Bin Laden and the reward that was not claimed

Who protected Bin Laden in Pakistan? We don't know. Any government turns out to have murky ideas as far as terrorists are concerned. If you doubt that, look at the history of the U.S.A. with colonel Khadafi. Is it clear to you?  What strikes me is that Bin Laden did not have a large force to protect him; he counted on anonymity rather than on the government. It is interesting. He probably had some protection, but not full support.
By contrast, I clearly remember the French village where the Ayatollah Khomeini took refuge in 1979: it was peppered with security officers from the Gendarmerie Nationale. They always had a police bus in front of the compound. Not only the protection was official, but you could see high antennas on the roof of the property: it was before the time of the Internet; Khomeini sent his messages by radio all over the Arab world, with the full complicity of the French. Murky, murky, and we have been in trouble ever since.
And how come the multi-million dollar reward offer had no effect? As I am very old and I have traveled a lot, I can tell you this: there is one very greedy person on every block of every town all over the world. No exception. Somebody sold Jesus, remember? Treason during World War 2 was common. What about Bin Laden?
There is something that we have not done right. I guess a lot of people would have liked the money and feared retribution: they wanted to stay home and enjoy the money, they did not want to emigrate here under our protection to enjoy it.  Our reward program abroad has to be modified: logic tells me it should have worked better than that.

Paper of the month: Tara Bahrampour

In wake of unrest, Britain replacing US as Iran "Great Satan"
Washington Post, July 17, 2009 You can read this paper here

This is an excellent paper which points out the difficulties we have in understanding not only foreign people but foreign governments.
How we are viewed abroad, and consequently how some government policies can be designed against us is not always based on facts, on good sense or on good information: it can be based on a reputation or on past encounters. In this report, Britain is seen by the Iranian government as the colonial power it was fifty years ago. I believe it: it took me some decades to change my opinion of Germany after WWII. Painful experiences with people or government make it hard to change our point of view.

This example is a good lesson for the US. We should do better with our strategic communications. and indeed restrict the publicity made by the Pentagon: they need the promotion but they are not the best at this; you should read also in the Washington Post, the paper by Walter Pincus (July 28, 2009)about the criticism coming from the House Appropriations Committee on this subject.)

I suggest that we change our image by hiring the people who promote tourism in Ireland: they make everybody want to go to Ireland which is a flat place with its past destroyed, always in bad weather and always on the verge of civil war. They have been consistently successful with this difficult task, therefore they can do anything. They are the best promoters in the world.