Al-Reuters journalist Saeed Ali Achakzai files a report from the viewpoint of the friends of Osama bin Laden, who wish the mass-murdering terrorist all the best: Bin Laden 50 today? (Hat tip: Van Impe.)

The friends of Osama bin Laden, of course, are the enemies of civilization—violent fanatics out of the Dark Ages who specialize in the killing of innocents. But to Reuters, they’re just ... people with a different opinion.

This has got to be one of the most insanely inverted stories we’ve seen out of mainstream media in quite a while.

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden, if he’s alive, celebrates his 50th birthday on Saturday, and his friends in the Taliban prayed for his long life.

The al Qaeda leader’s long silence has fueled speculation that the world’s most-wanted fugitive may have died, though many in the international intelligence community reckon Islamist militant Web sites would circulate word of his death.

“He is alive. I am 100 percent sure,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayatullah Khan told Reuters, adding that senior leaders were in touch with bin Laden, reinforcing a widely held view that he is hiding near the rugged Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Khan said special prayers were offered by Taliban fighters in camps in Afghanistan to mark bin Laden’s birth on March 10, 1957, in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah.

“We prayed that Allah may give him 200 years to live,” Khan said,“ by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. ”When we woke up today, we offered collective and long prayers for him because he is a great mujahid (holy warrior)."