One year later, bin Laden status, location still unclear.

Byline: Liz Sly

BAGRAM, Afghanistan _ A year after President Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," U.S. officials are not even able to establish whether bin Laden is, in fact, dead or alive.

"We have no compelling evidence that he's alive, and we don't have compelling evidence that he's dead," said Col. Roger King, spokesman for the 8,000 strong U.S. force that is still hunting for bin Laden and his associates in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials say he is certainly alive and most probably in Pakistan. Pakistani officials say he is probably dead, but that if he is alive, he is in Afghanistan. But the best guess of most military and intelligence officials and analysts is that, if he is alive, he is most likely spending the anniversary of the devastation he wrought upon America deep in hiding in the harsh, remote mountainous region of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

That was where U.S. forces believed they had him pinned down last December, high in the Afghan mountain stronghold of Tora Bora where he had taken refuge with more than 1,000 of…