Ok, here is my theory:

I can’t believe that nobody knows where he is. I mean, come on, “hiding in the hills” could work back in the days when the telescope was high-tech. But now? I don’t buy it.

In any case, I think that keeping a target like that under very close surveillance makes more sense than destroying it: you can listen to every call he makes, take pictures and follow every single person who comes and goes around him, and in this way you stand a better chance of disrupting his plans.

If you kill him, then you have a whole bunch of Bin Laden wannabes who’ll take his place, you don’t yet know where they all are, so you’ve got to start up your whole spying exercise all over again.

However, US elections are coming. Surely an outgoing President would want to have his name in history books as the hero who eliminated public enemy no. 1, right? He’d also want to be seen as a hero not too far from the coming elections so that his party could also benefit from some of the glory.

What would good timing be? Maybe let the opposition choose their candidate first: a lot of media attention will be on that. But once the Democrats have chosen H. Clinton, Obama, or Edwards (or whoever else), then would be a good time for the Republicans to have a real hero of their own.

You don’t want to do it to close to the elections because then you have less time to milk the whole episode (and not while people are away from the news, enjoying summer vacations).

So I’m guessing that Bin Laden will be killed in March or April 2008.

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