Geoff Burling wrote:

Saying that Usama ben Laden is considered by many people as a terrorist doesn't offer anything more than a possible widespread opinion -- unless it is linked to the fact that he is currently hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan from the US government, who are looking for him for that very reason.

A linkage would of course improve such a statement. But if a very large percentage of the population in the West would define OBL as a terrorist, then that opinion is very valid and relevant to an article about him. Like I said before, that widespread opinion about him is one of the major, perhaps /the/ major, reason why he is famous. That type of info needs to go in the lead section of an article about him (probably in the lead paragraph).

Having written more than once words to the efect "it is widely believed that", my excuse is that I can prove this statement, but in the press to get _something_ into Wikipedia, I'll use those 5 words, or a variation on them. However, I also try to qualify those words with something like: "a significant minority, however thinks Y because" or "an eloquent minority dissents". There are people who think Usama ben Laden is a freedom fighter, & I think their reaons are worth noting -- although I may not agree with them.

Adding qualifiers stating counter opinions is always a good thing. I in fact did this for the OBL article but my qualifier stating that 'in large parts of the Islamic world he is viewed as a freedom fighter' was first neutered by somebody taking out "large" and then the whole qualifier was taken out.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)