US Sigint assetts don't report to Fox news.
Fox and all the rest make up stuff for sheeple consumption.
December 6th-9th : The Taliban surrendered Kandahar and departed.
December 7th : Afghans reported bin Laden trying to rally his forces in the Tora Bora vicinity during a ground battle supported by US aircraft. Some of them try to negotiate a cease fire with remaining al Qaeda fighters.
December 9th - 10th : The US carpet bombs/daisy cuts the area.
December 10th : The US reports it has found bin Laden's video tape where it was evident he had prior knowledge of September 11th. (Gee, wonder where we found that?) The UK announces its ships will be on patrol looking for fleeing al Qaeda on the 10th, also first UK mumblings about the US widening the war are heard.
December 11th : Reports the Afghan fighters have smothered a lot of Taliban prisoners emerge ; US bombers continue to pound Tora Bora.
December 12th : A Saudi bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda financier claims bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on December 2 with help from locals. A flurry of shrill 'he's escaped, let's quit hunting in Tora Bora' news hits the media from Islamic sources. The Afghans become upset because in their view it was time to quit the attack on Tora Bora but the US doesn't stop. The US thus "messes up" the Afghan's negotiated surrender agreement with bin Laden's personal forces and the Afghans in question try everything possible to deter the US from going forward. Those Afghans fall silent as the operation proceeds cave-to-cave anyway.
December 13th : The US releases the bin Laden video to the press, muslims claim it is doctored.
December 14th : The US reports that bin Laden's forces are isolated in one part of the Tora Bora complex.
December 15th : Desperate messages that sounded like bin Laden asking for help were heard as the Tora Bora's al Qaeda defenders made their final stand under heavy US bombing.
December 15th : The US and the UK are reportedly at odds over widening the war.
December 16th : The US announces that al Qaeda has been crushed in Afghanistan and the US embassy in Kabul opens and Rumsfeld lands in Kabul, Afghanistan.
December 16th : Plans are found in Afghanistan for a bombing attack on London. (Wonder whose cave those were in?)
December 21th : US announces that 7,000 prisoners are being detained after the collapse of armed resistance in Afghanistan.
December 22th : Hamid Kharzai is sworn in as chairman of the interim government; the US recognizes the new Afghan government.
December 27th : The intelligence chief of Afghanistan's deposed Taliban militia, Qari Ahmadullah, was among 25 people killed in Naka, in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika, in American bombing.
January 2002 : Taliban officially capitulate, Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners are going to be sent to Gitmo.
January 4th : A US SEAL is killed in a battle near Tora Bora. US forces also close in on villages in the central highlands where Mullah Omar may have been hiding out with about 1,500 supporters.
January 6th : Teams of MI5 and MI6 officers are in Afghanistan and Pakistan questioning three captured Britons about their links with al-Qaida.
January 7th : Tony Blair flies into Bagram airport for a midnight visit with Afghanistan's prime minister, Hamid Karzai.
January 8th : Three Britons accused of being al-Qaida fighters 'disappear.' (I think they turn up in Gitmo)
January 8th : General Tommy Franks announces the US is winding up ints activity in the Tora Bora area.
January 11th : The first of hundreds of al-Qaida prisoners arrive at the US military base in Cuba.
While the stories of his survival sound a lot like urban legends, so do the accounts of his death. He died on December 6 of kidney failure.
Arab source for the Kidney failure rumor- stories that bin Laden got killed in Tora Bora bombing does not sound like an urban legend. It's the one story no one is pushing, not the Arab propagandists, not the Afghans, not the press, not even the US government. That makes it rather unique.
He died on December 9 from US bombing.
There was the frantic effort by the Afghans to convince the US bin Laden was gone and it was time to have a negotiated surrender which leads to me thinking that bin LAden was indeed trapped and bargaining for his life wiht the locals. The US reported what sounded like him giving orders on December 15th during heavy bombing, while there are theories that these were recordings, in all probability he was killed on December 15th. In any case, US bombing of the complex- really scattered caves- went on for some time after the 15th as each cave was found. We obtained a one-of-a-kind video from somewhere in December, and no one has heard from bin Laden since then, other than one report he died from an al qaeda source, later retracted, and another report that one of bin Laden's sons had taken over the organization.
Whatever happened, we obtained video tapes of him at that time which were not, unlike his other al Qaeda traiing and bragging tapes, made for mass distribution. And since that time, he hasn't produced a single video or uttered a single word for the airwaves or through video recordings to his followers. Not even on the anniversary of 911. If he's not heard of 14 months past 9/11, he's as dead as Hitler and Elvis. 12 to 14 months is about the interval between major al Qaeda attacks.
Incidentally, if bin Laden is dead beyond a reasonable doubt why the heck hasn't the Bush administration stepped up to take credit for it?
This one's simple- as folks here have pointed out since before we even went into Afghanistan, it's better that bin Laden isn't found or heard from again.
For one, he would then be a martyr...
And two, the US congress would say, "OK, we got him, now let's go home." And too many Americans would agree, and then terrorism would continue as before, and those sponsoring terrorism would simply help to reinvigorate it.
Then the war on terrorism would be over, without us accomplishing anything serious against the whole strategy terrorism. That strategy must be discredited- but it requires such a serious change in American policy that it won't occur if the congress is given any excuse at all to quit.
Now, Bill Clinton would never even allow the military to take out people like Aidid or Mugniyah or bin Laden, but if by some chance they went ahead and took out the lieks of bin Laden, Clinton would crow about it, no doubt- why? Because then he could call it quits and go back to getting blow jobs and still look good. But this is not the Clinton administration- this is an administration led by people who want to fix the problem rather than just temporarily patch it.
Bin Laden has, as Ollie's sources said, about 80% chance of being dead. Quite frankly, given the weapons we were using, there wouldn't be enough of him left to identify, and what parts there were are likely under a great deal of rock. Much of what is laying up in those mountains is not identifiable. Just as we have not and cannot identify all of those who died in the WTC and the Pentagon... they're still dead, proof or not. There is no reason for us to continue to assume they are alive.
After December 15th the US focus switched over to peacekeeping ant to Mullah Omar. Although we still had Operation Anaconda to go in 2002, where several interesting characters were caught. In May 2002 Jose Padilla was captured ; in May there was also an incident where Lithuanian nationals attempted to sell cesium (dirty bomb grade, no better) to a German national in a plot involving an attempt to verify the material's quality; in doing so, officials were alerted by concerned individuals but the German buyer escaped. In May the US turned its attention to inspecting ships leaving foreign ports for the US, and our attention also turned to Iraq and to Iran (which had some drones land in their territory), and in June Iran's UN diplomats were caught videotaping NY tunnels, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty before being thrown out of the country. But no interest in bin Laden since December...