Osama Bin Laden has been killed
- Thread starter RogerD
- Start date
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, because I don't think bin Laden would have waited until confronted to go grab a weapon, especially if there had been prior exchange of fire down on the ground as is claimed. Of all things I have read, this sounds the most unlikely to me.
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
ABCNews TV just reported that the SEALs forgot to take with them a tape measure to measure bin Laden's height, so one of them lied down alongside the body and estimated him at 6'4"... If they were to take the body with them and onto a naval ship, wouldn't there be an opportunity to measure his height at that point??? And then some wonder why I am skeptical about all this stuff they tell us...
Well, in the light of all this freedom of press, freedom of speech, etc. in a free world, I have learned slowly that we want to hear is not necessarily what we need to hear. When reports of a major incident is done, an inquisitive and even a rational mind would want to be told of a logical story. But, in the real world, there is such a thing as National Security - things than cannot be said, or divulged to the public, to us, because it will undermine 'national security'. There are 'facts' that were even locked up as 'classified' or 'secret' files for 50 years because they threaten national security. So much for our 'right to know'. No wonder when the dots do not connect, people become skeptical, and then the 'conspiracy theories' naturally follow. I admit sometimes I get skeptical myself.
Now I'm reading that Bin Laden was actually turned in by the Abbottabad Homeowner's Association, who were angry about a water slide he was building on the compound. 
Now I'm reading that Bin Laden was actually turned in by the Abbottabad Homeowner's Association, who were angry about a water slide he was building on the compound.
Boy, that would make me bring in the Seals.
I'm appalled that the mainstream press has made no mention of Osama's go-kart track or bowling alley. This is surely some kind of conspiracy.
Here is what I am shocked about: that a $1M would buy the kind of house he had. A million dollars in Pakistan in a remote town buys you what he got? I think he got ripped off. I think you can get a nicer house in LA than he did over there .
.Maybe the housing market in Costellobad got inflated due to the large influx of U.S. dollars to the army compound?
Here is what I am shocked about: that a $1M would buy the kind of house he had. A million dollars in Pakistan in a remote town buys you what he got? I think he got ripped off. I think you can get a nicer house in LA than he did over there
But does the house in LA come with AK-47s and a harem?
Or maybe there is a premium on the lot and the fee per entry of each truck delivering cement, hollow blocks, military grade steel bars and beams and what not, since the location is basically a military establishment.
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Photos show three dead men at bin Laden raid house
By Chris Allbritton, Reuters
Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.
The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.
The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.
None of the men looked like bin Laden. President Barack Obama decided not to release photos of his body because it could have incited violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.
"I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Obama told the CBS program "60 Minutes."
Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.
Other photos, taken hours later at between 5:21 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. show the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned. The tail assembly is unusual, and could indicate some kind of previously unknown stealth capability.
Reuters is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday.
U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.
The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself.
The close-cropped pictures do not show any weapons on the dead men, but the photos are taken in medium close-up and often crop out the men's hands and arms.
One photo shows a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.
A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.
A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.
U.S. acknowledgment on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead had raised accusations Washington had violated international law. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear and could yet fuel controversy, especially in the Muslim world.
Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in explaining how the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.
Pakistan blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect bin Laden, while Washington worked to establish whether its ally had sheltered the al Qaeda leader, which Islamabad vehemently denies.
By Chris Allbritton, Reuters
Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.
The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.
The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.
None of the men looked like bin Laden. President Barack Obama decided not to release photos of his body because it could have incited violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.
"I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Obama told the CBS program "60 Minutes."
Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.
Other photos, taken hours later at between 5:21 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. show the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned. The tail assembly is unusual, and could indicate some kind of previously unknown stealth capability.
Reuters is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday.
U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.
The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself.
The close-cropped pictures do not show any weapons on the dead men, but the photos are taken in medium close-up and often crop out the men's hands and arms.
One photo shows a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.
A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.
A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.
U.S. acknowledgment on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead had raised accusations Washington had violated international law. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear and could yet fuel controversy, especially in the Muslim world.
Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in explaining how the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.
Pakistan blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect bin Laden, while Washington worked to establish whether its ally had sheltered the al Qaeda leader, which Islamabad vehemently denies.
I agree with Jadis ...100% ... This is a very serious undertaking and literally millions of lives are at stake ... We may have to keep guessing, Certain aspects of this raid will (should?) likely never be known by the general public... he got taken down. To me the goals of the mission were to first eliminate him and second gather as much information as time and safety would allow. However cynical I may sound I am certain that the lives of any entity in the compound were secondary to the Mission, ANYONE regardless of age or gender ...
Moreover the least we know about those who conducted the mission, the safer their lives will be and the more efficacious they will remain...
Yet democracy requires free flow of information.. Something that cannot always be done when the enemy can use this very information against you.. We have to understand that there will be compromise .. We won't know it all.. We must however however always demand accountability and propriety IOW Ethics and Morality... We have to always ask and find answers to a fundamental question : Who's watching the watchers? it should be we, the people or at least we should try ...
