Into Thin Air He's still out there. The hunt for bin Laden.

Newsweek ^ | Sept. 3, 2007 issue | Evan Thomas

[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...

[Western Phil]

For all practical purposes, Truman disarmed the US after the war. Many planes were dumped into the ocean from aircraft carriers, much equipment was buried, others sold on the surplus market. Our military was in really bad shape when Uncle Joe kicked Truman in the gonads in Berlin.

[xjcsa]

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.

What about his 2004 campaign ad video for John Kerry? Did you miss that, or did I miss it being shown to be fake?

[Abathar]

Nothing there that was dated though, all of it could have been from something he said long before. Let’s face it, the guy is a media whore and everyone knows if he showed his face recruitment of jihadi idiots would jump 5 fold probably. There is no way he wouldn’t have made a video by now if he was still around. I think he is dead, and the other side isn’t talking because they want the myth alive.

[TChris]

He’s dead Jim.

Ditto that.

I can't imagine the jihadis would waste any opportunity to rub our noses in it if he were still alive.

He's dead, and they just want the fight to continue.

[what's up]

Why is it all over the headlines today?

Pres. Bush scored points with his Vietnam comments; the surge is working.

Newsweak is tryint to divert attention from Iraq to Afganistan to give their liberal Dem friends in Congress time to get their heads together to figure out how next to handle Iraq since their current tactics are losing.

Won't work.

[syriacus]

Our military was in really bad shape when Uncle Joe kicked Truman in the gonads in Berlin.

Too bad Truman got carried away with believing that there were no more wars to be fought.

I know folks were sick of war, but he should have made sure we were strong. It's obvious that he realized he was the guy in charge. ("The buck stops here.")

[SevenMinusOne]

The sand continues to spill out on the number of days UBL remains alive.....Time was on his side in the short run....when one understands the region of the world where he is eking out his survival....

But the day we put guns or a JDAM on his sorry as$ is coming.....It is just a matter of who we zap first....Him or his sidekick Zawahiri....