Those mountains in Pakistan are riddled with caves and hiding places, and with a high profile target like Bin Laden, they want a confirmed kill, not just an explosion and a "we think we got him". Nothing short of his face plastered all over CNN with "WE GOT HIM!" as the headline will do. I know it seems like they should be able to get him easily enough, but remember how long Saddam evaded them when he was in the same country. Bin Laden is being helped by people who have little to not contact with the outside world other than seeing him as a hero against the "Great Satan" across the sea.
The US military is powerful, but not omniscient, and since 1990 or so the CIA and other intelligence agencies got away from human intelligence and focused on signals intelligence. It's easier to eavesdrop on microwaves and internet lines than someone riding a donkey in the hills passing notes with pigeons, and a lot easier to see submarines and aircraft carriers with satellites. Sure you can read a licence plate from orbit, but you have to find it first, and that's a lot of ground to cover. It's much easier to spy on a big country that has big toys and opportunities for lax security or, by superior technology, stay out of their reach while you do so. Having an inside man is really the only way to go if you want concrete information. It's hard, it's risky, and it's a dirty business. The Chinese understand this and for some reason the US spooks seem to have forgotten how to play the game.
Then there's the other side of the game, which conspiracy theory fans love, and that's the notion that the US doesn't really want to catch Bin Laden for one of two reasons. The first is that it's convenient to keep a bad guy around you can dig up later, a bogeyman to scare the populace with. The second idea is that Bin Laden actually works for the US government and that 9/11 was planned as part of a mass conspiracy or that Bin Laden wasn't even involved and was just a convenient scapegoat. I leave that all for your own discernment, I'm not in the game of speculation when it comes to back door politics and above black organizations. I've found that more often than not the truth is stranger than both the official line and the wildest conspiracy ideas, and often plainer as well.
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