Osama Bin Laden

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

In the year since President Obama approved a successful raid against Osama bin Laden, public opinion has been shifting. While many Westerners still celebrate the targeted killing - along with the killing several months later of Anwar Awlaki - some are expressing doubts. European politicians, human rights lawyers and members of some East Coast think tanks have posited that these terrorists were actually more dangerous dead than alive. Death, the reasoning goes, martyred the leaders, thus immortalizing their ideas and appeal.

Osama bin Laden, a scion of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, became the grim apostle of a strain of Islamic radicalism that exalted violence against non-believers, and the leader of a terrorist network that launched repeated attacks in the West, most spectacularly in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. Born in 1957 to a life of privilege, Bin Laden was one of more than 50 offspring of a Saudi construction magnate. He spent his youth in mansions filled with crystal chandeliers, gold statues and Italian tapestries.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret American commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his sprawling compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan's arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world's most wanted man. From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington's calls for his release.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret American commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his sprawling compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan's arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world's most wanted man. From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington's calls for his release.

Osama bin Laden has been uncharacteristically silent for nearly a year. He has issued no videotape since October 2004, or audiotape since Dec. 28, 2004, while second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri has issued seven such tapes. Is Bin Laden dead? Current asked five experts. * No "If he had died, it could not be hidden from the grid of Muslim extremist groups in Pakistan." -- Ahmed Rashid, author of "Taliban" and "Jihad" * Perhaps "In one of the very last videos, [he] looked very gaunt.

Osama bin Laden is dead or deformed badly by shrapnel or so ill that he can't talk or show himself. No, I have not had the privilege of administering him his last rites or seen him buried or had a CIA agent whisper this information into my ear. However, because common sense is permitted in the court of public opinion, allow me to plead my case: When I saw the excerpts from the so-called "new" Bin Laden tape broadcast Monday, I knew that Bin Laden didn't exist anymore.

WASHINGTON - In the months after the U.S. militarymission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show. Emails and meeting transcripts obtained from the Pentagon and CIA through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that officials went out of their way to assist the filmmakers, while trying to keep their cooperation from becoming public.

A Mauritanian who reportedly has links to Saudi militant Osama bin Laden has been arrested on suspicion of having a role in plotting a bomb attack against the United States, security officials said Friday. Mohambedou Ould Slahi was being held at the offices of the Bureau of Mauritanian Security, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He was arrested in this West African nation after leaving neighboring Senegal on Wednesday, they said.

In his powerful address before Congress last Thursday, President Bush correctly defined the threat of terrorism. And he correctly characterized the motivation of Osama bin Laden, the presumed evil genius of terrorism. President Bush correctly called for American leadership in a global campaign against terrorism. But he laid down non-negotiable specifications for his "war" that friendly states will consider ill-judged and delivered in a tone they may regard as arrogant.

WASHINGTON - In the months after the U.S. militarymission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show. Emails and meeting transcripts obtained from the Pentagon and CIA through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that officials went out of their way to assist the filmmakers, while trying to keep their cooperation from becoming public.

We do not run many letters to the editor responding to other letters. With such a small piece of newsprint real estate to allocate among the hundreds of letters sent each week to letters@latimes.com , priority is given to submissions responding to Times Op-Ed articles, editorials and news stories. But this isn't to say that letters responding to what other readers say don't come in. This was especially true this week, when the letters page carried reader responses addressing hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death and more.

WASHINGTON -- With a day of large rallies and the unveiling of his stump speech, President Obama on Saturday will acknowledge what has been obvious for months: He is in official campaign mode. In appearances at college campuses in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., Obama will outline his case for reelection and explain the new "Forward" campaign theme his team announced in recent days. People close to his plans say Obama isn't going for the vibe of his 2008 campaign, which he kicked off on a frigid day at the old state capitol in Springfield, Ill., more than five years ago. That event focused on the historic nature of Obama's candidacy and on soaring ambitions for the country.

WASHINGTON — In his final months padding around the dark third-floor room in his cinder-block Pakistan hide-out, the world's most notorious terrorist mastermind spent a lot of time in his own head. He fretted about his public image and the legacy of his organization. He wondered whether he had misnamed it Al Qaeda. He fired off orders, handed out promotions, denied requests for help from the battlefield and sought to direct publicity for the looming 10th anniversary of the Sept.

NEW YORK -- Mitt Romney on Tuesday marked Osama bin Laden's death a year ago by alternately praising President Obama for ordering the targeted killing of the terrorist leader and slamming him for politicizing the moment. “I think it's totally appropriate for the president to express to the American people the view that he has that he had an important role in taking out Osama bin Laden. I think politicizing it and trying to draw a distinction between himself and myself was an inappropriate use of a very important event that brought Americans together, which was the elimination of Osama bin Laden,” Romney told reporters after bringing six pizzas to a fire station that lost 11 men in the Sept.

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was devising a strategy for overthrowing Afghan President Hamid Karzai and controlling Afghanistan once the U.S. left the country, said a former U.S. official familiar with the cache of notes and letters that were seized last year in the raid on the terrorist leader's compound. Bin Laden had discussed his plans with the Taliban leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani network, which controls the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan, said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while discussing the intelligence.

In its first high-level meeting with Afghanistan's ruling militia, the Bush administration told the Taliban on Thursday that it must stop supporting terrorists before any serious progress can be made in relations with the United States. Osama bin Laden, the alleged terrorist mastermind who has been living in Afghanistan under Taliban protection since 1996, was a main focus of the discussions in neighboring Pakistan.

One more day, and the people at Court TV can stop sweating the Osama bin Laden hunt. The network's one-hour documentary imagining a trial for the terrorist thought to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks is being rushed to television tonight, rescheduled from next Thursday. The Taliban's sudden retreat in Afghanistan and the prospect that Bin Laden might be dead before the program could be telecast had producers working night and day to get it done.

President Obama said this morning that U.S. special operations forces had rescued an American woman held hostage for three months in Somalia. Jessica Buchanan was rescued Tuesday and is on her way home, Obama said in a statement issued early this morning. News of the rescue began to spread shortly after Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night. As the president arrived in the House chamber, cameras captured him saying to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, "Good job tonight.

The Navy SEALs parachuted into the darkness, landing more than a mile from their objective: a small bush camp in north-central Somalia where an American aid worker and a Danish colleague were being held captive. The commandos, several dozen in all, shed their chutes and moved quietly through the brush. The compound had been under secret U.S. surveillance for weeks after an intelligence tip had signaled the whereabouts of the hostages, 32-year-old Ohio native Jessica Buchanan and 60-year-old Poul Thisted.