Moreover the least we know about those who conducted the mission, the safer their lives will be and the more efficacious they will remain...
Yet democracy requires free flow of information.. Something that cannot always be done when the enemy can use this very information against you.. We have to understand that there will be compromise .. We won't know it all.. We must however however always demand accountability and propriety IOW Ethics and Morality... We have to always ask and find answers to a fundamental question : Who's watching the watchers? it should be we, the people or at least we should try ...
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
he Man Who Got bin Laden: The Most Deadly Would-be Journalist in the World
By MARK THOMPSON – Thu May 5, 4:00 am ET
The man who commanded the SEAL team that hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden studied to be a reporter. If the Pulitzer Prize board establishes a new category - for killing the world's most wanted terrorist - it's a safe bet Bill McRaven will win it next spring.
Vice Adm. William McRaven, himself a SEAL, was on the ground in Afghanistan as bin Laden met his end, linked electronically to CIA chief Leon Panetta at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. "I have to tell you that the real commander was Admiral McRaven," Panetta told PBS Tuesday night. "He was on site, and he was actually in charge of the military operation that went in and got bin Laden." (See TIME's video: "Inside the Raid to Kill Osama bin Laden.")
So just who is this reporter-turned-frogman-turned-giant-killer? He currently heads the military's 4,000-strong and secretive Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. Assuming Senate confirmation, he'll soon pick up his fourth star as head head to Florida to run U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. That will make him the Pentagon's top commando among the 57,000 people working for SOCOM. He's married, with several kids.
McRaven hedged his bets while studying journalism at the University of Texas in Austin before graduating in 1977: he also was a member of the Navy ROTC program. "You wouldn't expect a journalism major," former deputy CIA chief and ex-Navy admiral Bobby Inman told the San Antonio Express-News, "to end up running special forces." (See pictures of Osama bin Laden's Pakistan hideout.)
But it looks like McRaven picked the right career path: in his 35-year career, McRaven went from being a SEAL platoon commander, to heading a SEAL team, to running U.S. special operations in Europe. But he didn't give up everything he learned in journalism school: in 1996 he published Spec Ops, a book on the art of special operations based on eight case studies. He concluded the keys to successful missions are Simplicity, Security, Repetition, Surprise, Speed and Purpose.
McRaven is highly-regarded in the dark world of special operations for improving the JSOC targeting center created by Stanley McChrystal, the Army general who retired last year after Rolling Stone quoted his staff making disparaging comments about top members of the Obama Administration. The unit has gotten high marks for compressing the nation's flow of military and civilian intelligence into targets, times and places for action. In other words, he has spent years "shortening the kill chain," linking curiosity, detection, tracking and destruction. (See TIME's al-Qaeda covers.)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in announcing McRaven's promotion in March, said McRaven "has led a JSOC team that has been ruthlessly and effectively taking the fight to America's most dangerous and vicious enemies." As JSOC chief, he commands what the public knows as SEAL Team 6 - the toughest, most skilled SEALs - but officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or simply DevGru.
McRaven deployed SEAL Team 6 to great effect early Monday in Pakistan. Back at CIA headquarters, Panetta and his team monitored McRaven's men from a windowless seventh-floor conference room. As he and his team waited for McRaven to report on whether bin Laden was indeed at the compound, Panetta says the room was tense. "I kept asking Bill McRaven, 'O.K., what the hell's this mean?,' " Panetta told Time's Massimo Calabresi. When McRaven finally said they had gotten "Geronimo," their code name for bin Laden, "all the air we were holding came out," Panetta says. Not a bad day's work for a would-be journalist. Sure as heck beats writing about it.
By MARK THOMPSON – Thu May 5, 4:00 am ET
The man who commanded the SEAL team that hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden studied to be a reporter. If the Pulitzer Prize board establishes a new category - for killing the world's most wanted terrorist - it's a safe bet Bill McRaven will win it next spring.
Vice Adm. William McRaven, himself a SEAL, was on the ground in Afghanistan as bin Laden met his end, linked electronically to CIA chief Leon Panetta at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. "I have to tell you that the real commander was Admiral McRaven," Panetta told PBS Tuesday night. "He was on site, and he was actually in charge of the military operation that went in and got bin Laden." (See TIME's video: "Inside the Raid to Kill Osama bin Laden.")
So just who is this reporter-turned-frogman-turned-giant-killer? He currently heads the military's 4,000-strong and secretive Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. Assuming Senate confirmation, he'll soon pick up his fourth star as head head to Florida to run U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. That will make him the Pentagon's top commando among the 57,000 people working for SOCOM. He's married, with several kids.
McRaven hedged his bets while studying journalism at the University of Texas in Austin before graduating in 1977: he also was a member of the Navy ROTC program. "You wouldn't expect a journalism major," former deputy CIA chief and ex-Navy admiral Bobby Inman told the San Antonio Express-News, "to end up running special forces." (See pictures of Osama bin Laden's Pakistan hideout.)
