Doesn’t his signature look like a person that has just been knocked to the ground?
He’s even got the little “ziggly” lines near the head to show what happens when you get a noggin-conk.
Is it an English signature or an arabic one? Or is it just a drawing?
And the topic for debate is? 
Whether this should be in Great Debates, perhaps? I say “No” and refuse to be swayed.
With apologies to Mandelstam, who queries the credibility of the organ, this is from The Times dated 25 September 2001:
*‘The signature, read from left to right, tends to drop,’ said Erik Rees, chairman of the British Institute of Graphologists. ‘That is a sign of depression. Whatever he says, he is not a happy man. He’s got a lot of weight on his mind and there’s a deep feeling in him that he has bitten off more than he can chew.’
Mr. Rees said that although Arabic script had very different characteristics from Latin letters, many clues to character found in handwriting were the same. He said that the rather ‘puffy’ appearance of the writing suggested a man who was creative but also greedy. ‘He is a pleasure-seeker given to self-gratification.’
He noted that many people use their signatures deliberately to suggest a picture or image. In this case, bin Laden’s signature ‘looks like a creeping insect that has swallowed something that’s stuck in its craw.’
Arabic uses dots above and below the line to distinguish letters. In Latin letters, the use of dots, if they are extra, would show compulsiveness and might suggest a schizoid habit. ‘I could not immediately say that in this case, as the dots are part of the signature, but they do seem to be exaggerated.’
Mr. Rees said a significant feature was the way that the centre part of the signature was wrapped up in a circle. ‘Graphologists call this a ‘cocoon’. It shows a great need by the writer for self-protection.’*
‘He is a pleasure-seeker given to self-gratification.’ So, allow me to construe this:
Osama bin Laden is a wanker.
Your first question is really an IMHO thing, The second sentence an MPSIMS thing, and the last line looks good for GQ. Don’t know where it will get moved, but unless this develops into a discussion on the merits of graphology or something, I’m betting it moves somewhere.
That being said, it would be helpful to post a link to a picture of it so we can see what you’re talking about.
Finally, this just screams to be taken out of context:
I hate it when someone queries the credibility of my organ. 
But, since Arabic reads from right to left, the signature would rise, instead of drop.
Maybe they were referring to his Latin signature.
It seems that Mandelstam should be questioning my credibility and not that of The Times.
I humbly apologise for misquoting Mr. Rees because what he actually says is:
The signature, read from right to left, tends to drop.
and not
The signature, read from left to right, tends to drop.
My reporting of this article casts unwarranted doubt on the credibility of British Graphologists, and if any of them read my previous post, I am sorry for the slur.
And of course, The Times, unreliable organ that it is, is still unwilling to let me load the appropriate page due to technical problems of an unspecified nature.
Hence no link.
Here is a photo of Osama bin Laden’s signature from CNN.
Wow. That looks like something out of my Necronomicon.
It looks like a dead bug.!
Maybe he was Going to write his name, but had to squash this bug that landed on the paper…
It looks like a stick man that has put on a chest medallion so large and heavy he has been dropped to the ground by it. Reminds me of those stickdeath flash games you see every so often [no, I’m not linking that garbage here]
The script above is in Arabic. Reading from right to left the first character is “m”.
the funny writing is probably also Arabic.
I don’t know why his first name starts with
an “O”. Three are no “o’s” in Modern Standard
Arabic that I know of. The closest sound you can
get for the start of his name would be with
the Arabic ayn or l(alif).
Oh I almost forgot. This could also be a map.
Thank you Mr. Carpenter. It looks like a map. Exactly!
those of you who have capapbilities to make transparancies, copy the sig and try it out on a regular 8 X 11 scaled map of the world. See if you can detect a fit in pattern and location.
Nostradamus wrote:
Hell, I can cast warranted doubt on the credibility of any Graphologists:
I’ve seen that shape in a cornfield, I’m sure if it.
CNN showed his alleged signature on a fax they had gotten that he sent a few days ago and compared it to his actual signature they had in their files. They kept going on and on about how they looked “strikingly similar”. Umm, no they didn’t. They looked like the same characters. I suppose my name would look “strikingly similar” if I wrote it or if any other native English speaker wrote it when viewed by someone whose native alphabet is non-Latin based.
Just to make my point abundantly clear, in case that link I posted above left any room for doubt:
Graphology is hooey. One hundred percent hooey. Trying to divine someone’s psychological make-up by the way he dots his "i"s has as much basis in scientific fact as divining the future by looking at tea leaves.