Nearly 10 years after the traumatic Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon, the world's most wanted terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has been killed in Pakistan.
An Article From Yahoo
9: 45 pm: Pakistan's president on Tuesday denied suggestions that his government may have sheltered Osama bin Laden but admitted his security forces were left out of a US raid to kill the al Qaeda chief. US officials kept Pakistani authorities in the dark out of concern that they might "alert the targets" and jeopardize the special forces assault on Monday that ended a long manhunt for bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Time magazine. Here is the full story
9: 30 pm: High turnout in Bengal; Singur, Nandigram vote Former volatile spots Singur and Nandigram voted Tuesday as millions exercised their franchise in 63 constituencies of four districts in the fourth phase of West Bengal assembly elections. As many as 84.55 percent of 1.26 crore people voted during the day, sources in the chief electoral officer's office said. When polling ended at 5 p.m., many men and women were still in queues to vote.
9: 15 pm: Search for missing Arunachal CM now extends to Bhutan
With the search at high altitude Banggajang and Nagarjiji yielding no results, the search teams have been concentrating at five more locations including Putujiji in Bhutan to trace out the missing chopper of Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu. More
8: 45 pm: Taliban express doubt that bin Laden is dead
The Taliban cast suspicion on the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, saying they would not believe the al-Qaida leader was dead until they had seen proof or received confirmation from sources close to him.Though US officials have said they confirmed bin Laden's identity both with face-mapping software and DNA tests, the lack of photos of the body and its burial at sea have raised doubts in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the man who evaded American detection for so long has actually been killed.
8: 20 pm: The United States may release later on Tuesday photos of Osama bin Laden's burial at sea but no final decision has been made, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
8: 00 pm: Pakistan has bin Laden wife, children in custody
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said one of Osama bin Laden's daughters had seen her father being shot dead by US forces, and was one of about 10 relatives of the al Qaeda leader in custody pending interrogation. Read more
7: 45 pm: No proof Pakistanis knew bin Laden location: USThere is no evidence Pakistani officials knew Osama bin Laden was living at a compound deep inside the country, but the United States is not ruling out the possibility, President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser said. Here is the full story
7: 30 pm: US believes it can now destroy al Qaeda:
The United States will aim to destroy al Qaeda's central organization now that its leader Osama bin Laden has been killed and its capabilities degraded by US operations, a top White House adviser said. Here is the full story
7: 10 pm: 250,000 more NYTs printed for US newsstands today. 10-page special section on Osama bin Laden raid, analysis.
6: 30 pm: The Dummies' Guide to Identifying a Dead Osama:One of the questions most commonly asked in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's killing was, how did the US manage to identify him so quickly -- and what makes them so sure it's him anyway? Courtesy Scientific American, here are the answers.
Essential Reading
So, through the day, we brought you links to interesting stories about Osama bin Laden -- all of them topical and current. As we get to that time of evening when you contemplate putting your feet up, here's another selection -- of great longform articles on Osama. NB: This list does not include articles already linked to over the last couple of days.
1. The brilliant Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, on the Egyptian doctor turned terrorist Ayman al-Zawihiri, the man tipped to take over the al Qaeda network.
2. The child is father of the man, reckons Steve Coll, as he goes looking for clues into the mental makeup of Osama in the terrorist's old school where he spent his formative years. More
3. Omar bin Laden, whose surreal interview in Rolling Stone magazine we had linked to yesterday, profiles his father Osama for Vanity Fair magazine.
4. Back in February 1999, John Miller interviewed Osama bin Laden for Esquire magazine. The story of his travels to get to Osama is as interesting as the interview itself, with the man who in less than two years was to become America's Most Wanted.
5. A detailed, and superbly atmospheric, Newsweek cover story, circa 2007, on the hunt for bin Laden.
6. And finally: Rambo movies are made of these. From GQ, the story of 50 year old Gary Faulkner, the man who armed with a sword, a pair of night vision goggles, and the presumed blessings of his god, wandered the most dangerous part of the world on the self-imposed mission of capturing or killing Osama.
5: 45 pm: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration will probe whether Pakistani authorities helped to hide Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. The administration's top counter-terrorism officer, John Brennan, is quoted as saying it was “inconceivable” that bin Laden didn't have a significant “support system” in Pakistan, while Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Senator Carl Levin said the Pakistan army and its intelligence agency "have a lot of questions to answer". The full story
5: 20 pm: Smitha Prakash of ANI travels to Kashmir, and comes back with the sense that the one-time paradise on earth has been turned into a refugee city. An outtake from Smitha's piece:
"Spring is indeed beautiful in Jammu. The well manicured lawns in the up-market localities where huge houses owned by either serving or retired government employees have large blossoms and chirping birds. Traffic stops for police and army officers and senior politicians. There is an overpowering presence of government here.
