Fear of flying—II

 

Prateebha Tuladhar

When I boarded the Cessna nine-seater aircraft from Nepalganj to Juphal, I just knew that I had to write “Fear of flying-II”, if I made it in one piece. The plane was tiny, really tiny. I was already shivering inside just at the sight of the aircraft.
I noticed the pilot, who had just flown the aircraft to Nepalganj from Juphal, sauntering near the plane talking to a tourist, drinking out of a mug that said COFFEE in brown letters all over it. He looked composed. I wondered how he could be so and also what kind of a man would want to fly such a small aircraft, and so many times a day.

Secret Held if Bin Laden Lived Here, Village Says

Warrick Page for The New York Times

News vans have begun showing up in Chak Shah Muhammad, the Pakistani village Osama bin Laden's wife said they made their home for two and a half years.

By CARLOTTA GALL

Bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was detained after the raid that killed her husband, told Pakistani investigators that they lived for more than five years in their last home, in Abbottabad, and before that spent two and a half years in this village of roughly 1,500 people, some 25 miles to the south.

Bin Laden’s Secret Life in a Diminished, Dark World

Reuters

An image from a video seized during the commando raid shows Osama bin Laden at home, watching himself on TV.

By ELISABETH BUMILLER, CARLOTTA GALL and SALMAN MASOOD

The Abbottabad compound became the Bin Laden base in 2005. Interviews paint a portrait of a man, perhaps a little bored, presiding over family life while plotting mayhem.

WASHINGTON — The world’s most wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity.
American officials believe that Osama bin Laden spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from the outside world.

EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Former Guantanamo Detainee David Hicks

by: Jason Leopold, Truthout

David Hicks was one of the first “war on terror” detainees to be sent to Guantanamo the day the prison facility opened on January 11, 2002. He is one of the small group of detainees who challenged President George W. Bush’s November 13, 2001 executive order authorizing indefinite detention, which led to a landmark 2004 Supreme Court case, Rasul v. Bush, in which the High-Court said detainees have the right to habeas corpus. Hicks spent five-and-a-half years at Guantanamo and was tortured. Last October, he published a memoir, “Guantanamo: My Journey.” This is his first interview since his release from Guantanamo in 2007.

The War Is Over. Start Packing!

by: Robert Naiman, Truthout

(Photo: Tom Haymes/Flickr)

We got our man. Wave the flag, kiss a nurse (or a sailor) and start packing the equipment. It's time to plan to bring all our boys and girls home from Afghanistan. When the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks rolls around, let the world see that we are on a clear path to bringing home our troops from Afghanistan and handing back sovereignty to the Afghan people.

With more Sherlock Holmes than Rambo and judging from press accounts, not much role for the 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan, US intelligence tracked Osama bin Laden to a safe house in a well-appointed suburb of Pakistan's capital and a small US force raided the compound. Press reports say Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in the compound and that his body has been buried at sea, in accordance with Islamic tradition that expects a burial within 24 hours.

Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Samar Hassan, with a relative, had never seen the photo of her, below, taken after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq

By TIM ARANGO

MOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war.

“My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets.
“My mother and father were killed, just like that.”
The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.

The daughter of a 9/11 victim reacts to the death of bin Laden

Matt McClain/For The Washington Post - Carie Lemack, who lost her mother, Judy Larocque, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, on May 4 in Washington.

By Carie Lemack

from Washingtonpost
Like most Americans, the first time I heard the name Osama bin Laden was on Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike everyone else, when I first heard his name, I had just hung up the phone after being told that my mother, Judy Larocque, had a reservation on American Airlines Flight 11 — which hours earlier had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.