I mean in no way to belittle the efforts of the CIA, the military, and the White House. Great effort all around. But I still find it amusing that in a day and age where you can find most people in about 10 seconds by Googling them that it took almost 10 years to track down the most wanted man in the world, who turned out to be chilling in what was basically Middle Eastern suburbia. It just goes to show that our government isn’t nearly as omnipotent nor omnipresent as it sometimes seems.
Now for the poll part. I honestly thought he was probably already dead, or if he wasn’t, we would never hear about his death like this (i.e. in a way that was clearly confirmed). There would always be some doubt, and Al-Qaeda would continue to maintain that he was alive even if he wasn’t. As it turns out, even Al-Qaeda has admitted that the news is true. So that comes as a surprise for me. What about you?
Well, the question isn’t so much whether he would have ever died, but would we have ever known with a high degree of certainty that he was dead (without waiting until he would have been about 110 where we could pretty safely assume it).
I was pretty sure he was still alive. He sent out audios & videos every few months. While they could have been faked if he’d already died in secret, I think that with enough people wanting to discredit his words, soon enough that fakery would have been found out.
I expected him to die of old age or ill health, or for us to do the *massive airstrike on cave complex *thing some day and declare him dead after he hadn’t been heard from for a few months.
Something this neat & clean was far from my most likely scenario.