The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote.

Why should Americans care about the Nazi back story in World War II? If you don't have the Nazi back story in World War II, World War II is simply not comprehensible.

So Pakistan is a country that I'm very fond of and have spent a lot of time, but it is a country where conspiracy theories have a life of their own.

And in the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound surrounded by his wives and children and far from the front lines of his holy war.

Bin Laden was 200 miles away from the area where all of these drone strikes were taking out his key leaders in al-Qaida. He was able to indulge in his hobbies... He was making occasional video tapes and audio tapes for release to the wider world.

Bin Laden's death is just a punctuation point on a set of problems they've had for a long time. I think the prognosis for al-Qaida and groups like it is really bad, and that's a good thing.

In February I secured permission to enter Osama bin Laden's compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where he was killed and where he had lived for the last half-decade of his life; the first, and only, journalist to do so.