Algorithms for getting Osama, One of Many...

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(From a comment in our local newspaper, by yours truly.)

As for solutions, again, if you've just got one, it's because you're not thinking creatively enough.

Case in point, the "Osama Problem."

We actually know where he is, we're just trying to make sure we round them all up at once. Look for an attack on USA about next June - Sept, and the "capture of Osama" by early October, to be attributed to the "brilliant Republican strategy," in hopes of retaining the White House.

Back to the problem.

Airdrop $100 USA bills in an area where you suspect him to be. If you drop one thousand of them at a time, each drop will cost $100,000 + delivery. Have a drawing each month for one of the serial numbers out of all the dropped bills ever, and the winner is awarded $1,000,000 cash and the option for he/she and family and friends to all get instant USA citizenship and transportation. 24 hours after the drop, Announce the location to the world. Do this once a month. Talk about reality TV! Do the drop at least once a month, and maybe pick on a poverty stricken area, if you have no clue as to where he might be. In fact, just to vary things, and maybe make it easier for the folks who receive the cash to use it, maybe dropping smaller denominations, but more of them, still adding up to $100,000, would be a good idea. Given the cost of everything else, this is a cheap program.

As for violating other nations' rights, well, that certainly didn't stop us in Iraq. Besides, the most likely spots are Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to what the Bush administration wants us to "know." I'm sure the locals would view this as a big improvement over bombs. Embedded information might just as well be shredded information. Our current government doesn't trust our own reporters to tell the story the way they (in government) want it told.

If the drop is near Osama, his own people will leave him to grab the dollars to discourage others from getting them. IR (infrared) camera equipped drones will pick the excess activity. Each individual Osama supporter will also have mixed feelings about what to do with the bills. They each are worth their face value, which is a ton of value in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they have their potential at the big prize.

The event would focus media and world attention onto the search. It will attract thrill seeking trust fund babies and bounty hunters equally well. It just might turn the Pakistani Northern tribal types against him. If I read them right, they love their privacy and social structure, and this is going to mess with that like mad. This is called "applied anthropology." Osama would become a pariah, a typhoid Mary, a carrier of cultural destruction.

So what's your idea of how to catch Osama ?

I personally think he is squirreled away in a manmade luxury cave in Switzerland, and travels to and from the Mideast via the modified keel of a very large sail boat.