I travel to the outskirts of the city, to Basti Chak Bhoopat, a hamlet occupied by Hindu refugees who fled from the newly formed country of Pakistan in 1947. There are about 20,000 'West Pakistanis' as they call themselves, along the 200 odd kilometers of the Line of Control (LOC) in this region. They are the 'nowhere people' of Jammu and Kashmir.
The state does not give them a 'Permanent Resident Certificate' because they migrated from the Punjab province of the newly formed Pakistan in 1947. Geographically, a large part of Jammu sits cheek by jowl with the Punjab province of Pakistan.
This certificate is only given to those whose ancestors lived in the united Jammu and Kashmir state before 1954.
I met with several of the displaced persons who now are now second and third generation refugees. They live in abject poverty, and are not eligible for government jobs or even bank loans, as for all administrative purposes, they don't exist! They occupied homes and lands vacated by Muslims who migrated to Pakistan. But they don't possess any ownership papers so they can't sell their property either.
Since they cannot vote for assembly or panchayat elections, they do not have any political representation in the state."
Read the whole story to know what happens to the ordinary people while politicians, militants and sundry others play their deadly games.
5: 10 pm: The Taliban in Pakistan have threatened to avenge the killing of Osama. Geo News reported that the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said in an audio message, “Pakistan will be the prime target”. Read story here
4: 50 pm: Pakistan's president acknowledged for the first time that his security forces were left out of a US operation to kill Osama bin Laden, but he did little to dispel questions over how the al Qaeda leader was able to live in comfort near Islamabad.
The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for years, prompted many US lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to nuclear-armed Pakistan. Read more
4: 35 pm: Responding to a petition filed by GL Singhal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Vadodara, a two-member bench of the Supreme Court today stayed investigations into the Ishrat Jahan case. The petition by Singhal, who was a member of the police team that had gunned down Ishrat and three others on June 15, 2004, argued that the case needed to be investigated by a team of officers, and that currently there was only one member left in the Special Investigations Team appointed by the Gujarat High Court to probe the case.
4: 20 pm: Al Qaeda is strapped for cash, and could even have gone bankrupt, according to Time magazine. An article by Tim McGirk says: “The terrorist network has been hit by a double whammy: the death of its charismatic leader and the Arab Spring, the popular and democratic uprising against cutthroat despots. No longer can al-Qaeda and its offspring sell itself to Muslims as the sole alternative to tyrannical regimes.” Read more
3: 50 pm: Friends in low places:
"We would have destroyed them long ago," Nazarov (that is Kazakhstan's Deputy Chairman for Counterterrorism General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov) said, "if other countries didn't manipulate terrorist groups for their geopolitical goals. For instance, in Pakistan Osama bin Laden wasn't an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces."
3: 35 pm: The wisdom of crowds:As anyone who followed this live blog over the last two days knows, there is so much of information out there on the killing of Osama bin Laden, plus so much of commentary and insight, that it is hard for even the most seasoned news organization to keep track of it all. Enter, into the breach, crowd-sourcing.
Frankly, the best resource for following all the developments, almost in real time, is not one of the world's great news organizations but the wikipedia entry on Osama bin Laden's death -- a site completely edited by an army of anonymous people putting their energies into the effort.
Check it out -- it's the best there is at telling this particular story.
3: 30 pm: Who is Osama bin Laden?A significant number of teenagers in the US are clueless on who Osama bin Laden is. Some tweets from yesterday say,” Who is Osama? And why is it good that he is dead?”
3: 20 pm: Osama killed Dorjee Khandu:The test of a first rate intelligence, someone once said, is the ability to retain two ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. By that definition, did the media lose the test? Teresa Rahman certainly thinks so: in all the hue and cry about Osama, she argues, the Indian media clearly lost sight of a story that should have resonated more than it did: the disappearance of Dorjee Khandu.
"As the people of the state spent sleepless nights praying for the safety of their leader, by the third day, the news of Khandu’s rescue operations were reduced to a ticker on the television screens of the national channels," Rahman writes. "Of course, they had more meaty news in the form of Osama and Obama. Long deliberations on Osama’s death and its implications eclipsed Khandu. One anguished reader of The Arunachal Times wrote, “Osama killed Dorjee Khandu”. But for the people of Arunachal Pradesh, Khandu is probably more important."
3: 10 pm: China's Balancing Act:
In an official reaction, China hailed the killing of Osama bin Laden, calling it a "major event" in the fight against terrorism. However, in the next breath, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu defended its ally Pakistan from criticism that it has done little in the battle against terrorism. "Pakistan stands at the forefront of the international struggle against terrorism," Reuters quotes Jiang as saying. "The Pakistani government's determination to fight terrorism is staunch and its actions have been vigorous. Pakistan has made important contributions to the international struggle against terror. China will continue staunchly supporting Pakistan developing and implementing its own anti-terror strategy based on its own national conditions."
