Where is Osama bin Laden?

As President Barack Obama is on the verge of announcing his strategy on Afghanistan the ghost of Osama bin Laden surfaces in the political discourse once again.

Democrats on the Hill resurrected old intelligence report on bin Laden to play the Blame Bush game again.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee released paper on Sunday that analyzes bin Laden’s escape from the Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan in late 2001. The report blames the missed opportunity on lack of coordination effort by President George W. Bush’s administration and U.S. military commanders. Chairman of the Committee is Democrat John Kerry. The report states with melancholic tone that:

“The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism”



President Obama always said that looking forward is a better way to go. So let us leave George Bush alone and take a look where we stand in the search for Bin Laden today.

Intelligence sources widely agree that the al-Qaida leader is hiding somewhere in the remote border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The USA and Britain tend to place him in Pakistan. The Pakistani officials tend to place him in Afghanistan in a world-wide “Where is bin Laden” blame game.

Just yesterday the British PM Gordon Brown lashed out at Pakistan accusing sympathizers in Afghanistan neighbor’s secret service of protecting bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Mr. Brown told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in a phone call that the world couldn’t understand why they hadn’t been dealt with.

Pakistani leaders did not let Brown insult them. Official position in the country is that if the USA and Britain have any intelligence of the location of bin Laden they should share it with Pakistan, not just blame the country. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s high commissioner to Britain said that Pakistani military is fully engaged in these operations and many people have lost their lives in battle.

And so the blame games between the West and Pakistan continues as apparently nobody has a clue where bin Laden is.

For the former CIA director Michael Hayden hunting down bin Laden was at the top of the CIA’s priority list at the time. In his speeches he insisted that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden appears to be isolated from the terrorist group’s day-to-day operations and has been forced to devote much of his energy to his own security.

Russian Prime-TASS floated the rumor last week that bin Laden is in Pakistan and just married young lady from a prominent Pashtun family.
Another popular idea about bin Laden’s fate is based on the fact that he is reportedly suffering from a range of sicknesses – diabetes, hepatitis C and severe kidney problems requiring hospitalization. The medical record of the top-terrorist leader made many believe that bin Laden is simply dead.

There is only one place where you can find Osama bin Laden for sure and that is the FBI Top Ten Wanted list. Until he is taken off that list the blame games will continue.