Osama Bin Laden

WASHINGTON - A year after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda is hobbled and hunted, too busy surviving for the moment to carry out another Sept. 11-style attack on U.S. soil. But the terrorist network dreams still of payback, and U.S. counterterrorist officials warn that, in time, its offshoots may deliver. A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost the United States about $1.28 trillion and 6,300 U.S. troops' lives has forced al-Qaeda's affiliates to regroup, from Yemen to Iraq.

Mark Bowden is the author of "The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden," from which the following is excerpted The raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, was the brief, climactic end of a story that had begun almost 10 years before, with the attacks of Sept. 11. It had taken that long to put the al-Qaeda founder in America's crosshairs. Even so, as President Obama instructed CIA Director Leon Panetta and Joint Special Operations Commander Bill McRaven to launch the raid on the curious compound in Abbottabad, he was only half sure bin Laden was there - "This is 50-50," he told his advisers.

WASHINGTON - A Senate panel expressed its outrage Thursday over Pakistan's conviction of a doctor who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden, voting to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million - $1 million for every year of the physician's 33-year sentence for high treason. The punitive move came on top of deep reductions the Appropriations Committee already had made to President Obama's budget request for Pakistan, a reflection of the growing congressional anger over its cooperation in combating terrorism.

IN 2003, the Daily News published an even larger list of 20 unanswered questions about 9/11. The good news - some have actually since been answered. For example: Q.What did national security adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001? A. Now we know: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. " Q. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?

Police trained on immigrant law BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - After confusion and misgivings from some police about how to enforce Alabama's new immigration crackdown, the state is now requiring special training in the law for more than 16,000 law officers - every sworn officer in the state. Officials hope the unusual move will alleviate uncertainty about the law on the front lines of law enforcement. Police chiefs, prosecutors, and judges have said that the lengthy law's complicated provisions were hard to understand, and federal court rulings that blocked some sections while letting others take effect only made life tougher for officers on the street.

NEW YORK - Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. That was Vice President Biden's message for Republican Mitt Romney in a campaign speech Thursday that blended a robust defense of President Obama's foreign policy record with a harsh attack on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's positions. Appearing before 500 students at New York University Law School, Biden said Romney approaches foreign policy with a Cold War mentality and is uninformed about the challenges facing the United States abroad.

NEW YORK - Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday accused President Obama of politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden a year ago but said it was "totally appropriate" for Obama to claim credit for ordering the U.S. military raid that ended with the terrorist leader's death in Pakistan. Obama's reelection campaign has used his decision to suggest that Romney would not have made the same call. Romney, the president's all-but-certain Republican challenger in the fall election, says he would have.

Mitt Romney delivered pizzas Tuesday to a firehouse in Greenwich Village alongside former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, marking the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden with heroes of 9/11. Not a bad campaign event, all in all. Then President Obama landed in Afghanistan that night for an unannounced visit to the war zone, knocking Romney out of the news cycle. The trip also eased, for a few hours at least, a raging partisan debate over whether Obama's reelection campaign has crassly politicized the death of the most-wanted terrorist.

He likes the ambience of Savona in Gulph Mills, enjoys the food at Alma de Cuba in Center City and Fleming's Steakhouse in St. Davids, and appreciates the views from the Water Works overlooking the Schuylkill. Craig LaBan? No, Pervez Musharraf. The former (and maybe future) leader of Pakistan has become a fixture in Philadelphia in the last few years, a fact I first learned through a rather surreal encounter. A few years after 9/11, I grew disenchanted with the way the Bush administration was pursuing Osama bin Laden, convinced that we'd placed too much responsibility in Musharraf's hands.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.   — Lt. Col. John A. McCrae     Those words written to reflect the battlefield realities of World War I remain meaningful nearly a hundred years later. American soldiers are still dying on foreign soil. Like the doughboys back then, they commit their lives to a fight that isn't so easy for some to understand.

WORCESTER, Mass. - The uncle of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived in Massachusetts on Sunday to arrange for his burial, saying he understands that "no one wants to associate their names with such evil events. " Ruslan Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Md., and three of his friends met with the Worcester funeral home director and prepared to wash and shroud Tsarnaev's body according to Muslim tradition. The 26-year-old died after a gun battle with police on April 19. Funeral director Peter Stefan said he hasn't been able to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to take the body.