2: 55 pm: How many votes is a dead terrorist worth?
Besides being battered over the weak economy, Obama's Republican rivals had been criticizing, with increased fervor, what they called the president's weak and vacillating foreign policy. In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, even his potential rivals in the 2012 presidential elections have been forced to pay grudging tribute. So does this mean Obama is now a shoo-in for re-election? Not really, says Yahoo's Holly Bailey in an opinion piece. The crux of Holly's argument:
"However, political history also offers some important cautions about how short-lived such victories can be in the heat of a re-election effort. Take, for example, former President George H.W. Bush's sky-high poll numbers in the aftermath of the successful 1991 Gulf War, which made him seem virtually unbeatable by his likely Democratic opponents.
But as the 1992 campaign drew closer, Bush 41's numbers steadily dropped, and he lost his bid for a second term, thanks mostly to public anxiety over the struggling economy--an issue that also seems likely to dominate the upcoming 2012 campaign, at least for now."
The reference to the 1992 campaign is particularly apt. Back then, while Bush senior was flogging the Gulf War for election mileage, James Carville, campaign strategist for Democratic candidate Bill Clinton, came up with a catchphrase that was near perfect in its formulation. It called out that the mismatch that was the Gulf War was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things; it pointed out that back home, where the voters were, the recession was the real sticking point.
That phrase was 'It's the economy, stupid.' And that is the crux of Holly's argument: that come 2012, Obama the man who ordered the hit on Osama won't really matter all that much, because it will still be the economy, stupid.
2: 47 pm: Pakistan's duplicity is now exposed in the eyes of the world, but the United States is unlikely to look for a showdown with that country, strategic experts say. The US administration, they expect, will continue to play India and Pakistan against each other to gain maximum benefit for itself.
2: 45 pm: Intelligence, worth $80 billion:
Ten years ago, it took an estimated $40 billion to maintain American intelligence operations for a year. 9/11 happened, and everything changed. As must have been evident from the many stories we've linked to about the mechanics of Operation Geronimo, a massive, sustained intelligence effort was behind the eventual tracking down and killing of the al Qaeda chief. The cost? $80 billion. More number crunching here
2:35 pm: In a boost for President Obama ahead of the 2012 elections, his ratings have risen post Osama's death.
2: 30 pm: So he's dead, so what?:
Opinion is divided on what the killing of Osama bin Laden means, in the larger scheme of things. Here's a cross section gleaned from the US media:
David von Drehle says in Time magazine that America has emerged stronger for the taking down of the al Qaeda chief. "It matters," von Drehle says, "because people had begun to doubt whether American power was truly power; and to ask whether its day was past. In that equation, Osama bin Laden was an unsettling factor even though his own power was diminished. As long as he was free, the US was failing. It was that simple."
Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times, says it is all good, but it is merely the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Osama's killing could have come when the halo around the al Qaeda founder had dimmed more than somewhat. "It's also true that bin Laden's killing might have mattered more in 2002 or 2003," Kristof writes. "At that time in countries like Pakistan, many ordinary people had a very high regard for bin Laden and doubted that he was centrally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Over time that view has changed: popular opinion has moved more against him, and you no longer see Osama t-shirts for sale in the markets. Some people still feel a bit of respect for his ability to outwit the United States, or they are so anti-American that they embrace anybody we don't like, but bin Laden has been marginalized over time."
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower (one of the best books you will ever read about 9/11 and the events that led up to it), says Osama's death matters not in and of itself, but because of the possibilities it opens up. Democracy and civil society are the cure for the chronic misery of Muslim countries that has fed the rise of Islamic extremism," Wright says. "The death of the most notorious terrorist the world has ever seen, whose mission was to create a clash of civilizations, will allow the door to open more widely to the tolerance, modernism, and pragmatism that is so badly needed and so long awaited in a part of the world where despair, corruption, brutality, and fanaticism have laid waste to so many generations."
1: 24 pm: As the world hailed the death of America's most wanted man, two 9/11 widows share their immediate feelings on the death of the man responsible for their husbands' death. Read Marian Fontana's piece here and Nikki Stern's here.
1: 19 pm: OBAMA WATCHED BIN LADEN DIE, AS IT HAPPENED
9: 30 pm: High turnout in Bengal; Singur, Nandigram vote Former volatile spots Singur and Nandigram voted Tuesday as millions exercised their franchise in 63 constituencies of four districts in the fourth phase of West Bengal assembly elections. As many as 84.55 percent of 1.26 crore people voted during the day, sources in the chief electoral officer's office said. When polling ended at 5 p.m., many men and women were still in queues to vote.
