Hunting bin Laden: Part 2 - Regruping

After the mishandled attempt at capturing bin Laden so shortly after his attacks, al-Qaeda managed a bit of a resurgence. They began recruiting oversees, showing they can hit targets abroad and not just in their territory. The most notable attack was in 2005 when suicide bombers attacked the people of London on the trains for their morning commute, killing dozens. Especially in recent years, that's kind of the tone for terrorism; crazed individuals killing typically less than a hundred (well, at least in the Western world), but increasingly large amounts due to the fact that weapons are more dangerous than ever and the only major hinderance to committing atrocities is a sense of basic morality.

America's response to this has been to amp up the drone program, effectively increasing what Osama claimed he was trying to prevent - an increased presence of Americans in the Middle East. Eventually, around 2007-2008, America simply stopped asking Pakistan for permission to drone-strike certain areas and began doing it on their own accord. Bringing out more controversy was their decision to also do a cross-border raid that killed mostly women and children, damaging relations with Pakistan and covering the face of the Americans with many an egg. However, at the core of it all they were still eliminating al-Qaeda leaders left, right and centre all from the safety of places hundreds of miles away. It suddenly became very dangerous to be a leader al-Qaeda, but the most important one was nowhere to be found. All the while, terrorists were citing him as their major influence the way rock stars say they learned from some past musician. Osama was the Beatles of modern terrorism.

The search for him never died down, in spite of the fact that they had very little evidence on

Osama bin Laden's father; siring 55 kids. It was
his winning smile and devout religious extremism
that his wives just couldn't resist.

where he might be residing. It mostly came down to where he couldn't be. Initially they believed it couldn't be Yemen as he would be too recognizable, and most likely Afghanistan or Pakistan. From there they searched the history books. They searched where his father hid when he was on the run, hoping he would be in a similar situation (in searching up his father I discovered that bin Laden's dad had over twenty wives and 55 children, which would make keeping track of birthdays a tiresome issue). They discovered he had a network of safehouses everywhere, leading them to believe he could very well be in an urban centre.

From there, they looked for what they referred to as "four pillars" - his family, hints in his messages to the media (if there was a plant, a bird, voices in the background, anything that could lead them in a direction), communication with the other leaders, and his courier network. It was the lattermost of these pillars that eventually led to his capture.

Aguilera: proudly doing her part in the
war on terror.

We know now that bin Laden was holed up in a compound in a quiet town in Pakistan (more on that later). It was isolated; with cell phones being tracked, messaging was very slow in the al-Qaeda world. That meant that much of the messaging had to be done by a courier, transporting whatever had to be transported in and out of the compound to the beck and call of Osama. The courier himself, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, with his real name being Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed (we'll refer to him as the Kuwaiti for brevity, and so I don't have to keep double checking the spelling) had been close to bin Laden for ages. Eventually, the U.S. Jack Bower'ed just the right people - meaning torture - until a few coughed up information about the Kuwaiti and what he might be doing.

So, does that mean that torture works?
Sort of. First off, it was pretty brutal; one man was kept awake twenty hours a day, stripped nude, left cold and isolated, and, interestingly enough, subjected to hours of blaring Christina Aguilera music - a fate typically reserved for suburban fathers of white teenage girls in the 2000-2010 decade. Another man, also tortured (although not as heavily - perhaps with smooth jazz) led to the Kuwaiti as well. Certainly, it looks promising; that is, until you consider that another high ranking member was waterboarded almost two hundred times and still told the Americans the Kuwaiti had retired - another provided only disinformation. So, the answer to the original question is... maybe?

Barack, after being asked where the drone strikes
 are coming from.

It was right around this time finds the end of the George Bush era. New to the warfront is Barack Obama, the first black president that has one letter off the name of the terrorist he's hunting (considering how America looks currently, that's nothing short of a miracle). Being fiercely anti-war on the campaign trail and before, he shifts the tone from saying "war" to "policing", putting a fresh new spin on it. He then took the drone program, amped it up to never before seen levels, and declared stronger than ever that it's Osama season. After what seems like ages, they have their first real lead, and he was feeling like they just might get 'im. American style.