Cyber Warriors Gun for Bin Laden October 19, 2001 08:43 AM ET By Sinead O'Hanlon LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. armed forces are not the only ones taking aim at Osama bin Laden. The weird, wacky -- and tacky -- world of the Internet has allowed surfers to join the chase for the world's most wanted man. While the real bin Laden may have eluded capture, his virtual likeness has not, with an endless stream of Web sites and emailed jokes, games and pictures allowing keyboard cowboys to shoot, bomb or just ridicule the man Washington accuses of masterminding last month's attacks. Many of the sites are violent, but most have an underlying element of humor that players say provides relief in the trauma that has followed the September 11 attacks on the United States. "I really shouldn't find these things funny and amusing but the truth is I do," said Haitham Dayeh, a Lebanese advertising executive who works in Dubai. "I guess it boosts morale." New York based company CyberExtruder (www.cyberextruder.com) said it had seen a massive surge in users since it created a virtual copy, or "skin," of bin Laden that can be downloaded and imported onto a range of video games. Company chief executive Larry Gardner told Reuters that the bin Laden character has been downloaded more than 120,000 times since it was posted on September 25 -- with less than a dozen complaints from people who thought the "skin" in bad taste. Gardner said people wanted to poke fun at bin Laden and "diminish" the enemy in the same way the Allies did with Adolf Hitler in cartoons during World War Two. "One of the things we found to be most interesting about this phenomenon is that, while the majority of the downloads are coming from the United States, nearly as many are coming from other countries." he said. By popular demand, the company has also posted likenesses of a camouflage-clad U.S President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- the two principal Western warriors in the terror crackdown -- so users can organize their own global war. YO MAMMA, OSAMA At www.twistedhumor.com, players of "Yo Mamma, Osama" head to the desert to hunt bin Laden with rockets and cannonballs. Twistedhumor's marketing manager Jason Day said the game had been downloaded more than 100,000 times in its first 12 hours and was on track to be one of the net's most downloaded files. "The game was created as a catalyst for charitable donations to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund," Day said. "But we feel that laughter can, at times, be a great healer when dealing with tragedy. Charitable intentions aside, good taste has never been an Internet forte. A spoof video on www.newgrounds.com that pits a flatulent Bush against an equally gassy bin Laden is among the less bloody offerings. At the other extreme, one animated email doing the rounds allows the user to feed a howling bin Laden into a wood chipper and revel in the inevitable results. "There is a risk of stigmatizing the whole community merely by association. Jokes are fine, but there is a line and it is always difficult to find that line," said Mahmud al Rashid, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. One surfer in Dubai said mock photos of Bush and bin Laden making love were doing the rounds in Jordan and Kuwait. Questionable jokes were also whizzing between Europe and the Far East, while mobile phones from Pakistan to Britain have registered text messages purporting to come from bin Laden. "Whether it's black humor or light relief, it acts like therapy," said one London office worker addicted to an online bin Laden shooting gallery. "Naturally, when people find it difficult to cope with reality, there's nothing better than humor to remind us that life's too short for worrying." Nor is the vilification limited to cyberspace. There is now a best-selling bin Laden toilet paper, gun targets and even a song doing the rounds to the tune of the old Harry Belafonte classic -- "Hey Mr. Taliban, Taliban banana, Air Force come and it flatten my home." Last week pictures of Sesame Street favorite Bert popped up on a bin Laden placard in anti-U.S. protests in Bangladesh. The images were projected around a terrified world, providing some respite from anthrax, air campaigns and all the global grieving. "Humor is the only thing that keeps you sane in this mess," said one Dutch Internet user who has sampled the bin Laden humor. "Mockery is one thing you can be sure will infuriate any fundamentalist. If you can joke, you know you're free."