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Now I finally understand how Osama bin Laden eluded our grasp for all of these years — he was hiding in the open, in the backyard of one of our supposed allies. Let’s put this in context: Pakistan is a police state where foreigners do not go unnoticed, even when they’re living behind the high walls of a compound
Considering how closely tied their histories have been, the Taliban in Afghanistan have yet to release a statement on the death of Osama bin Laden.
For Omar bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden’s 20 known children, the awful realization that his father was a terrorist mastermind who was plotting a global conspiracy that would destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and even his own family came gradually. Of course, there were warning signs: Omar’s childhood was marked by regular beatings and survivalist training; the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father “Prince”; and that Afghan mullah who had given his father an entire mountain in Tora Bora
Which is closer to dying: Osama bin Laden or the CIA’s effort to catch him? Nothing has characterized the fruitlessness of the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader so much as the recurrent — and mostly inaccurate — reports that he is seriously ailing, or even at death’s door.
Almost 10 years ago, Osama bin Laden ghosted away from the Afghan battlefields. Since then, it is as if the doomsday sheikh had slipped into a twilight zone where the only proof that he was alive was the chilling voice on a spool of tape, the occasional video image — and a string of terrorist outrages and wars lengthening around the globe that claim inspiration from him and his cause.
A few years ago, an adviser went to Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum with a plan for a tall office building. “Only 90 stories?” the ruler of Dubai asked.
Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp.