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Driving Directions from Pakistan Military Academy to Bin Laden's Compound
- koenigdavidmj 15y agoI do not remember the source, but heard that the town had checkpoints at entry as well. The guy was six and a half feet tall and on kidney dialysis. How was he not noticed for this long?
- VB6_Foreverr 15y agoA further insight into the type of man OBL was. I heard BBC reporter John Simpson describe his one encounter with OBL which occurred in 1989 in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. Simpson was interviewing some Mujahadeen when OBL rode in on a horse and tried to persuade them to shoot Simpson and his crew. They refused.
- MichaelSalib 15y agoIn his book on 9/11 and Al-Queda, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright claims that OBL is actually not particularly tall and certainly not 6'6".
- srd11 15y agoCorrected to use actual location of Osama's compound, as determined by zeteo from satellite photos here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506963 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506963, instead of the fake one making the rounds.
- VB6_Foreverr 15y agoSomeday google will have a streetview of the most wanted with his face blurred out
- VB6_Foreverr 15y agoThe best place to hide is the last place you'd be expected to. Also when you hear of cases like the man in Austria who kept his daughter captive in his cellar for years and of Phillip Garrido in California maybe people shouldn't be so quick to assume the worst motives of the Pakistani authorities
- MichaelSalib 15y agoThe fact that a military academy was in the same town tells us pretty much nothing. Such institutions by their very nature are focused on external military threats. Pakistan's military has long had an obsessive focus on its Indian counterpart. Cadets at West Point don't spend their free time canvassing the town looking for suspicious houses or people. Cadets at the academy in Abbottabad were probably a lot more focused on Indian strategic nuclear forces than they were on the goings-on in their own town. Now, that doesn't mean that some elements of the Pakistani government were not cooperating with OBL; it just means that talking about the presence of a military academy in the same town is silly.
- srd11 15y agoThe military intelligence Pakistani ISI has a major presence there. PMA isn't just any military base. Its the military base. Its just not reasonable to think they didn't know what that giant compound down the road was.
- MichaelSalib 15y agoThe ISI have a major presence at a military academy? Really? Do you have a cite for that? Maybe you should consider changing the title to talk about a military base with (apparently) many ISI staffers as opposed to a military academy.
- srd11 15y agoSure, let me grab the citation. You raise a valid point. If this were any minor base it wouldn't be such a big deal. PMA is where Pakistan trains its special ops and intelligence guys. Its their elite academy. The base is commonly called Kakul, and the main road leading to it is Kakul Rd. The purpose of this map is to show its literally a quick right off the main drive.
- MichaelSalib 15y agoAh, well, that makes a big difference. I've read people joking about it online by comparing it to West Point, but what you're describing sounds a lot more like Langley or Quantico.