*Ø* Is Bush hiding bin Laden?

The article from a prestigious British journal that had everyone (well, some people) talking last August seems to have been widely forgotten.

It's here at The Guardian but because people keep asking me for it, here are parts of it:

Inside story of the hunt for Bin Laden
"The al-Qaida leader is said to be hiding in northern Pakistan guarded by a 120-mile ring of tribesmen whose job it is to warn of the approach of any troops. Rory McCarthy reports

Saturday August 23, 2003

"Experts who have been following the attempts of the Pakistanis and the US to find the al-Qaida leader have suggested that:

· The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal with the US not to seize Bin Laden after the Afghan war for fear of inciting trouble in his own country;

· The al-Qaida leader is being protected by a three elaborate security rings which stretch 120 miles in diameter; and

· The Pakistani special forces looking for him are no closer than they were a year ago ... [emphasis mine]

"Some argue that the Pakistani authorities saw the difficulties from the start and, although they publicly stressed their commitment to the hunt for Bin Laden, in private they had a different strategy.

"Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from Tora Bora.

"The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill Bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and would trigger a spate of revenge al-Qaida attacks on western targets across the world.

"'There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term,' he said. 'There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate.'

"The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Bin Laden, but the 'retaliation infrastructure' of al-Qaida.

"It meant that Gen Musharraf frequently put out remarkably conflicting accounts of the status of Bin Laden, while the US administration barely mentioned his name."


This site claims to have a story 'Al-Qaida leader getting dialysis treament at Peshawar hospital' but they want money to read it. Then there's this from The Times of India, another credible journal, of July 24, 2004:

"WASHINGTON: Pakistan's intelligence officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, a well-known American analyst has said, based on a 'stunning document' that he claims was given by a Pakistani source to the 9/11 Commission on the eve of the publication of its report.

"The document, from a high-level, but anonymous Pakistani source, also claims that Osama bin Laden has been receiving periodic dialysis in a military hospital in Peshawar, says Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-at-large of the news agency UPI."
Osama being treated by Pak Army