9: 15 pm: Search for missing Arunachal CM now extends to Bhutan
With the search at high altitude Banggajang and Nagarjiji yielding no results, the search teams have been concentrating at five more locations including Putujiji in Bhutan to trace out the missing chopper of Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu. More
8: 45 pm: Taliban express doubt that bin Laden is dead
The Taliban cast suspicion on the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, saying they would not believe the al-Qaida leader was dead until they had seen proof or received confirmation from sources close to him.Though US officials have said they confirmed bin Laden's identity both with face-mapping software and DNA tests, the lack of photos of the body and its burial at sea have raised doubts in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the man who evaded American detection for so long has actually been killed.
8: 20 pm: The United States may release later on Tuesday photos of Osama bin Laden's burial at sea but no final decision has been made, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
8: 00 pm: Pakistan has bin Laden wife, children in custody
A senior Pakistani intelligence official said one of Osama bin Laden's daughters had seen her father being shot dead by US forces, and was one of about 10 relatives of the al Qaeda leader in custody pending interrogation. Read more
7: 45 pm: No proof Pakistanis knew bin Laden location: USThere is no evidence Pakistani officials knew Osama bin Laden was living at a compound deep inside the country, but the United States is not ruling out the possibility, President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser said. Here is the full story
7: 30 pm: US believes it can now destroy al Qaeda:
The United States will aim to destroy al Qaeda's central organization now that its leader Osama bin Laden has been killed and its capabilities degraded by US operations, a top White House adviser said. Here is the full story
7: 10 pm: 250,000 more NYTs printed for US newsstands today. 10-page special section on Osama bin Laden raid, analysis.
6: 30 pm: The Dummies' Guide to Identifying a Dead Osama:One of the questions most commonly asked in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's killing was, how did the US manage to identify him so quickly -- and what makes them so sure it's him anyway? Courtesy Scientific American, here are the answers.
Essential Reading
So, through the day, we brought you links to interesting stories about Osama bin Laden -- all of them topical and current. As we get to that time of evening when you contemplate putting your feet up, here's another selection -- of great longform articles on Osama. NB: This list does not include articles already linked to over the last couple of days.
1. The brilliant Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, on the Egyptian doctor turned terrorist Ayman al-Zawihiri, the man tipped to take over the al Qaeda network.
2. The child is father of the man, reckons Steve Coll, as he goes looking for clues into the mental makeup of Osama in the terrorist's old school where he spent his formative years. More
3. Omar bin Laden, whose surreal interview in Rolling Stone magazine we had linked to yesterday, profiles his father Osama for Vanity Fair magazine.
4. Back in February 1999, John Miller interviewed Osama bin Laden for Esquire magazine. The story of his travels to get to Osama is as interesting as the interview itself, with the man who in less than two years was to become America's Most Wanted.
5. A detailed, and superbly atmospheric, Newsweek cover story, circa 2007, on the hunt for bin Laden.
6. And finally: Rambo movies are made of these. From GQ, the story of 50 year old Gary Faulkner, the man who armed with a sword, a pair of night vision goggles, and the presumed blessings of his god, wandered the most dangerous part of the world on the self-imposed mission of capturing or killing Osama.
5: 20 pm: Smitha Prakash of ANI travels to Kashmir, and comes back with the sense that the one-time paradise on earth has been turned into a refugee city. An outtake from Smitha's piece:
"Spring is indeed beautiful in Jammu. The well manicured lawns in the up-market localities where huge houses owned by either serving or retired government employees have large blossoms and chirping birds. Traffic stops for police and army officers and senior politicians. There is an overpowering presence of government here.
I travel to the outskirts of the city, to Basti Chak Bhoopat, a hamlet occupied by Hindu refugees who fled from the newly formed country of Pakistan in 1947. There are about 20,000 'West Pakistanis' as they call themselves, along the 200 odd kilometers of the Line of Control (LOC) in this region. They are the 'nowhere people' of Jammu and Kashmir.
The state does not give them a 'Permanent Resident Certificate' because they migrated from the Punjab province of the newly formed Pakistan in 1947. Geographically, a large part of Jammu sits cheek by jowl with the Punjab province of Pakistan.
This certificate is only given to those whose ancestors lived in the united Jammu and Kashmir state before 1954.
I met with several of the displaced persons who now are now second and third generation refugees. They live in abject poverty, and are not eligible for government jobs or even bank loans, as for all administrative purposes, they don't exist! They occupied homes and lands vacated by Muslims who migrated to Pakistan. But they don't possess any ownership papers so they can't sell their property either.
