osama bin laden

Battleland Battleland

Why Wasn’t bin Laden Where We Thought He Was?

If our dealings with Pakistan are hampered by the same flawed assumptions we used in our hunt for Osama bin Laden, the road ahead for Washington and Islamabad is likely to be rocky. Over at Small Wars Journal, Will Chalmers, a research assistant at the Centre for Security, Armed Forces and Society at the Royal Military College of …

Battleland Battleland

The Outing of the SEALs Has SecDef Ticked Off



Remember when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got that question about “hillbilly armor” in 2004 from a soldier in Kuwait complaining about lousy protection for troops in the war in Iraq? And Rumsfeld’s timeless response: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have.”

It turns out the question, from a member of …

Battleland Battleland

Pakistan: indispensable to US security?

I am amazed at how quickly the Obama administration is going out of its way to assure everyone that we’re sticking with Pakistan for the long haul no matter what. No discussion and little explanation, it’s just assumed that Pakistan becomes the new indispensable partner that anchors US national security, even as every day reveals …

Battleland Battleland

1 in 11,800,000,000,000,000

DNA samples collected from his body were compared to a comprehensive DNA profile derived from bin Laden’s large extended family. Based on that analysis, the DNA is unquestionably his. The possibility of a mistaken identity on the basis of this analysis is approximately one in 11.8 quadrillion. I’ll let you count the zeroes.

— Senior …

Battleland Battleland

The Silence from Pakistan

There was a more important story over the weekend than the U.S. propaganda effort to demystify Osama bin Laden by releasing five silent video clips. It involved another kind of quiet coming from Pakistan worth noting, as Karin Brulliard did in Saturday’s Washington Post:

In a nation that is home to an alphabet soup of militant

Battleland Battleland

The Lessons of bin Laden

After a decade of Osama bin Laden, the lessons he taught us crystallized over the weekend, a week after his death at the hands of the U.S. military. They became clear when the Obama Administration released some of his homemade videos. Administration officials said they showed bin Laden to be a hands-on leader of al Qaeda, still in …

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