He likes the ambience of Savona in Gulph Mills, enjoys the food at Alma de Cuba in Center City and Fleming's Steakhouse in St. Davids, and appreciates the views from the Water Works overlooking the Schuylkill. Craig LaBan? No, Pervez Musharraf. The former (and maybe future) leader of Pakistan has become a fixture in Philadelphia in the last few years, a fact I first learned through a rather surreal encounter. A few years after 9/11, I grew disenchanted with the way the Bush administration was pursuing Osama bin Laden, convinced that we'd placed too much responsibility in Musharraf's hands.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. - Col. Nathan Jessep, "A Few Good Men" 'You," said Jack Nicholson's Jessep to Tom Cruise's Lt. Daniel Kaffee, "have the luxury of not knowing what I know. " Viewers of the movie Zero Dark Thirty will, according to some informed persons, lose the luxury of not knowing about hard but morally defensible things done on their behalf.

THE ESSAYIST Christopher Hitchens once characterized the U.S./Afghan war as the world's most open society fighting the world's most closed society - he was particularly taken with the idea of U.S. female pilots dropping bombs on "those who would enslave women. " This way of looking at the conflict remained mostly unique to Hitchens, and in any case was supplanted by Iraq and other events. Now Kathryn Bigelow quietly takes it up in her absorbing hunt-for-Osama bin Laden drama, "Zero Dark Thirty.

NEW YORK - On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Kathryn Bigelow was in an editing room, in post-production on K-19: The Widowmaker , her Russian nuclear sub thriller, when word of the attack on the twin towers reached her. "We just stopped what we were doing and shut down for a few days," she recalls. "I was just trying to process it all. " That same morning, Mark Boal was in his apartment in New York, trying to roust himself from bed. After the planes hit the World Trade Center, he walked downtown, working with rescuers, moving through the debris, the chaos.

Too much about the royal pregnancy already? How could there be? More news! Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge , is due in July! Reputed Kate-pal Jessica Hay tells Life & Style the royal couple decided to couple royally in September, near the end of their royal tour. Nice, Jess: Make sure we know just when William and Kate were doin' it. And now, icky, but funny: Aussie radio folks Mel Greig and Michael Christian of station 2DayFM are apologizing big time. They impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles on the phone and actually got through early Tuesday morning to the nursing staff at King Edward VII hospital in London, where Kate is being treated for severe morning sickness.

WE WOULD never say that it doesn't matter whom or what you vote for - in fact, our picks for president and city referendum questions are below - but this year, it could also matter how quickly you vote. Because a controversial Pennsylvania voter-ID law was blocked in court, most voters on Tuesday do NOT need to have photo identification to cast their ballots, although everyone will be asked for one. But there is much confusion over this, and that could lead to delays in the voting line, so be prepared.

Mark Bowden is the author of "The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden," from which the following is excerpted The raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, was the brief, climactic end of a story that had begun almost 10 years before, with the attacks of Sept. 11. It had taken that long to put the al-Qaeda founder in America's crosshairs. Even so, as President Obama instructed CIA Director Leon Panetta and Joint Special Operations Commander Bill McRaven to launch the raid on the curious compound in Abbottabad, he was only half sure bin Laden was there - "This is 50-50," he told his advisers.

WASHINGTON - A new book says President Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S. commitment to due process under law, if the al-Qaeda leader had surrendered during a U.S. raid in Pakistan last year. In The Finish, Mark Bowden, a former Inquirer reporter, quotes Obama as saying he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for the Sept. 11 attacks. But Bowden says Obama expected bin Laden to go down fighting.

Casting the election as a battle for middle-class survival, declaring that economic healing is slow, and promising a future that lifts up all Americans, President Obama made a strong case for a second term. His Democratic convention was a political success because he reenergized or, as the fluttering placards in the Charlotte, N.C., arena told television viewers, "Fired Up" dispirited party activists. Their job is to widen Obama's slim margin over Republican candidate Mitt Romney by convincing voters that Obama deserves a chance to finish what he started.