

Driving Directions from Pakistan Military Academy to Bin Laden's Compound - srd11
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=203102110811747366096.0004a24d49e4740eeccf1&ll=34.183992,73.251343&spn=0.010934,0.013368&z=16

======
MichaelSalib
The 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.

~~~
edge17
Why is this so shocking? I keep seeing people point out that he was near by a
military academy. There's plenty of documented history of US and Russians
spies in eachother's agencies.

In fact, I have read stories about the area I grew up in (suburb of DC) with
CIA safehouses, etc.

It's fairly well documented that there are sympathizers within the Pakistani
govt. It's all quite corrupt and the world views from that vantage point are
quite different than the world views from the US.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_Why is this so shocking?_

Er, I never said anything was shocking....

 _There's plenty of documented history of US and Russians spies in eachother's
agencies._

I don't tend to think of West Point as equivalent to the CIA....

 _In fact, I have read stories about the area I grew up in (suburb of DC) with
CIA safehouses, etc._

Sure, and if the claim is 'OBL was hiding right under the noses of the ISI',
I'd have no problem with it. What I disagree with is the notion that 'OBL was
hiding right under the noses of the Pakistani equivalent of West Point'.

------
srd11
Corrected to use actual location of Osama's compound, as determined by zeteo
from satellite photos here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506963>,
instead of the fake one making the rounds.

~~~
VB6_Foreverr
Someday google will have a streetview of the most wanted with his face blurred
out

------
koenigdavidmj
I 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?

~~~
MichaelSalib
In 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".

------
VB6_Foreverr
The 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

