003, statement from bin Laden: “It’s clear from this that the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, which set the stage for the carving up of the Ottoman empire between the French and the British following the end of World War I, plays the same role for bin Laden that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles did for Adolf Hitler: a humiliating ‘stab-in-the-back’ that must be avenged and reversed.”
– Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 373