Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid believes Al-Qaeda terror network kingpin Osama bin Laden may be dead and conversely Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks Bin Laden is still alive:

“I don’t know where he is,” Powell said. “I don’t know his state of health. I believe he is still alive, but I can’t prove that. He clearly is in hiding and he is on the run.”Powell went on: “He is not popping up on television and he is not showing himself in a way that he can be captured.”

Will capturing and bringing to justice Bin Laden ever bring closure to the families of the 9/11 tragedy? I still remember that day, 9/11/01 as we were on vacation, of all ironic places to be, in Vegas at the time. Vegas was not the Vegas you’d expect, but then no place in America was normal on that fateful day. I distinctly remember waking up and seeing those horrible images of the planes hitting the building on the news and thinking I must have been watching a movie and not real news. As I turned channels and saw the coverage on every channel, the horror swept over me.

I do think Bin Laden will be found by next year’s anniversary of 9/11 but whether he will be dead or alive, I don’t know. I think it would impact the terrorists more if Bin Laden was captured alive, as Saddam Hussein was, probably in some dirty hole in the earth. There are some wild conspiracy theorists who believe Bin Laden has already been captured and the Bush administration is going to wheel him out like some puppet just before the election. I don’t think so.

Please put the families of 9/11 victims in your thoughts today.

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