Even with a 50 mil reward no knows where he is, but would there be any benefit to capturing him. You execute him and he becomes a martyr to his followers. Just the security needed to keep him would cost us tax payers a lot of money. At his age does he even do anything for al qaeda ? I am sure the government understands this and there will "try" their best to catch him without actually ever doing it.
Well if we catch him and the number 2 goon, then we cut off the head. Yes Al-Qaeda will still go on, but won't be near as effective. I think the effect of his martyrdom will be great at first, but as the remnants of Al-Qaeda are mopped up, and it loses effectiveness, his martyrdom won't carry much weight after a few years. In addition any other leadership and plans that are confiscated when they get OBL the greater boost it is to our ability to thwart terrorist plans. The information trove there could be enormous, and of huge benefit. It could lead to the apprehension of terrorists, and cell leaders around the world, as well as give us clues into how they work, organize, etc.
capture him, release him as a sign of mercy, then the whole world will be in peace, until the next day when 500,000 rednecks lynch the whitehouse staff
I think that the strategy that they used when they captured Saddam is probably a good example. They first emphasised the fact that he was hiding 'like a rat in a hole', then they circulated all the pictures in which he looked like a homeless guy begging for change on a street corner. I am reasonably sure that the way in which they portrayed him was done in a calculated way to attack the mythos of the man as strong and brave. For instance, if they weren’t specifically trying to make him look shameful, it wouldn’t have been that hard to give him a hair brush before taking his picture. Once they kill the mythos, his life is inconsequential or at least less consequential as a rallying symbol. They did the same thing with one of the al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, when they showed a video of him wearing Nikes among other things, IIRC.
It's a lose lose deal. I guess the best case morally would be to keep him alive and carry out a life sentence with no outside access. It'd be totally unpopular with our death penalty culture. Even then that's kind of Big Brother-ish because there's no doubt we'd try to break and de-martyrize him. In the meanwhile, there'd probably be loyalists who'd perform hijackings and kidnappings and throw out his name and release as their cause for it, real or not. But OTOH, if we blew him up Uday-style or even trial him the Saddam way, he'd be the Tupac of the Arab street, with cryptically recent messages and videos popping up on the net and Al-Jazeera every now and then. And his cohorts would claim he's alive while propping up his martyrdom concurrently, similar to how Holocaust deniers do so while mentioning the numbers of Jews that were killed.... On our end, if Bush is the Big Bad as we all think he is, then you can claim that we already have him. It's not released to the public because our supposed resolve with the War on Terror would greatly diminish as our governments have done a good job affixing his face as terror and using that as collateral to diminish the public's civil liberties. This is despite most terror groups not even being in contact with Osama and only look to him as a kind of Santa Claus, a figure who can possibly supply them with money and resources for their extremist cause. So yeah, the whole scenario sucks.
This strategy won't work, kill one another few will pop up. These people don't care about money or their lives they believe in an idea which is the most dangerous thing in the world. Ultimately if we stuck to our ideals such as no torture and public freedom, I think we have a much better chance of winning, but we keep on trading a little freedom for some security which is terrible.
I'm in the "He's already dead" camp, but with little real evidence. I just have a hunch. I'm just about positive that we'll never see him again.
Put him on public trial. This is a war of values and ideals and nothing would express that better than giving OBL a public trial with due process. Have family members of 9/11 victims confront him in court so we can see the contrast between his ravings and the real human sorrow of his victims. I agree given that we haven't seen anything recently from him that can be verified as having been filled in the last few years. My guess is that he is either dead or near death.
NPR did an editorial when the bounty was raised, arguing that all they're doing is increasing al Queda's cachet by making Osama look like a bad-ass. We were already offering $25 million, so if anyone was going to sell him out, they'd have done so already. Instead, they suggested reducing the bounty to some nominal amount (enough to make a difference to a Pakistani's wallet without being exorbitant) to signal that America thinks Osama isn't important anymore. It would somewhat deflate his reputation and stop helping al Queda with their marketing. Of course, all the politicians and media-types would be all over it as being soft on terrorism.
if caught...he should be forced to wear pink and a pig nose and braught out on a weekly worldwide tv broadcast and spanked by a woman with a belt while OBL wears a thong...with a tatoo on his ass that says "i love america".
He would never be caught alive so the only thing we will be capturing is a dead Osama. However, we will never find him at this rate. I would personally like to see him beheaded in a manner that these terrorists can understand...just like they beheaded innocent civilians. Put some stupid ass banner on a wall and have several hooded people around him in military fatigues holding AK-47s. Then, have one guy with a machete who does the chopping. Just hearing Osama scream like a little baby would give me satisfaction for life. I would watch that video until my eyes bleed. Then, let's circulate that sh*t around the Internet for all those idiots over there to see and see how they like it when it happens to one of their own. The only problem with this is then they would do tit-for-tat and start kidnapping/beheading all over again. It seems that since some of those more fanatical mf-ers were caught or killed...that this video-tape beheading phenomenom is not happening any more.
