That's called hiding in plain sight. The government was not necessarily aware of it, just some corrupt or sympathetic general lending his place and keeping the mouth shut. And nobody around even dreamed that this bearded man glimpsed in that building could be THAT man.
Of course, so or not so we will never know.
Such stuff is to be declassified 99 years later, good luck living till then.
Remembering Nixon, Reagan, Even Carter and Clinton, I really do think it's possible that Bush is hiding something in this case.
Of course, this isn't hard evidence, but he admitted himself to be responsible for it.
Of course, such testimony means that you need to check if he is really responsible or just claiming so, to turn it into something solid.
But how much do we really know of Bin Laden?
Ok, I usually find you very trust-worthy and knowledgeable urwumpe, and I have no contradictory evidence myself.
But I, myself, just haven't ever heard or seen Osama assume responsibility for 911, although that could just be because I missed it along the way.
If anybody has got a link to a video where he's clear about this I would certainly like to see it, just to get another piece of the puzzle put in it's correct place.
I've seen many videos and news-reports claiming all sorts of things about him, and perhaps it's a flaw in me but I don't find the news too trust-worthy in many cases and don't see why it should be different in this one.
And even if the news are reporting what they know correctly and fairly, then the government might still be keeping things from the public that would paint a different picture. Maybe a more grey one, with guilt being more evenly spread on both sides. The war-on-terror includes a much too long list of western wrong-doings; Guantanamo, abu-ghraib and other secret CIA prisons, water-boarding torture (sanctified by the Bush-administration), soldiers executing civilians in Iraq, erroneous airforce bombings of weddings and caravans and other completely non-military targets. The full picture includes all that.
At any rate, a proper court-preceding would have been so much better than just killing the suspect. That's what any good justice-system is built upon; trial by jury, not by soldier with gun.
Well, we'll see in a few days how reactions will be, when we have had more time to reflect and think and become more sober about it all. It's taken us 10 years to get here after all, so it won't be over in 12 hours for sure.
For what it's worth; my personal sympathies go to all innocent victims, on both sides of the border. It does, after all, take 2 to tango.