Butch and Sundance

There's the classic movie image of Butch and Sundance being chased by the persistent posse. "Who are those guys?" is the question that they ask every time they show up on their trail. "Who are those guys?"

Osama Bin Laden stopped running five years ago. We are told that he'd lived in this same villa in Abbottabad for five years. We are told that the torture at Guantanamo prison led to his killing becuase they interrogated some people 5 years ago.

Osama stopped running five years ago. Osama stopped moving around five years ago. He'd settled in to a comfortable house in a pretty area of the country just down the road from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.

I like spy novels. Here's the drill from spy novels. If someone is captured, they are told that no matter what is done to them, that they can't talk for 48 hours. The 48 hours gives all the people that they know time to realize that someone is missing, and then run and hide as best they can before the captive does start to talk under torture. Just give every one 48 hours to run.

The US supposedly captured and interrogated someone back in 2004 and 2005 who's information led to Abbottabad and Osama Bin Laden. Gee, I'm guessing Osama wasn't using the 48 hour rule, was he?

You constantly hear that Osama Bin Laden wanted to be a martyr. That apparently was quite true. It seems he had stopped running from the US years ago, and was just sitting there, basically unarmed (one person in the house was armed is now the story), just him and his wife waiting for the US to come get him.

Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting. For five long years.

Osama is sitting there in a house that he knows that US intelligence has links to. He knows that US intelligence has captured the people who know his secret courier. And still, he sits there living in that same house for five years. Osama wanted to be a martyr.

US Intelligence doesn't exactly come off as the posse chasing Butch and Sundance. Osama stopped running five years ago, at a house that was connected to people in Guanatanamo, and it takes five years for US intelligence to find Osama? Osama wasn't exactly asking "who are those guys?" who were so closely dogging his steps.

At least that's the official story.