Who put him up there? Who knew that he was there? How long was he there? The Pakistani government needs to come clean. “A massive house with no telephone or internet connection led to bin Laden,” by Chidanand Rajghatta for TNN, May 2 (thanks to Jaladhi):
Washington: A large mansion in a massive compound with 12 feet to 18 feet tall walls topped with barbed wire. No telephone or internet connection to the house. And seldom seen residents who burnt their trash rather than dispose it as other neighbors did.
These were the slender leads that eventually took US spooks and seals to the world’s most wanted fugitive. Osama bin Laden lived not in a cave in some frontier mountain redoubt, but in a suburban neighborhood in a million-strong city just an hour’s drive from Islamabad, right under the eyes of the Pakistani military.
No one is particularly surprised about this. In fact, going by the track record of major Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives captured so far, it would seem that images of them hiding in caves are overblown. Most of them have been captured in Pakistani cities — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Mullah Biradhar in Karachi, and other operatives in places like Faisalabad and Multan. It would seem the terrorists like their comfort — or at least they are kept in comfort….
“Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom built to hide someone of significance. We soon learned that more people were living at the compound than the two brothers and their families,” one U.S official explained. ”Our best assessment, based on a large body of reporting from multiple sources, was that bin Laden was living there with several family members, including his youngest wife.”…
Although the operation lasted just 40 minutes, U.S officials acknowledged the team ran into resistance. Bin Laden, who was living in the compound with his eldest son and his youngest wife, himself fought before being shot in the head in the firefight. The two couriers who were also with him also died, as did his son and another woman who was used as a human shield. Two other women in the compound, which also had children, were wounded. It is not clear if his wife survived….