One bit of the Osama story from Sunday night was that he was found in a massive and secured compound, well secured to a point I guess, in a neighborhood of some affluence in Abbotabad. My initial thought was "hmm, that's interesting."Then after reading one account with a little more detail including that the walls of the compound were 18 feet tall I became truly perplexed. If I understand correctly, US intelligence has known about the compound since August.
Based on the appearance of the compound it took very little time to figure out that some important terror figure must be there although if I have my timeline correct it does seem like it took a while to actually find the compound but once found it stuck out very blatantly kind of like Yao Ming running on a track but to be proportionally correct to the Osama compound Yao would need to be 15' tall.
By being in such a huge compound there is a sort of "you're the only white poet warlord in the neighborhood" thing that allowed Elaine to find Peterman in Burma. Relatively speaking he was not really hiding. Assuming he did not want to live in an actual cave he could taken whatever expense went into the compound and instead fortified an ordinary house such that it did not stick out as it does in the image below.
I'm not sure if there was some impetus on his part like a serious deterioration in health for his wanting martyrdom sooner rather than later or something else and while we may never know there seems to be something behavioral here. While I don't rule out being proven wrong in short order, for now I have to conclude that either he wanted to get caught (self destructive) he became over confident.We talk about these things a lot with investing so it is fascinating to see it occur, if that is what is even happening, outside the investment realm.
16 comments:
Good points. Maybe his health dictated that he had to be in an urban area and (relative) comfort, while the proximity to the Barracks was strategically chosen as where 'no one would think of looking' and also made him appear stronger to his group.
Kind of like being on the verge of Chapter 11 and announcing a huge buy back of your own stocks, as a sign of strength?
Some neighborhoods can be very private; you could be living opposite International drug dealers and human traffickers (happened to a friend of mine in a very conservative street in London) and no-one is the wiser until a police raid at dawn - the residents gave a completely convincing appearance of a normal family unit.
Nice to see some respite for those affected by it all.
He lived there 6 years.
His friends and neighbors in the Pakistani military seemed to be protecting him.
SEG
I agree with SEG.
Why would there "need" to be a motivation or a conspiracy theory that is "required."
OBL= Corned. Dead. Gone. Good riddance.
I find this a strange departure from your normal thinking.
I don't doubt he is dead nor am I putting forth any sort of conspiracy. I saw a headline this morning rhetorically asking if he was hiding in plain sight. What I am perplexed by is that he almost wasn't hiding. It makes me think that to Osama getting caught was not the worst outcome.
I tend to agree with Roger. Maybe he had paid off Pakistani agents to provide protection, or he was ready to go.
I really doubt they will find information on his computers as I bet he was a non-factor in terrorist activities anymore. He probably sees dying in a fight with American forces as a way to motivate his organization. Since he could no longer help strategically or operationally, he might as well stoke the internal fire. I wouldn't put it past him.
Of course, I am still happy to see it happen and really appreciate the courage of Seal Team 6. That takes guts.
As far as investing, I think the theme would be the recency affect. Bin Laden figured he was safe if he had paid off Pakistani officials. Since he lived there for six years, he saw no real threat on the horizon. He projected the recent past into the future.
Need an investing metaphor?
Try reversion to the mean.
Things went against us for a while, but our boys finally got the bastard.
Now maybe things will swing in the other direction and the U.S. will start kicking the ass of everyone else out to destroy us.
I think it highly unlikely that UBL "paid off" anyone. The Taliban . . . spiritual soul mates of al Quadea, were spawned and continue to receive intelligence and logistical support from Pakistan's ISI. Osama had been living for the last 5 years within a mile of Pakistan's equivalent of our West Point. Frankly, for Hillary Clinton to publicly praise the Pakistani government for their "assistance" is laughable. By the way, I'd like my 18.6 billion dollars back that we have given the Pakistanis since 9/11.
As a former member of SEAL Team 1 ('68 - '70)I had tears running down my cheeks that all of these brave men came home safely.
Did you notice biden and obama look good in the released photo and Hillary (the potential challenger) looks weak holding her hand against her mouth?
A better investment metaphor might be that basing predictions and methods on preconceptions and prejudice rather than confirmed theory and empirical evidence is a good way to fail. In this case the preconception that bin Laden was living in a cave somewhere and the right methods to find him to bribe or torture people into identifying which one while bombing or shooting a missile at every target they could identify in the hope of getting lucky.
The alternative was to understand, as these geography students did in 2008, that a city (where bombs cannot be dropped at will), where strangers are common, supply lines complex, medical care readily available and security easier to mask is a much better hiding place than the countryside and that data combined with statistical analysis is a much more reliable method of detecting an elusive target in that case.
How accurate was their prediction? As reported in Science at http://tinyurl.com/6a6du9g "...UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie ...and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts ...According to a probabilistic model they created, there was an 88.9% chance that bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed last night."
Shorter version: The probability that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld would catch or kill bin Laden could only become lower over time; they were cold warriors fighting the last war and neither understood their current enemy nor the nature of the war they were conducting against him.
Correction: The model only predicted the probability of bin Laden being in a city within a specific radius of his last known location, not a specific city. Still pretty good though since there are few cities in that region.
Bin Laden's behavior "Perplexing"?
Not really.
One word explains the behavior: Hubris.
Beyond that, must every event be viewed through the lens of money/investing?
BillM
Why is it hubris? It's obviously a plan that was working. Everyone thought he was in the mountains. that was the last place he was seen, and we just assumed that a carrier was getting his medicine though our surveillance every month or so.
What surprised my was the lack of a "back door" from the compound like a tunnel or false wall. This is an experienced terrorist with decades of experience in eluding capture, who designed his compound and had large monetary resources to draw on for design and execution. I like the "Hubris" opinion. He really thought he had the situation under control. No need for an exit strategy.
Why is it hubris?
Somewhat for the same reason that David Sokol thought it was perfectly OK to buy the stock that he bought. When you think you are above the rules, or when you think you've perfected you 'getaway' from your pursuers, well, that's when things start to collapse.
Clearly not everyone thought he was living in the mountains. The spooks cast a pretty wide net, worked their sources hard, had feet on the beat and just chipped away at the mystery.
Let that be a lesson.
As we all know, the only people above the law of the land are the banksters!
BillM
ubris [ˈhjuːbrɪs], hybris
n
1. pride or arrogance
2. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) (in Greek tragedy) an excess of ambition, pride, etc., ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin
[from Greek]
Bill, I think we are saying the same thing. David Sokol is a good case in point on arrogance, above the law. WRT OBL I'm not taking away from the good job done by the Law Enforcement agencies. I'm just surprised that he stayed in the same place for six years, without an escape hatch. Arrogance is easier to believe than stupidity.
David Sokol bought the stock after Buffet told him they weren't going to buy the company. Buffet then later bought the company.
SEAL teams tend to cover the back door.
Post a Comment