Since they cannot vote for assembly or panchayat elections, they do not have any political representation in the state."
Read the whole story to know what happens to the ordinary people while politicians, militants and sundry others play their deadly games.
5: 10 pm: The Taliban in Pakistan have threatened to avenge the killing of Osama. Geo News reported that the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said in an audio message, “Pakistan will be the prime target”. Read story here
4: 50 pm: Pakistan's president acknowledged for the first time that his security forces were left out of a US operation to kill Osama bin Laden, but he did little to dispel questions over how the al Qaeda leader was able to live in comfort near Islamabad.
The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for years, prompted many US lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to nuclear-armed Pakistan. Read more
4: 35 pm: Responding to a petition filed by GL Singhal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Vadodara, a two-member bench of the Supreme Court today stayed investigations into the Ishrat Jahan case. The petition by Singhal, who was a member of the police team that had gunned down Ishrat and three others on June 15, 2004, argued that the case needed to be investigated by a team of officers, and that currently there was only one member left in the Special Investigations Team appointed by the Gujarat High Court to probe the case.
4: 20 pm: Al Qaeda is strapped for cash, and could even have gone bankrupt, according to Time magazine. An article by Tim McGirk says: “The terrorist network has been hit by a double whammy: the death of its charismatic leader and the Arab Spring, the popular and democratic uprising against cutthroat despots. No longer can al-Qaeda and its offspring sell itself to Muslims as the sole alternative to tyrannical regimes.” Read more
3: 50 pm: Friends in low places:
"We would have destroyed them long ago," Nazarov (that is Kazakhstan's Deputy Chairman for Counterterrorism General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov) said, "if other countries didn't manipulate terrorist groups for their geopolitical goals. For instance, in Pakistan Osama bin Laden wasn't an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces."
That clip is from a diplomatic cable released not so long ago by Wikileaks. The Telegraph has a more detailed story, spelling out who knew what, when.
3: 35 pm: The wisdom of crowds:As anyone who followed this live blog over the last two days knows, there is so much of information out there on the killing of Osama bin Laden, plus so much of commentary and insight, that it is hard for even the most seasoned news organization to keep track of it all. Enter, into the breach, crowd-sourcing.
Frankly, the best resource for following all the developments, almost in real time, is not one of the world's great news organizations but the wikipedia entry on Osama bin Laden's death -- a site completely edited by an army of anonymous people putting their energies into the effort.
Check it out -- it's the best there is at telling this particular story.
3: 30 pm: Who is Osama bin Laden?A significant number of teenagers in the US are clueless on who Osama bin Laden is. Some tweets from yesterday say,” Who is Osama? And why is it good that he is dead?”
3: 20 pm: Osama killed Dorjee Khandu:The test of a first rate intelligence, someone once said, is the ability to retain two ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. By that definition, did the media lose the test? Teresa Rahman certainly thinks so: in all the hue and cry about Osama, she argues, the Indian media clearly lost sight of a story that should have resonated more than it did: the disappearance of Dorjee Khandu.
"As the people of the state spent sleepless nights praying for the safety of their leader, by the third day, the news of Khandu’s rescue operations were reduced to a ticker on the television screens of the national channels," Rahman writes. "Of course, they had more meaty news in the form of Osama and Obama. Long deliberations on Osama’s death and its implications eclipsed Khandu. One anguished reader of The Arunachal Times wrote, “Osama killed Dorjee Khandu”. But for the people of Arunachal Pradesh, Khandu is probably more important."
3: 10 pm: China's Balancing Act:
In an official reaction, China hailed the killing of Osama bin Laden, calling it a "major event" in the fight against terrorism. However, in the next breath, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu defended its ally Pakistan from criticism that it has done little in the battle against terrorism. "Pakistan stands at the forefront of the international struggle against terrorism," Reuters quotes Jiang as saying. "The Pakistani government's determination to fight terrorism is staunch and its actions have been vigorous. Pakistan has made important contributions to the international struggle against terror. China will continue staunchly supporting Pakistan developing and implementing its own anti-terror strategy based on its own national conditions."
2: 55 pm: How many votes is a dead terrorist worth?
Besides being battered over the weak economy, Obama's Republican rivals had been criticizing, with increased fervor, what they called the president's weak and vacillating foreign policy. In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, even his potential rivals in the 2012 presidential elections have been forced to pay grudging tribute. So does this mean Obama is now a shoo-in for re-election? Not really, says Yahoo's Holly Bailey in an opinion piece. The crux of Holly's argument:
"However, political history also offers some important cautions about how short-lived such victories can be in the heat of a re-election effort. Take, for example, former President George H.W. Bush's sky-high poll numbers in the aftermath of the successful 1991 Gulf War, which made him seem virtually unbeatable by his likely Democratic opponents.
