Whither Osama?
By Jon Caruthers

That’s the $25 million question, isn’t it?

For six years now, pundits, bloggers, media vetted “experts,” politicians, columnists, and all sorts, kinds, and flavors of prognosticators have weighed in on the subject with the general consensus being that he’s just on the Pakistani side of the Tora Bora mountains in the federally administrated tribal areas (FATA).

After giving the US military the slip in late 2001, Osama and company have seemingly disappeared into the ether, reconstituting periodically to give the metaphorical digit to the American people and giving the left more ammunition to fire at the Bush administration.

Although the question seems largely to have been settled in the media, taking a fresh look at the question of our age is instructive for understanding more about Al Qaeda and specifically why we’ve not seen another attack on American soil.

The general consensus among the intelligentsia in the government apparatus and parroted ad nauseam by the talking heads on the media circuit is that Osama is hiding out in the caves of the Hindu Kush.

I would argue that he’s not, and the fact that he’s not is the reason why he’s yet to be caught but more importantly the reason why we’ve yet to see an attack on American soil since that fateful day.

Let’s think this through.

Osama bin Laden is a hero in that part of the world – especially in the tribal areas.

This isn’t September 12th, 2001, we’re a few years down the road.

If he really were in FATA, somebody would have talked by this point.

Obviously they wouldn’t be singing to western intelligence agencies deliberately, these people take their blood oaths seriously, but they would have talked nonetheless.

People are people no matter where you go.

Maybe it would have been a couple of housewives gossiping while doing laundry down by the local creek, or some school kid bragging to his buddies on a soccer field, or a couple of camel traders yacking over tea in Peshawar – but people talk.

These mighty Pashtun warriors are still people and they’re still susceptible to water cooler conversations like the rest of us – even if they lack the water cooler.

We, along with the rest of the western world, have that part of the world hard wired with listening posts, spy drones, turncoats, secret agents, and every intelligence gathering asset known to man. Surely, we would have picked up his scent by now.

Moreover, this is a part of the world where blood feuds and tribal hatreds are a national pastime.

If you’re the leader of tribe A and you’ve got a longstanding blood feud with tribe B and you’ve found out through the grapevine that bin Laden is a guest of tribe B, what better way of settling your feud, making a quick $25 million (of course, as we’re told relentlessly by the talking heads, in that part of the world money has no real value but I’m sure they’d be interested in $25 million worth of trade goods), and getting the prime pastureland and livestock of tribe A than dropping a dime and waiting for the smoke to clear from the daisy cutter?

That the trail has gone cold for this long means that Osama is not in the FATA of Pakistan – although I’m sure he’s doing his best to ensure that the intelligence apparatus of the west believes him to be.

I would wager that he’s probably using cutouts to carry orders from his location to the FATA and broadcast them from there.

So, that brings up the question of where he actually is. . . .

Read the rest here.