The most common cause of something like that would be something like diabetes and hypertension. Once that's happened, if you're separated from your dialysis machine -- and incidentally, dialysis machines require electricity, they're going to require clean water, they're going to require a sterile setting -- infection is a huge risk with that. If you don't have all those things and a functioning dialysis machine, it's unlikely that you'd survive beyond several days or a week at the most.
ZAHN: If he had all these things you're talking about to keep the dialysis machine running, how much help does he need around him to administer the treatment?
It was pretty clear to everyone except, perhaps, some factions of the American government, who may know one thing and say another anyway, that bin Laden had advanced kidney disease, a disease that would be extremely hard to treat in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan, a disease that can lead to death in even the best of circumstances.
Wait, It Gets Worse
According to a January 28 report by Dan Rather on CBS News, on September 10. 2001, one day before that fateful September day, bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi. He may well have been in that same hospital during and after 9/11. All of this fuels immense speculation about the extent of cooperation between al Qaeda and Pakistan, as well as underscoring that bin Laden was a sick, sick man. Here is a portion of the transcript:
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS's Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here's the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
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