The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein says the price tag easily runs into the trillions of dollars:
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, neither of which would’ve been launched without bin Laden’s provocation, will cost us a few trillion on their own, actually. But before such reprisals were even on the table, there was the [9/11] attack itself, which largely shut down the American economy for a matter of days, and then slowed it for weeks. There was a long period in which Americans avoided the airlines, which pushed them so close to bankruptcy that Congress passed a $15 billion federal bailout, but the costs of that intervention pale in comparison to the price of the endless security theater Americans undergo each time they need to fly, which some experts peg at $8 billion a year — and there’s a good argument that they’re being conservative.
Klein argues that only Hitler comes close in terms of monetary cost (human cost is something else altogether).
Did Pakistan Know Where Bin Laden Was Hiding?
by Alan Greenblatt is a Jewish Writer, his spin is to taint Pakistan Army. In their vivd imagination, Jewish talking heads are paranoid about Pakistan and its Army as being threat to Israel. Why? Only heaven knows, how this paranoia can be treated. Unfortunately, they forget that the fountainspring of Islam are Judaism and Christianity. In this sense, Muslims are more liberal than Jews and Christians, in accepting Ahle Kitab (People of the Book, Torah, Injeel, Talmud, and Qu’raan)).
Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, spoke to cadets at the Kakul Military Academy on April 23.
“The terrorists’ backbone has been broken and, inshallah [God willing], we will soon prevail,” he said in his speech, which was broadcast on state television.
The fact that Osama bin Laden was living roughly a mile away from Kakul in a fortified compound has proved embarrassing both for the Pakistani military and for its civilian government, calling into question whether they knew about his presence in Abbottabad
