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Into Thin Air He's still out there. The hunt for bin Laden.
Newsweek ^ | Sept. 3, 2007 issue | Evan Thomas

Posted on 08/27/2007 6:09:07 AM PDT by shove_it

Sept. 3, 2007 issue - The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden's redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader's 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove "the Sheik," as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. "If there's a 99 percent risk of the Sheik's being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well," Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan...

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS:
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a 14 page Newsweek infomercial for bin Laden.
1 posted on 08/27/2007 6:09:08 AM PDT by shove_it
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To: shove_it

We already knew this. Why is it all over the headlines today?


2 posted on 08/27/2007 6:11:24 AM PDT by mtbopfuyn (I think the border is kind of an artificial barrier - San Antonio councilwoman Patti Radle)
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To: shove_it

Show me a recent picture of him holding up a NYT. I believe he is buried in a cave somewhere, not one video or picture can be attributed to him after the first few weeks of the war.


3 posted on 08/27/2007 6:12:25 AM PDT by Abathar (Proudly catching hell for posting without reading the article since 2004)
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To: shove_it

“If there’s a 99 percent risk of the Sheik’s being captured” ......... No Mr. Bin Laden, we don’t expect you to talk, we expect you to die. Does he really think he’s wanted alive?


4 posted on 08/27/2007 6:14:46 AM PDT by Bringbackthedraft
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To: Abathar

He’s dead Jim.


5 posted on 08/27/2007 6:14:56 AM PDT by marlon
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To: Abathar

Well, he probably has disappeared into thin air. His dead body would have largely oxidized by now.


6 posted on 08/27/2007 6:15:53 AM PDT by Mr. Lucky
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To: shove_it

Just NewSqueek doing the Dem’s bidding.


7 posted on 08/27/2007 6:16:02 AM PDT by facedown (Armed in the Heartland)
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To: Abathar
Show me a recent picture of him holding up a NYT.

My thoughts exactly, but then there's photoshop, so it wouldn't necessarily prove the case.

Anyway, what's the chance that Evan Thomas even asked the Taliban 'press secretary" for such proof? My guess, is, no chance -- just another of the MSM's lack of intellectual curiousity it the answer would take them "off theme".

8 posted on 08/27/2007 6:17:09 AM PDT by WL-law
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To: shove_it
the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide

damn.
9 posted on 08/27/2007 6:18:09 AM PDT by reagan_fanatic (Ron Paul put the cuckoo in my Cocoa Puffs)
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To: reagan_fanatic
Say... I heard he’s in Iran, being protected by the Republican Guard.

Doesn’t that give us legal cause to go in and get him?

10 posted on 08/27/2007 6:20:54 AM PDT by null and void (I hate to suggest something this radical, but why not let the policy follow the facts? ~ReignOfError)
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To: shove_it

I can’t have that much exposure to leftist repetition. Did this article conclude W is a failure because bin laden is still on the run? Has the far-left noted their hero FDR didn’t get Hitler or Hirohito? Doesn’t that make FDR a failure in the same way


11 posted on 08/27/2007 6:21:18 AM PDT by Sgt_Schultze
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To: Abathar

gree he’s dead.


12 posted on 08/27/2007 6:21:48 AM PDT by Unicorn (Too many wimps around.)
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To: Sgt_Schultze

What I took out of the article is that lawyers and politicians are fighting the war from their desks. I didn’t read it as a partisan article.


13 posted on 08/27/2007 6:24:30 AM PDT by Scarchin (+)
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To: Mr. Lucky

Yep, especially if it was heated to a couple of thousand degrees for a second or two when the bunker buster bomb hit the cave mouth.


14 posted on 08/27/2007 6:25:15 AM PDT by Abathar (Proudly catching hell for posting without reading the article since 2004)
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To: shove_it
While our media promotes the enemy and gives away free information to our enemies, our Congress is doing exactly what they are being paid by the enemy to do. It doesn't look good folks. The Big Picture is not promising. I fully expect bin Laden to show up at one of the future Rock Worships in Mecca and mock US. Our people in D.C. will never take out Mecca, unless we have NEW people there willing to take this War to the enemy. Even if America does take this War to the enemy, the Big Picture is not looking good.

Surrender is not an option. Although our own Congress (of Democrats and Rinos) hold 'sleepins' for defeat. Get ready folks, this is going to be the most interesting time in History, this small speck of Earth and Earth's people have ever witnessed. Thank Goodness, for being alive to see this time.

15 posted on 08/27/2007 6:28:56 AM PDT by From One - Many (Trust the Old Media At Your Own Risk)
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To: Abathar

I agree I think he’s dead too.


16 posted on 08/27/2007 6:30:34 AM PDT by mimaw
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To: Scarchin
What I took out of the article is that lawyers and politicians are fighting the war from their desks. I didn’t read it as a partisan article.

I just finished reading it and (for the most part) I'd have to agree. There were a few gratuitous digs at the Bush Administration, but for the most part it was a tale of needless bureaucratic and legal interference in a military operation, risk aversion on the part of career military officers, inexperienced CIA station personnel, and a crippling over-regard for Muslim sensibilities.

17 posted on 08/27/2007 6:36:50 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (There are two kinds of people: those who get it, and those who need to.)
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To: Sgt_Schultze
Has the far-left noted their hero FDR didn’t get Hitler or Hirohito? Doesn’t that make FDR a failure in the same way

Truman didn't get rid of North Korean dictator Kim il-Sung, who invaded South Korea in 1950, either.

But, mostly, Truman must shoulder the blame for the deaths* of 30,000 Americans whom he sent to re-liberate South Korea in the last 30 months of his presidency (July 1950-January 1953).

We previously had troops in place in S. Korea at the end of WWII, just as we had troops in W. Germany, W. Berlin and Japan.

Truman's 1949 withdrawal of those troops from S. Korea, was a mistake of monumental proportions.**

Odds are, there would have been no Korean War if Truman would have kept the US troops in the young and unstable Korea in 1949.

The stuck-on-stupid Democrats want to repeat Truman's 1949 mistake in Iraq.

* Many of these brave young people died because they were unprepared, undermanned, and under-supplied. Harry ("The buck stops here") Truman had slashed the defense budget down to the bone.

**Millions of Koreans were displaced and tens of thousands were killed because Truman prematurely withdrew our troops from their country.

18 posted on 08/27/2007 6:59:47 AM PDT by syriacus (If the US troops had remained in S. Korea in 1949, there would have been no Korean War (1950-53))
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To: Abathar
Exactly!! This guy has been feeding worms since Tora Bora. Every tape showing him since has tons of edits in it and there haven’t been any credible reports of him being alive. The A-holes are just trying to keep his legend alive.
19 posted on 08/27/2007 7:18:21 AM PDT by mortal19440
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To: andy58-in-nh; Scarchin
I do agree with your remarks to the extent that there is way too much civilian micromanagement of military tactics and ROE’s in this so-called WOT.
20 posted on 08/27/2007 7:18:54 AM PDT by shove_it (nonilligitimus carborundum)
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