But it looks like McRaven picked the right career path: in his 35-year career, McRaven went from being a SEAL platoon commander, to heading a SEAL team, to running U.S. special operations in Europe. But he didn't give up everything he learned in journalism school: in 1996 he published Spec Ops, a book on the art of special operations based on eight case studies. He concluded the keys to successful missions are Simplicity, Security, Repetition, Surprise, Speed and Purpose.
McRaven is highly-regarded in the dark world of special operations for improving the JSOC targeting center created by Stanley McChrystal, the Army general who retired last year after Rolling Stone quoted his staff making disparaging comments about top members of the Obama Administration. The unit has gotten high marks for compressing the nation's flow of military and civilian intelligence into targets, times and places for action. In other words, he has spent years "shortening the kill chain," linking curiosity, detection, tracking and destruction. (See TIME's al-Qaeda covers.)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in announcing McRaven's promotion in March, said McRaven "has led a JSOC team that has been ruthlessly and effectively taking the fight to America's most dangerous and vicious enemies." As JSOC chief, he commands what the public knows as SEAL Team 6 - the toughest, most skilled SEALs - but officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or simply DevGru.
McRaven deployed SEAL Team 6 to great effect early Monday in Pakistan. Back at CIA headquarters, Panetta and his team monitored McRaven's men from a windowless seventh-floor conference room. As he and his team waited for McRaven to report on whether bin Laden was indeed at the compound, Panetta says the room was tense. "I kept asking Bill McRaven, 'O.K., what the hell's this mean?,' " Panetta told Time's Massimo Calabresi. When McRaven finally said they had gotten "Geronimo," their code name for bin Laden, "all the air we were holding came out," Panetta says. Not a bad day's work for a would-be journalist. Sure as heck beats writing about it.
Steve Williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Pakistan army orders cut in US military personnel
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press – 41 mins ago
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army ordered a reduction in U.S. military personnel operating inside the country on Thursday in apparent protest at a unilateral American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The army has been heavily criticized at home for allowing the country's sovereignty to be violated during Monday's operation in a busy garrison town not far from the capital, Islamabad. It is also facing international charges it may have been harboring the al-Qaida chief, given his location.
The army statement, the first since the raid, appeared aimed at countering both charges.
It said a decision had been made to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel to the "minimum essential" levels, but gave no more details and a spokesman declined to elaborate. U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment.
The U.S. has around 275 declared U.S. military personnel in Pakistan at any one time, some of them helping train the Pakistan army.
The Pakistani army also warned that it would review its military and intelligence cooperation with Washington if the United States carries out any more similar raids. Earlier, the government had warned of "disastrous consequences" if the U.S. staged a similar attack on its territory.
But in an apparent nod to international criticism, the army admitted to "shortcomings in developing intelligence on the presence" of bin Laden in Pakistan.
Still, it said its Inter-Services Intelligence agency had given initial information to the CIA about bin Laden, but claimed the "CIA did not share further development of intelligence on the case with the ISI, contrary to the existing practice between the two services."
Ties between American and Pakistan were already strained before Monday's raid because of American allegations it was failing to crackdown on Afghan Taliban factions sheltering on its soil and Pakistan anger over U.S. drone strikes on its soil.
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press – 41 mins ago
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army ordered a reduction in U.S. military personnel operating inside the country on Thursday in apparent protest at a unilateral American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The army has been heavily criticized at home for allowing the country's sovereignty to be violated during Monday's operation in a busy garrison town not far from the capital, Islamabad. It is also facing international charges it may have been harboring the al-Qaida chief, given his location.
The army statement, the first since the raid, appeared aimed at countering both charges.
It said a decision had been made to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel to the "minimum essential" levels, but gave no more details and a spokesman declined to elaborate. U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment.
The U.S. has around 275 declared U.S. military personnel in Pakistan at any one time, some of them helping train the Pakistan army.
The Pakistani army also warned that it would review its military and intelligence cooperation with Washington if the United States carries out any more similar raids. Earlier, the government had warned of "disastrous consequences" if the U.S. staged a similar attack on its territory.
But in an apparent nod to international criticism, the army admitted to "shortcomings in developing intelligence on the presence" of bin Laden in Pakistan.
Still, it said its Inter-Services Intelligence agency had given initial information to the CIA about bin Laden, but claimed the "CIA did not share further development of intelligence on the case with the ISI, contrary to the existing practice between the two services."
Ties between American and Pakistan were already strained before Monday's raid because of American allegations it was failing to crackdown on Afghan Taliban factions sheltering on its soil and Pakistan anger over U.S. drone strikes on its soil.
Too bad our response won't be to pull all of our troops out of Pakistan and leave the to rot in their own corruption. But they have nukes, so that won't happen.
Tim
Pictures taken of bodies inside the compound would not show weapons, as the SEALs would immediately remove weapons from the proximity of the enemy. Although shot and down, an enemy can still easily pull a trigger. Therefore, all weapons are secured as quickly as possible once primary hostilities are concluded.
Lee
Lee
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