Oh Where, Oh Where Did Osama Go?

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

On Monday February 16, a missile strike by a U.S. Predator drone occurred in the town of Parachinor in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region. Two U.S. missiles struck a compound believed to be a Taliban or Al-Qaida hideout, killing 15 people. The target, coincidently, is in a region where UCLA geography professors believe a man on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List is hiding — terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

"If he's still alive, he honestly could be sitting there right now," said Thomas Gillespie, a professor of geography at UCLA, to the Times of India.

In a report published in the MIT International Review, Gillespie and his team of biogeographers detailed their techniques for studying the migratory patterns of birds over island chains and how they were modified to find the most likely high-altitude perch to which Osama may have flown. The primary thrust of their research is to understand and hopefully stem the extinction rate of Earth’s flora and fauna, but they are willing to make an exception in bin Laden’s case.

According to the report, birds tend to migrate to larger islands close to their point of origin in order to maintain access to food and mates. The further they fly from their point of origin, the greater the risk to their survival. Likewise, the further Osama bin Laden strays from Pakistan’s mountainous hotbeds of crazed Islamic radicalism, the more vulnerable he is to death or capture — a process known as distance-decay theory.

Using satellite images of the Afghanistan/Pakistan area, overlaid with concentric circles, separated by 6 miles and radiating from Osama’s last reported Tora-Bora sighting in 2005, Gillespie’s team predicts that “bin Laden is in a larger town rather than a smaller and more isolated town where the extinction rate would be higher.” They also say high-resolution satellite images of cities and towns will help narrow potential targets to communities where bin Laden can plan the end of Western Civilization in peace, comfort and safety.

Their search criteria included:

1. A building tall enough to accommodate the terrorist’s 6’ 4” height.
2. An electrical grid to power his dialysis machine (his supposed kidney failure is only a theory).
3. A compound surrounded by walls at least 10-feet in height to better veil the gangly killer.
4. Separate quarters for the supreme leader to assure privacy and just a little distance from the living arrangements of his scruffy, well-armed bodyguards.
5. Trees throughout the grounds to provide a leafy canopy shielding Osama from the intrusive gaze of the Great Satan’s spy satellites.

The report even includes satellite photos (pictured above) of what the UCLA team believes are the three most likely bin Laden hideouts, together with latitude and longitude coordinates calculated down to the arc-second.

In 2008, the secret black budget for our nation’s intelligence agencies was estimated to total 50-billion dollars. One can only hope that the efforts of these UCLA professors isn’t just a cynical attempt to feather their academic nests with a few billion dollars of President Obama's stimulus pork. If these university eggheads are correct, Osama bin Laden may go the way of the Dodo Bird — assisted by of a few well-placed missiles fired from a featherless Predator drone.

—Mr. Curmudgeon