Feb 11 2008
Is Bin Laden Dead?
Time again for another round of “Is Bin Laden Dead”?
U.S. intelligence agencies are beginning to suspect that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is dead after all, despite a recent audio tape exhorting Al Qaida terrorists in Iraq.
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The new analysis of Bin Laden follows the death of No. 3 Al Qaida leader Abu Laith Al Libi, who was killed last week in a CIA-led operation in Pakistan that involved an armed unmanned aerial vehicle attack.
Asked about U.S. military or intelligence involving in the terrorist killing, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: “I’m not going to talk any more about the operational side of this, of how that in fact occurred.â€
Tea-leaf-reading time. I had suspected initially that the recent attack on al-Qaeda’s leadership was aimed at Bin Laden. I did so because we would only do this kind of over the border attack under rare circumstances (and I believe it was done with Pakistani permission).
We ended up with Al Libi instead (Al Libi is a Libyan), who was AQ’s number 3. What this story hints at is the intel must have indicated the top dog in AQ, but since Bin Laden was not there it may be reasonable to assume Al Libi became number one operationally and that is why there is speculation Bin Laden has been dead for some time. Anyway, some interesting speculation I thought worth sharing.
How do you say “Bring out yer dead!” in Arabic?
I have thought that he might be dead for some time now.
AJ I can’t confirm this, but I thought there were 2 raids maybe a few days apart. Do you remember reading this? They are saying that they think bin Laden has been dead for sometime. Now that his popularity numbers are going down we may hear more about his possible death.
One other thing…..has the American PR person surfaced yet? I heard that after the raid that they buried many people right away.
Kathie,
I only heard of one attack – AJStrata
Find that damn body, then we’ll believe he’s dead.
Cobalt — good one!
About a year and a half to two years ago there were two news stories that came out about a week apart. The first was a story of an attack on an AQ base near the Pakistani border that supposedly missed Bin Laden by a little over an hour. Then about five days later, there was a story that came out about a big dispute in the defense department because there was a big funeral for an apparently high ranking person with a lot of AQ heads present in roughly the same area that was detected by drones. The argument was over the fact that we could have attacked and killed those AQ heads right then but we did not because there were so many women and children there. Remember that? Some said we should have attacked anyway regardless of the collateral damage and others said it was the right move to let the AQ leaders go.
I’ve always wondered, was that him?
I was talking to a guy who works for the company once and we were talking about Bin Laden. I remarked, “Boy, I’ll bet you sure would like to get him.” He said something that really surprised me. He said, “No we wouldn’t.” I was stunned, I ask him why not? He told me, “If we were to kill Bin Laden and show his dead body to the world, America would think the whole terrorism thing is over and wouldn’t support us fighting it anymore.” At first I thought that was a little wierd, but after I thought about it…..
Bikerken:
I think a lot of people have wondered that very same thing.