But as the 1992 campaign drew closer, Bush 41's numbers steadily dropped, and he lost his bid for a second term, thanks mostly to public anxiety over the struggling economy--an issue that also seems likely to dominate the upcoming 2012 campaign, at least for now."
The reference to the 1992 campaign is particularly apt. Back then, while Bush senior was flogging the Gulf War for election mileage, James Carville, campaign strategist for Democratic candidate Bill Clinton, came up with a catchphrase that was near perfect in its formulation. It called out that the mismatch that was the Gulf War was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things; it pointed out that back home, where the voters were, the recession was the real sticking point.
That phrase was 'It's the economy, stupid.' And that is the crux of Holly's argument: that come 2012, Obama the man who ordered the hit on Osama won't really matter all that much, because it will still be the economy, stupid.
2: 47 pm: Pakistan's duplicity is now exposed in the eyes of the world, but the United States is unlikely to look for a showdown with that country, strategic experts say. The US administration, they expect, will continue to play India and Pakistan against each other to gain maximum benefit for itself.
2: 45 pm: Intelligence, worth $80 billion:
Ten years ago, it took an estimated $40 billion to maintain American intelligence operations for a year. 9/11 happened, and everything changed. As must have been evident from the many stories we've linked to about the mechanics of Operation Geronimo, a massive, sustained intelligence effort was behind the eventual tracking down and killing of the al Qaeda chief. The cost? $80 billion. More number crunching here
2:35 pm: In a boost for President Obama ahead of the 2012 elections, his ratings have risen post Osama's death.
2: 30 pm: So he's dead, so what?:
Opinion is divided on what the killing of Osama bin Laden means, in the larger scheme of things. Here's a cross section gleaned from the US media:
David von Drehle says in Time magazine that America has emerged stronger for the taking down of the al Qaeda chief. "It matters," von Drehle says, "because people had begun to doubt whether American power was truly power; and to ask whether its day was past. In that equation, Osama bin Laden was an unsettling factor even though his own power was diminished. As long as he was free, the US was failing. It was that simple."
Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times, says it is all good, but it is merely the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Osama's killing could have come when the halo around the al Qaeda founder had dimmed more than somewhat. "It's also true that bin Laden's killing might have mattered more in 2002 or 2003," Kristof writes. "At that time in countries like Pakistan, many ordinary people had a very high regard for bin Laden and doubted that he was centrally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Over time that view has changed: popular opinion has moved more against him, and you no longer see Osama t-shirts for sale in the markets. Some people still feel a bit of respect for his ability to outwit the United States, or they are so anti-American that they embrace anybody we don't like, but bin Laden has been marginalized over time."
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower (one of the best books you will ever read about 9/11 and the events that led up to it), says Osama's death matters not in and of itself, but because of the possibilities it opens up. Democracy and civil society are the cure for the chronic misery of Muslim countries that has fed the rise of Islamic extremism," Wright says. "The death of the most notorious terrorist the world has ever seen, whose mission was to create a clash of civilizations, will allow the door to open more widely to the tolerance, modernism, and pragmatism that is so badly needed and so long awaited in a part of the world where despair, corruption, brutality, and fanaticism have laid waste to so many generations."
1: 24 pm: As the world hailed the death of America's most wanted man, two 9/11 widows share their immediate feelings on the death of the man responsible for their husbands' death. Read Marian Fontana's piece here and Nikki Stern's here.
1: 19 pm: OBAMA WATCHED BIN LADEN DIE, AS IT HAPPENED
1: 16 pm: Imran's Bouncer: Former Pakistan cricket captain turned politico Imran Khan is profoundly disturbed by the events of yesterday, vide his signed column in The Independent. Here's a sample clip:
"All this has led to other serious questions being raised in Pakistan. For instance, if the Pakistan government or the army had this intelligence, why did we not take out Bin Laden ourselves? Why did we have to rely on the Americans coming over from their airbases in Afghanistan? Equally disturbing is the tremendous level of distrust the US has for the Pakistanis, which led it to jam the radars during the duration of the operation.
There is not just confusion that prevails in Pakistan, but also a national depression at the loss of national dignity and self-esteem as well as sovereignty. There is no answer to these questions and this simply allows allegations from the West and from India to go unchallenged that Pakistan has been protecting Bin Laden and other terrorists; that Pakistan knew he was here and kept him safe.
The president, the prime minister and the army need to address this immediately and if, as they claim, they had the intelligence that led to the killing of Bin Laden, why it was not done by Pakistani forces? Until this happens, Pakistan will suffer a great loss of credibility - and this from a country that has the fifth biggest army in the world and a hefty defence budget.
