AFTER THE DEATH OF OSAMA bin LADEN, the FBI website has wasted no time in promoting Ayman al-Zawahiri, the psychopathic eye-surgeon and paediatrician, personal physician to bin Laden and blatant violator of the Hippocratic Oath, to the top of its most wanted web page. Interestingly, his profile has now been upped to the point where we are told that he is the “cunning mastermind” behind Al-Qaeda. Helpfully, anyone wishing to claim the $25m reward on offer for information leading to his capture is advised to “approach him with caution”.
BUT THE MAIN BATTLE facing Obama (no relation) and his diplomatic team at the moment is the wrangling over the wording of any statements about the events leading to the detection, pursuit, engagement and killing of bin Laden in a leafy middle-class suburb 45 minutes away from the capital of Pakistan and living in a house in the shadow of the country’s major military academy and installations.
READING BETWEEN THE LINES, it is obvious that Pakistan was of no help whatsoever in these events, whether due to laziness, incompetence or perhaps even collusion with Osama and his merry men, but the USA cannot be seen to believe this, let alone state it, for fear of Pakistan clamming up again or even being deliberately obstructive during the hunt for al-Zawahiri, who might feasibly be living in a hotel suite in the Islamabad Hilton, receiving a subscription from Time magazine under his own name, paying his bills with a Mastercard or Visa and bowling the first ball at ceremonial international cricket games, none of which might arouse the suspicion of the Pakistan authorities.
WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE informed us yesterday that the Boeing Chinook downed in the raid was destroyed “so as not to fall into enemy hands”, this could only mean the Pakistani forces, and the twittering classes and online newspapers have already carpet-bombed the ether with stories about Pakistan shooting down the US helicopter so much that it has almost become true simply by weight of argument. Once again, this leaves diplomats in the West no better off in the “war against terror” than they were last week, or indeed in 1948: if you are nice to Pakistan, India gets annoyed, and vice-versa.
BUT PERHAPS THE FBI can breathe a sigh of relief: no longer do they have to try to find alternative spellings of Osama to post on their most wanted page (Usama or Usma were their favourite ones) for fear of any bright young American confusing Obama with Osama, shooting their own president and turning up at the nearest FBI field office and asking for a cheque for a hundred million dollars – which I suspect the FBI would secretly be prepared to pay.
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