Why has Bin Laden not been apprehended yet?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am not sure if this belongs to GD, because I am not looking for a debate here, at least not until now.

I am really and genuinely surprised as to how bin Laden has been able to avoid getting killed or captured. It is not that he has been totally underground and in hiding since 9/11 nor has he been known to be anything like the Jackal who avoided capture by changing appearances and identities. I think more people the world over have seen, and know, his face than any of the other famous or infamous personalities. He was in a small, poor, insignificant country and supposedly continues to be there. He has not escaped nor abandoned the region as many of the Nazis did after the war. He has sent pictures and tapes of himself at regular intervals to the media.

If what I have been told is correct, the US and other similarly developed nations posses satellites that have the ability to see up very close to the earth’s surface, close enough to identify individuals, and I believe it without a doubt. If we can have telescopes like the Hubble, such resolution on satellite cameras is definitely possible.

The richest, most powerful nations with extensive resources in finding criminals and bringing them to justice have been involved in the search for this man.

Yet, he has been able to successfully elude capture for the last 8 years. That is 8 long fucking years!!! It is said that he is hiding in the mountains and hills of Tora Bora, or probably some border areas of Pakistan.

The location is known, the identity is known, the crime is known, yet the man has roamed free and continues to do so.

How?

2

Perhaps he’s already dead, and it’s merely to AQ’s advantage to pretend he’s still alive and uncatchable. Note that mostly audiotapes have been sent out in recent years, and that the “videos” appear to be recycled from pre-9/11 footage.

We can’t prove a negative, so our side is out of luck.

3

He’ll never be caught because the US national security industry, the people who profit from fear need him as a boogeyman. He’s our Emmanuel Goldstein.

4

He’s in a castle in Sardinia. Honest.

5

Partly because President Bush found him more useful as a boogyman to stir up trouble in River City from time to time. Partly because the Iraq war led to a loss of focus on the original enemy by creating many new ones. And partly, suspect, because he’s long since joined the choir invisible.

6

Yes, actually, it is. If he’s alive. Remember that if he is alive, he’s being very careful about his whereabouts and communications, and he’s in a lawless border region of Pakistan that has strong sympathies to his cause.

Just because we have satallites doesn’t mean someone can’t hide in a mountainous, cave-ridden region where males tend to look alike and where regional tribes, etc would aid and abet his existence.

7

Why can’t a negative be proven? He could not have died alone. There must have been witnesses. Wouldn’t his son know if his father was dead? And judging him from what I saw of him on TV, I don’t think he would try and hide the fact if his father is dead.

Which is what I tend to agree with. But then I cannot believe that there is no one in the whole government set up that is not a whistleblower and will not call the bluff.

With the amount of money and other resources that the US has, I do not think it is possible for a single man to avoid capture, provided the US is truly inclined to get him.

I sometimes even doubt whether this bin Laden was acually instrumental, or played any significant role in the 9/11 attack. He seems to have been a creation by the powers that be, so that the general population could pin the responsibility on someone and thus allow them to vent their anger.

What I don’t seem to understand is why those in the US government who have been and are against Bush, do not raise this question and demand an explanation?

8

If you were to go hide in New Mexico, with an organization dedicated to keeping your whereabouts secret and shooting anyone coming after you, and you were totally unconcerned with eventually coming out of hiding, do you really think anyone could find you? Bin Laden is probably dead anyway, and his organization has nothing to gain by revealing this (unlike, say, a Bush underling would gain from revealing a “9-11 Conspiracy”).

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

9

Yes, we can.

10

I think you underestimate the size of the world out there, and overestimate our on-the-ground resources in places like remote Pakistan.

11

My guess/take on it?

We know the rough location of Bin Laden…I think I remember the Chitral district being speculated on, awhile back…but, being fairly large, remote, probably with hostile locals, and with an organized enemy actively trying to keep their boss safe therein, it becomes difficult to pin down his exact location—let alone “get” him (either with spies/commandos, or just in a small enough area to blow up with a missile).

If you try and “send Bond in,” so to speak, he might not even find the guy, and at worst, you’d just spur him into running off somewhere else, wherein you might lose him completely.

So, there’s the next option—take the place by force, in a full invasion. Many thousands of troops and vehicles, more than Panama or Normandy.