The reason we will not get these answers, of course, is that we have the most corrupt and incompetent government in our history."
1: 13 pm: Wired for Intel: It is entirely possible that the killing of Osama bin Laden was not the single biggest outcome of the raid on the Abbottabad complex. Politico reports that the Navy SEALs who carried out the raid seized computers, thumb drives et cetera that are now being described as the motherlode of hard intel on the al Qaeda network. Hundreds of people are examining the find now, in the hope of getting actionable information, the report says.
12: 48 pm: Registration has begun for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage, scheduled this year for the period June 29-August 13. Here are the details
12: 42 pm: Why did Pak give up Osama?: If the mood yesterday was celebratory, the mood today is somewhat skeptical, with more and more voices questioning the official version of events, and speculating about Pakistan's role. Here's Robert Fisk, in the Independent, on the topic of if, and if so why, Pakistan gave up Osama bin Laden to American interdiction. Sample quote:
"But talking of caves, Bin Laden's demise does bring Pakistan into grim focus. For months, President Ali Zardari has been telling us that Bin Laden was living in a cave in Afghanistan. Now it turns out he was living in a mansion in Pakistan. Betrayed? Of course he was. By the Pakistan military or the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence? Quite possibly both. Pakistan knew where he was.
Not only was Abbottabad the home of the country's military college - the town was founded by Major James Abbott of the British Army in 1853 - but it is headquarters of Pakistan's Northern Army Corps' 2nd Division. Scarcely a year ago, I sought an interview with another "most wanted man" - the leader of the group believed responsible for the Mumbai massacres. I found him in the Pakistani city of Lahore - guarded by uniformed Pakistani policemen holding machine guns.
Of course, there is one more obvious question unanswered: couldn't they have captured Bin Laden? Didn't the CIA or the Navy Seals or the US Special Forces or whatever American outfit killed him have the means to throw a net over the tiger? "Justice," Barack Obama called his death. In the old days, of course, "justice" meant due process, a court, a hearing, a defence, a trial. Like the sons of Saddam, Bin Laden was gunned down. Sure, he never wanted to be taken alive - and there were buckets of blood in the room in which he died.
But a court would have worried more people than Bin Laden. After all, he might have talked about his contacts with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, or about his cosy meetings in Islamabad with Prince Turki, Saudi Arabia's head of intelligence. Just as Saddam - who was tried for the murder of a mere 153 people rather than thousands of gassed Kurds - was hanged before he had the chance to tell us about the gas components that came from America, his friendship with Donald Rumsfeld, the US military assistance he received when he invaded Iran in 1980."
In passing, Robert Fisk is the author of, among others, The Great War for Civilization, a gripping, often graphic, narrative of Islamic fundamentalism as it played out in the Middle East. During his researches, he met and spent time with Osama bin Laden. Here is an extract from the book that details that meeting. And here is a prescient passage the events of yesterday imbue with peculiar meaning:
"I said to Bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. "The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan." It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. "There are other places," he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? "There are several places where we have friends and close brothers - we can find refuge and safety in them." I told Bin Laden he was already a hunted man. "Danger is a part of our life," he snapped back."
12: 35 pm: Remember when Osama died of 'kidney failure'?: Yesterday, former President Pervez Musharraf spent a lot of time in serial statements that aimed to make him all things to all people. Thus, he spoke of what a bad man Osama was, and how his killing was a victory for Pakistan as much as it was for America -- clearly aiming that statement at the international community, among which he still projects the image of a moderate man at odds with the militant side of Islam. Almost immediately thereafter, in another statement, he criticized the operation itself as an invasion of Pakistan's sovereignty, and said if he were president he would never have permitted it -- a statement clearly aimed at the domestic constituency, given that a majority of Pakistanis are none too happy about US military adventures on their soil (Oh, in passing, Musharraf might need reminding that his successor, Asif Ali Zardari, did not quite "permit" the US operation in Abbottabad that led to Osama's death -- he was merely told about it after the fact).
Against that background, this article dating back to 2002 is worth revisiting -- remember how Musharraf was claiming, at the time, that Osama was already dead of 'kidney failure'? Seymour Hersh, in a compelling article, talks of the US-backed airlift by Pakistan of its various elements in Afghanistan -- and how that airlift provided cover for Musharraf to get many Taliban out of harm's way. Read on
12: 15 pm: The in-joke among the Pakistan military-political establishment was that Osama bin Laden was 'al-Faida' -- a perennial source of profit, thanks to the millions the US continued to dole out annually to Pakistan in exchange for their "help" in hunting down the al Qaeda leader and other wanted terrorists. Since 2001, Pakistan got $19.6 billion in US aid, including $13.3 billion under 'security' heads. Why then would it not make sense for Pakistan to ensure that Osama bin Laden was safe and secure? And why would it not make sense for Pakistan to ensconce the wanted al Qaeda chief right in the middle of an area packed with military establishments, rather on the lines of Edgar Allan Poe's famed short story 'The Purloined Letter', where the key epistle is hidden in plain sight?
