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Over on NRO's Corner I observe that that the secrecy of the operation to find and kill Bin Laden is extremely impressive, given the propensity for leaking or for just plain blowing our cover.  From Obama and other accounts it appears things got into high gear last August, which is a long time for such operational secrecy to hold this well.

But digging further into some accounts it appears we've had our eye on this compound in Abbottabad (by the way, I think I'm the first blogger to post a GoogleEarth photo of the probable location) for several years now, and may well have guessed Bin Laden was there maybe three or four years ago, but needed to figure out how to confirm it.  Which makes the patience, discipline, and secret-keeping of our intelligence services all the more impressive.  I'd love to hear David Tucker's observations about all of this.  (Hint: Time for another Schramm-Tucker podcast?)

The precautions Bin Laden took to conceal his whereabouts remind me of how drug kingpins isolate themselves from police surveillance; can we get the producers of The Wire to make the movie of how this whole thing went down?  Bin Laden had nothin' on Avon Barksdale, yo.
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Discussions - 4 Comments

Technically this is the most interesting thread.

I'm surprised that they kept their eyes on that compound for that much time without moving in on it.

During the Vietnam war we kept our eyes on the compound at Son Tay, in North Vietnam, which held many of our POWs. But by the time the strike order was finally authorized, after a year of study and planning, the compound had been evacuated by the enemy, and our special operators ended up hitting nothing more than an enemy army base. No POWs were freed.

Many questions remain about this operation.

he was probably dead for years and rolled out now when confidence was at an all time low. it does seem odd that we would spend years observing a compound on one hand and use drone strikes with what one would have to call a lack of restraint in concerns to civilians on the other. I suppose that one could argue we needed to have a corpse to parade around or no one would believe it, still it seems strange that we needed so much time to search a suspicious place. if there were Amish there selling raw milk we could have found him in a week. Of course, we will never be able to know for sure because of this following of Muslim belief/dumping the corpse in the sea.
i was struck by the media reaction, even saw a guy claim this was the greatest day in American history and it makes me wonder how long the good will from this will last with inflation causing gas and comoditties to rise all summer. Will people now have a renewed belief that the so called war on terror is winnable or will they now wonder why we are still in an ever expanding war.

Well, beyond the details of how this is done, I wonder if this will cause the President to think about being a character witness at trial for CIA operatives should his Justice Department ever decide to once again consider charges for harsh interrogation methods...

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