Military considerations aside—the chances of success, your technically ability to actually pull the operation off, or the chances of the whole thing turning into a pyrric victory at best, and another Gallipoli at worst—of course, war doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s an extension of political and social forces. In this case, the fact that (I’m assuming) that the region you’d have to invade belongs to a country with a nominally allied but shakey government, large sections of it’s populace that are discontent, and not very sympathetic to the U.S…and The Bomb.

It just might have the potential to turn real unpretty, real fast. (I think the technical term is “shitstorm.”)

You get the same thing or worse, I’d wager, if we just MIRVed the place into glass, but seeing as we probably wouldn’t do that unless Al Qaeda WMDed a couple of the Security Council’s major cities first (lousy “no first use” doctrine…Just like congress. Always making things difficult :wink: ), and we could prove it, that’s probably a non-issue. (Of course, if it came to that, we might as well take the opportunity to nuke the rest of Pakistan before they could react badly—if theres an atomic massacre going down already, tossing a few million more bodies on the pyre to reduce the chances of immediate nuclear reprisal directed towards us isn’t that unreasonable)

Failing all that, for the time being, Bin Laden might be considered semi-analogous to some of the less-important Japanese held islands the allies simply bypassed during the island hopping campaign—he’s keeping himself besieged, where we don’t have to deal with him. Granted, with his role in his organization and modern communications, this is less useful than pinning down thousands of troops holding a useless island and slowly starving while they wait for an invasion that’ll never come, but at least he’s not running around completely free, with no clue as to where he is. As it is, at least he might get stupid or slip up, eventually, leading to his death or capture, or he might become more trouble than he’s worth to the people he’s relying on, or just get sick and die.

Eh…my 2¢, anyway.

12

That phrase is not literal. It just means that it is exceedingly difficult to prove a negative.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

ETA: That article is a heaping mound of BS.

13

To add what’s already been said about the difficulty of finding him, consider Caylee Anthony. Her remains weren’t found for 5 months, and they were actually near her home.

Was that why Bill Clinton didn’t get him on the two occasions he could have before 9/11?

As long as we’re speculating, the terrorists could be concealing his death because they’ll recruit even more people with a wily, uncapturable leader outsmarting the Great Satan than they would with a martyr.

14

Or, to take a real-life example: Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, managed to elude the FBI for seven years, spending much of that time hidden in the mountainous region of western North Carolina.

Although maybe they’d have caught him sooner if the FBI had not focused their initial investigation on poor Richard Jewell…

15

No, he hasn’t! He’s just pining for the fjords!

16

Eric Rudolph spent five years on the run as a FBI’s Most Wanted Top Tenner, with a $1000 000 reward on his head, in an area known by the police, before being captured. Compare this to Bin Laden, who has a strong local support and infrastructure aiding his hiding.

17

A few well placed ‘leaks’ of impending troop movements to get them to pop their heads above the parapets, see what scurries from the caves and under the rocks, and bomb the shit out of anything that moves. Seems simple enough to me, but what do I know? If the enemy are known to occupy certain areas, why wouldn’t the Pakistani military assist the West in flushing them clean?

18

My location is known. Do you think you can find me? Bare in mind I don’t have my own global terrorist organization (yet), a cult following among the people I live with, and that I live in a society very similar to your own.

You don’t even have to show up at my house, just take a picture of me with one of those magical satellites you’ve been told about.

19

I believe there are some areas of Pakistan the Pakistani Army doesn’t control.

I still believe Bin Laden has had plastic surgery and lives in a condo in Dallas.

20

Some possible reasons:
The political situation in Pakistan is very unstable, and cooperation with the USA is very negatively perceived by large segments of the population. Actually, the government has to demonstrate that he can hold his ground against the USA. For instance by not allowing US forces into Pakistan.

The Pakistani government has very few authority in the region bordering Afghanistan. The army probably couldn’t clean the area without directly fighting its own local population that is not hostile to the Talibans, and not very fond of the central government.

For a long time, the Pakistani governments and the Pakistani army have established very close ties with the Islamists (and Pakistan also supported the Talibans as part of their regional policy). Even though the official policy changed after 9/11, it doesn’t imply that those ties just vanished overnight.

Generally speaking, Pakistan has been dragged very reluctantly in the fight against the Talibans and their allies, and its involvement in this fight is causing serious internal troubles.