This is what Nitin Pai muses on, in his latest column on Y! Opinions. What he concludes is that (a) It was next to impossible for the US to have located Osama without a bit of help from Pakistan; (b) that Pakistan had a very good reason for providing that help and (c), finally, that the killing of Osama is cue for the end game -- and that game will be played out in Afghanistan. Read
12: 12 pm: Pakistan authorities are interrogating a woman found in Osama's Abbottabad mansion. She speaks some English, and could reveal how long Osama and his family had been in Pakistan, an official told Dawn newspaper. Details here.
11: 37 am: 'Abbottabad killing will help Al Qaeda': Osama bin Laden's death is a gift to Al Qaeda, which will turn him into a martyr and grow even bigger, an analysis in The Hindu concludes. Pravin Swami, diplomatic editor of The Telegraph, writes in the Chennai-based paper, "Even as America, and many others across the world, celebrate the killing of a man who more than any other came to represent evil, there is in fact little reason for jubilation. The stark truth is this: a decade after 9/11, the jihadist movement is more powerful than at any time in the past. The small group bin Laden built in Afghanistan has flowered."
11: 34 am: Sourav Ganguly back in IPL, joins Pune Warriors. "We decided that the amount of experience that Sourav has in cricket will no doubt help the team. So we finalised Ganguly last night," Pune Warriors Director Abhijit Sarkar said. Full article here
11: 22 am: Arunachal Pradesh CM Dorjee Khandu is missing for the fourth day today. With some leads from ISRO, around 3,000 security personnel are scouting the Sela Pass for possible wreckage of the chopper. Aerial search operations were cancelled after bad weather persists. More here
11: 13 am: Flying Low: The Air India pilot's strike is into its seventh day, and neither side seems prepared to budge an inch. Or at least, as far as the pilots are concerned, they seem prepared to move the goalposts around from day to day. They had first asked for a raise; then they said they wanted a CBI inquiry into corruption within the AI management. Last heard from, they want the management to re-recognize the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (which the AI management had de-recognized on day two of the strike); they want three sacked pilots who are key members of the union reinstated, and if these two things are done they will report for work, maybe. The Delhi High Court is, today, hearing the case filed by the management against the pilots, and some clarity should emerge. We hope.
11: 11 am: THE OSAMA BIN LADEN SPECIAL
11:00 am: Al Qaeda had threatened a 'nuclear hellstorm' if Osama was killed. The target, according to some analysts, was to be London. So should the world gear up for nuclear terrorism now? A publication called the International Business Times is sceptical. It details how senior al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had spoken about a nuclear bomb hidden in Europe that would be detonated if Osama was captured or killed. But it is convinced many such 'confessions' were obtained through torture at Guantanamo Bay, and could be false. Read the analysis here.
10: 36 am: It's now a PR battle out there. The US hasn't decided whether it will release pictures and footage of Osama's corpse, but is letting it known that the terror mastermind tried to hide behind women when the US commandos confronted him. One of the women he used as a shield died, the US counter-terrorism chief has just told reporters.
10: 28 am: Iraqis reacted with joy and some skepticism to the news of Osama's death.
10:04 am: Osama was codenamed Geronimo, and a stonefaced American president Barrack Obama waited to hear the words 'Geronimo EKIA' (or Osama, enemy killed in action) while the Abbottabad operation was on, it has just been revealed. Details here
9: 15 am: The CIA isn't going to sit back in satisfaction after the killing of Osama, its chief indicated late last night. Leon Panetta, director of the American intelligence agency, warned that Al Qaeda without Osama bin Laden was still dangerous. "The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him, and we must - and will - remain vigilant and resolute," Panetta has written to his employees. More details here.
9:02 am: CNN IBN reports Osama was shot in the head first and then on his chest. US officials say that he didn't retaliate when his mansion was being ambushed and the woman who died during the operations is not Osama's wife, as initial reports said.
8: 50 am: Today is the fourth phase in the West Bengal elections. 63 constituencies including Howrah, Hooghly, East Midnapur will vote.
8: 37 am: Even as the world rejoices, Pakistan is losing steam over questioned arising from his death. The US says Pakistan knew he was in the country. However, the people of Pakistan are angry over the government's silence over these allegations.
8: 30 am: Osama may have avoided capture for over ten years. But what was it that gave him away in the end? Ironically, it was the absence of a telephone or internet connection at his mansion in Abbotabad, Pakistan that raised suspicions.