Either way, I kinda like this guy.

An American man accused of trying to sneak into Afghanistan to hunt down and kill al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden has been detained by authorities in Pakistan, police said on Tuesday.

Gary Faulkner was caught in the Brumboret Valley near the border of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province carrying a dagger, pistol and night vision goggles and was being questioned in Peshawar, Chitral police chief Jaffer Khan said.

[...]

A brother of the detained man told a news conference in Colorado that Gary Faulkner was in Pakistan legally and had been there six times on a “mission” to kill bin Laden.

“He’s not crazy, he’s not a psychopath and he’s not a sociopath,” Scott Faulkner said. “He’s a man on a mission and believes that God’s got his back.”

Okay it was probably stupidity, but he was probably closer to killing Bin Laden than the military was. Killing Bin Laden shouldn’t be something that people are punished for. If this man was willing to sacrifice his life to do it, he deserves no less respect than those in the military with the same goal. He just didn’t really think things through too well.

As always, Right Girl is hilarious:

The part of this story I don’t understand is why he was arrested and detained. Carrying a sword in Pakistan is like carrying a cell phone in Toronto. There’s nothing unusual about it. And killing bin Laden – that should be everyone’s top priority, regardless of who they are. The Pakistan government claims to be on our side, yet has been as useless as our Western governments in locating and killing that beast. Instead, they have the hills marked as “secured”. Why is that? Who are they protecting – aimless wanderers like Faulkner, or more sinister elements?