Greatly exaggerated, yes. But not a complete fantasy.
The term Al Qaeda was invented in a US court in January 2001, by a
plea-bargaining con-man who gave it as the name of the organisation of
which OBL was leader. In fact, OBL is/was not a leader of any large
organisation. He's a money-man, a visionary, but otherwise is
isolated. The video footage available which shows him being escorted
by a private army is bogus - he hired the "troops" for the day. They
were even required to bring their own weapons, as OBL had none to give
them.
There is no organised global terror network. There are lots of
separate terrorist groups, but they all operate independently. They
are still capable of killing, of course, but the spectre of Al Qaeda
is pure fantasy, invented by the Bush administration in order to
instil fear in the American population, because if people are afraid
they are easier to control.
I think terrorism in general has been hyped way beyond reality. There is a
far greater danger of being murdered by someone from your own town than by
an extremeist from the other side of the world.
Or, taking a random world citizen, it is much more likely you'll be killed
by the war on terror than terrorism itself.
I strongly suspect that the so-called "War On Terror" has already
taken more innocent lives than all the other acts of terror combined
in this century and the last.
The terrorists have won: the people of the US re-elected them.
Lemming