Ages ago, Musharraf made a telling statement that Usama is not on “sovereign Pakistani territory” which means Pakistani Kashmir, since the NWFP & Waziristan have been an integral part of Pakistan, despite being outside the purview of the Central Govt.
Google Maps works.
Mansur Ijaz in a column years ago spoke in similar terms.
Makes sense, why would Usama hang out in an area with an active US surveillance presence, near the Afghan border when the vast rugged mountainous areas of Pakistani Kashmir are tailor made for lying low.
Rumor: Bin Laden Holed Up in Pakistani Mountains (UPDATE: Rumor II: Bin Laden Dead)
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Al Arabiya is reporting that Osama bin Laden is holed up in a Pakistani cave along the China / Afghanistan border. They also claim the US is about to start a major offensive inside Pakistan. Nothing much new to these rumors, except for the part about the US planning feet on the ground in Pakistan, which in my estimation means that the entire report is bogus.
TOI:
The Central Investigation Agency (CIA) of the US has located bin Laden in the "rooftop of the world", the area of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan to the west, in particular the chain of mountains in the province of Nurestan, and China to the north, Arabic television network Al-Arabiya quoted unidentified sources as saying....There's also an interesting follow up quote about support for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda which seems rather prescient given the number of articles in the MSM over the weekend claiming that al Qaeda is at "war with itself" or that support for the group has dramatically fallen.The Dubai-based network reported that US security and military officials had a top-level meeting at a military base in Qatar's capital Doha to plan an operation to hunt for bin Laden a few days ago.
According to Al-Arabiya , support for al-Qaida is broadening among the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani tribes that deny bin Laden's presence in their areas and fundamentalists including the Muslim Brotherhood, which has changed its strategy.Thanks to Birddog26.Muslim Brotherhood leader Mahdi Akef has called bin Laden "a mujahid" fighting against "foreign occupation".
UPDATE: Or is Osama bin Laden dead? Rumormania, baby! If the truthfulness of a rumor was somehow related to my hopes, then the latter one would be empirically, ontologically, metaphysically, capital-T True.
By Dr. Rusty Shackleford at May 27, 2008 12:51 PM | | l digg this