Tight border checks and strong ties with neighbouring security agencies play pivotal roles

Col. Muammar Gadhafi will not only go down in history as being one of the world's most brutal and brazen despots, but also as one of its weirdest. From his wardrobe changes to the way he tries to woo women like former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a visit to a psychologist's couch is long overdue.

"A tax on stupidity" is how a former colleague of mine (who typically opposed most forms of taxation) liked to describe, and justify, revenue raised by governments through lotteries. A somewhat similar type of taxation, but with a less offensive rationale (and name), are Pigovian taxes.

A persistent and damaging national-security myth is that in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks a dispute developed between the FBI and the CIA over the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. The intelligence agency was uniformly in favor, or so the story went, and the FBI was strongly opposed.

Lady Gaga, the music industry phenomenon, is surprisingly hawkish in her views on foreign policy. In an exclusive interview, at a cafe around the corner from her parents? Upper West Side apartment, she laments what she terms "the pathetic U.S. policy on Iran."

Bin Laden is not the first senior al Qaeda leader killed by the United States and previous successes may offer insights.

This, then, begs a simple question: if the safety of a city or the location of a wanted terrorist balance solely on whether or not a detainee is tortured, shouldn't the American people demand an in-depth audit of how those funds are being invested?

That Osama Bin Laden was killed rather than captured allowed President Obama to dodge a very awkward problem: Where to take the al Qaeda leader after his arrest? When administration officials were asked this in February as a hypothetical question, they didn't have an answer, and no doubt they were relieved on May 1 not to need one. But unless the president wants to kill every terrorist on the spot going forward, the mess that is U.S. detention policy needs to be cleared up.

The death of Osama bin Laden, while a geostrategic event of real importance, is also a prime example of how three principles from quantum physics might explain the reality and the potential of such occurrences in the context of international affairs. The first principle would suggest this incident--or, more precisely, the news of this incident--is comprised of little more than energy and information, the same two fundamental building blocks that form the universe. The second principle describes how mere observation of an event will influence how it ultimately manifests. The third principle introduces nonlocality, how an event occurring in one physical space has the potential to profoundly alter events unfolding elsewhere. The combination of these principles offers a framework for eliciting more meaningful insights into the event's real import.

TO the Qaeda members I interrogated at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in the aftermath of 9/11, Osama bin Laden was never just the founder and leader of the group, but also an idea. He embodied the belief that their version of Islam was correct, that terrorism was the right weapon, and that they would ultimately be victorious. Bin Laden's death on Sunday did not kill that idea, but did deal it a mortal blow.