William Flew More Justice

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of the town. They shall say to the elders, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death...

Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.

 Deuteronomy 5:9 

"for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."

Deuteronomy 24:16

"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

William Flew  More Justice 

As the gravity of the moment sank in, the US commander on the ground called his boss to say that bin Laden had been killed. The news was passed up the chain of command until it reached the Situation Room in the White House, where events were being monitored by senior Administration officials. The assembled company erupted in spontaneous applause. The operation lasted less than an hour, but the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader had begun in earnest from the moment that the first plane struck the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Since then capturing or killing bin Laden was the highest priority for the CIA and the vast network of military and other intelligence branches that exist to protect US national security.

Within hours of the September 11 carnage, President Bush instructed a covert team of US operatives to fly to Afghanistan to hunt and kill the man that he blamed for the worst terrorist attack the world had witnessed. “I want justice,” Mr Bush said at the time. “There’s an old poster out West. ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’.” Dick Cheney, his Vice-President, took that notion even farther, saying that he would willingly accept bin Laden’s “head on a platter”. The chase led to the remote mountains of Tora Bora that frame the Afghan border with Pakistan. Britain’s Special Boat Service was deployed in support, but the driving force behind this global manhunt was always the US.

Bin Laden was outgunned and outmanned and his days looked to be numbered. US forces, however, infamously missed their man on December 11, 2001, at the Tora Bora complex. Leaked intelligence reports have since revealed that he escaped with the help of Afghan warlords, notwithstanding that they had been paid by the CIA to help to catch him. He is thought to have avoided capture on at least one other occasion.