Regular members of Joshua's Army might remember my mentioning the huge cost of the Osama bin-Laden assassination, not to mention that it might just have been a major strategic error. Fresh evidence of how costly President Obama's decision ( actually, Special Ops commander Admiral McRaven's decision that the president took credit for) actually has been surfaced yesterday.
Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta told Congress yesterday that the Pakistani closure of the land routes into Afghanistan via the Torkhum Pass in response to the bin-Laden hit is costing the U.S. $100 million per month as more costly alternate routes need to be utilized.
The U.S. attempted to talk the Pakistanis into opening the routes again, and their response was to jack up what the 'transit fees' per truck to the point where our negotiators just left.
Bin-Laden was taken out in May of 2011, so if you do the math we're talking about a billion dollars in extra costs so far..not to mention all the other costs involved in the raid, the priceless stealth technology from the downed helicopter the Pakistanis showed to Iran, Russia and China, and the still to be reckoned cost of relocating al-Qaeda from AfPak to the Arab world.
That's quite a price tag to assassinate one inactive, semi-retired terrorist we didn't even bother to bring back home and interrogate.
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