Bin Laden Remains as Elusive as Ever
It’s been many years since the 9/11 attacks and America’s favorite boogieman Osama bin Laden is apparently still out there…Or is he? Nobody seems to know for sure, it seems.
U.S. National Security Adviser, James Jones, says bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan as well. At the same time, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, says the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time – “I think it has been years” – and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.
The failed hunt for bin Laden has been one of the signature elements of the global “war on terror” that George W. Bush launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. The principal explanations given by both the Bush and Obama administrations for not getting bin Laden is that they simply don’t know where he is.
“If we did, we’d go get him,” Gates said.
Jones, a retired Marine general, stressed the urgency of targeting bin Laden, and spoke of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him. Bin Laden had been allowed to operate in Afghanistan by his Taliban allies while allegedly plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. When U.S. forces ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001, bin Laden reportedly fled into Pakistan from what was generally described as a complex of caves in the Tora Bora area.
Asked whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, James Jones replied, “The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.” He did not elaborate on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden’s apparent border crossings.
Robert Gates in turn, said: that “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is,” although he agreed that his likely hideout is in North Waziristan.
The U.S. has targeted North Waziristan and other areas on the Pakistani side of the border with drone-launched missile strikes, killing a number of militants as well as Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani army has undertaken an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan but it has not expanded it into North Waziristan.
Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones’s assertion that al-Qaida chief may have slipped back into Afghanistan puts a new twist on the issue.
Senator John McCain said: “that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden ‘moves back and forth.’”
McCain did not elaborate, except to say that although bin Laden is not currently able to establish bases for training and equipping terrorists who would attack the United States, “I think it’s important to get him.”
Gates said he does not blame a lack of Pakistani cooperation for the absence of intelligence on bin Laden. “No, I think it’s because if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,” he said.
During a visit to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir by chiding Pakistani officials for failing to press the hunt for al-Qaida inside their borders. She said she found it “hard to believe” that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn’t get them “if they really wanted to.”
A recent Senate report said bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora only three months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American military leaders made the crucial decision not to pursue him with massive force.
Some Pakistanis believe that Osama bin Laden is actually a CIA agent.
Take a look at this video:
So, it appears that we are as much in the dark about bin Laden’s whereabouts, as we seem to be about what really and truly transpired on September 11, 2001. Lets just hope that our intelligence regarding both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is more accurate, since nobody in his right mind wants the Afghan war to drag on forever.
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Although the real tale may hardly mesh with the idea that a supremely evil Osama bin Laden was wringing his hands with devilish glee while “plotting” to over throw America from some cave, a cooler view sees that the 9/11 scheme was cooked up in a sleazy apartment somewhere in New Jersey and put into action thanks to 9 Saudi’s and a few Yeminis and a box full of box cutters. Bin Laden was just as much a friend to the W as that old, torn up Gaul (Versingeterix?) was to Julius Caesar. In the movie, ROME, Julius looked the old prisoner in the face just before he was to be strangled at Caesar’s “inauguration festival,” saying remorsefully: “Good bye old friend.”
The autocrat and his cronies knew that Osama was worth far more as a threatening myth than he would ever have been as a publicly displayed corpse. I suspect that bin Laden encountered the fabricated, over-amped connection as an unanticipated, happy coincidence which could elevate his standing with the locals.
What are the “facts” about 9/ll, an unattentive NORAD, falling buildings, etc.? Who knows! The only “fact” that we seem to have is that most of us don’t really particularly believe the “facts” that we’ve been force fed so far.
The actual tale of bin Laden, the 9/11 attack, the Iraq war, the hydrocarbon treaty, the Afghan pipeline and our military expedition to stop the Taliban remain to be told. In any event, most Americans ain’t done with this by a long shot.
However, one dismal “fact” does remain, embarrassingly, on the table. These “terrorists” — whether directed from the Swat or Jersey City — have managed to play a pivotal role in wrecking our economy, undercutting the Constitution and almost ending our democracy.
Do we still insist that talking points are more important than facing reality?
Although this post was written on September 11, 2008, perhaps the idea is still just as relevant. Of course, I’m plugging MeanMesa!
“Why Not Revisit 9/11 Seven Years Later?”
http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-not-revisit-911-seven-years-later.html
Chad, I couldn’t agree more. There’s a whole lot that we haven’t been told and I wonder if we ever will..
Please, Osama or whatever you all want to call him, is only a character in this great hoax. he didn’t exist before and if you want his present whereabouts for an acting job; best to contact the SAG. they know where he is, as he probably is still paying his SAG Dues.
Really Doh,
Either that, or he has been driving a Washington Flyer taxi out of Dulles International Airport all along
The spectacular mystery is that we free citizens in a representative democracy with a rehabilitated justice department still don’t rate any straight answers.
This pisses me off royally — not only because we were attacked, but because some really stinky skanks are still, to this day, sucking more and more of our money out of this half-witted conspiracy. They remain mysteriously invisible, and we remain suckers.
It’s a fetid mix between “Bonfires of the Vanities” and the Federalist letters, all executed by a wanna be Texan and every creepy nobody he managed to sneak into his government.
Anybody want to ask me when I’ll stop blaming everything on the W?
When it all finally goes away to the dust bin of history, a federal prison or a cemetery.
Chad, it is to be hoped that this also pisses royally enough Americans, who might be willing to do something about it. Unfortunately, I do not have that many hopes for our general population, so dumbed down by television to even see which end is up…
Hey! POLITICUS!
We don’t lose hope — WE RAISE HELL! Keep complainin’ like a perpetual toothache, talk to everyone who’ll listen!
There’s nuthin’ “mousey” about Politicus OR MeanMesa or lots of other forward thinking Americans! The neo-cons hear all of us loud and clear.
They’re still just tryin’ to pretend we’re kooks and fringey…
Oh well, there’s nuthin’ funnier than a neo-con pretending to look down his nose at you while he claiming to be a pinnacle of honesty or common sense. From the cartoon on my tele, “the symbols of the Republican Party are an elephant and a bunch of old white men who are afraid of change…”
Ooops. Forgot the Sarah. Yawn …
Haven’t we been raising hell? Maybe, just maybe this is getting to those conservatives who have mastered the art of reading. Otherwise, we might have to force-feed it to them via TV.
AND, …. There’s always STREET THEATRE!
I posted a couple of photos of my “git up” as I prepared to attend a McCain rally at the University of New Mexico during the campaign.
View them at MeanMesa, “Youth for McCain!”
http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2008/10/youth-for-mccain.html
The best I’ve seen lately were the youngsters doing the “Wealth Care for Billionaires” parody on health care reform. (Interested? You can Google…)
Osama bin Laden is this generation’s Emmanuel Goldstein.
Good point