Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Pecking order
Hidden in this juicy Australian story about Sheikh Osama's henhouse is a surprising bit of chronology. The juicy parts are plenty juicy:
Here's the important bit:
Got that? Tora Bora before the Taliban took power. Not after we allegedly deposed the Taliban.
More juicy:
I can understand it! ¶ 4:30 AM
Although the compound where bin Laden hid for five years was large, the three wives were all cooped up in the same house. The older two lived on the second floor and the youngest one on the top. Their husband alternated between them. Pakistani officials who have been debriefing the women portray life in the compound as an Islamic version of Desperate Housewives. ... "It's a well-known fact that when you have two older wives and then this young one comes along half their age, they don't like it," said one.
The wives even dispute who tried to protect their husband in the raid. The youngest was reported to have attempted to save him, sustaining a bullet wound to her calf. But the older wives say they were the ones who rushed to shield him.
Here's the important bit:
According to Najwa's account, he kept his wives behind walls from the start. Expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, they spent five years in Sudan, until the Khartoum government kicked them out and they travelled to Afghanistan. They lived on a mountainside in Tora Bora then, when the Taliban took power, moved to Kandahar. Apart from their time in Tora Bora, the wives always had separate houses or apartments. Bin Laden divided his nights between them.
Got that? Tora Bora before the Taliban took power. Not after we allegedly deposed the Taliban.
More juicy:
In Abbottabad, CIA agents, who watched bin Laden from satellites and stealth drones referred to the tall figure walking round and round the compound as the Pacer.
"The joke in Pakistan is that Bin Laden called in his location to CIA because he was being driven mad cooped up for five years with so many wives and children," said Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister.
I can understand it! ¶ 4:30 AM
