Osama bin Laden dead

[unlucky]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I still amused that you are seriously trying to tell me that OBL had any chance whatsoever of having an IED anywhere near him. Seriously. You're trying to convince me that OBL - the pawnmaster - was somehow so idealistic as to actually consider using the types of devices which the idiot kids are told to employ. And that furthermore he would be employing these around his family. There is no credible evidence that there were even assault weapons at the compound; no American troops were injured in any way and the equipment damage was purely due to equipment failure.

So you have heavily armed, highly trained troops who
1) weren't shot at,
2) confronted by a total of 14 to 20 civilians of which 1/3 to 1/2 were women and children,
3) attempting to apprehend a man who had suffered from kidney failure and was on dialysis but felt they were seriously endangered?
These guys weren't meandering through the brush in Afghanistan under surveillance by Taliban.
They were in a residential home - one which the residents clearly must not have had any expectation of attack as evidenced by the lack of any defensive armament.

Should the US soldiers have assumed beforehand that there would be no danger to them in Osama's hideout? Should they have assumed that Osama would not be expecting any attempt to attack him, and that he had given up terrorism to spend more time with his kids? They probably assumed the opposite and it was reasonable for them to do so. [The question of whether they were shot at is disputed - Pakistani military say no, US military say yes].

So far your only justifications for this situation was that he was a bad man. The problem is, I'm not debating that. I'm pointing out that just because he was a bad man, doesn't mean that the 'good guys' should act the same way.

Well, they could have hijacked an airliner and crashed it into his house. But they didn't.

Perhaps these details have yet to come forth, but I am still trying to understand just how exactly OBL was presenting a credible threat when there was little to no shooting (outside of the kill team) and apparently no significant numbers of 'bad' men present - much less armed men. ...

I'd like to see a single example of an official proceeding or any other judicial action which reviewed OBL's actions and pronounced a sentence.

Even with the Nazis, there were the Nuremburg trials.

Whether "Stop! [blam] or I'll shoot!" or "Shot while resisting arrest" - either is not justice.

Under US law, and I believe the laws of many other nations, enemy combatants can killed even if they do not pose a threat, provided only that they are not actively trying to surrender (or are incapacitated). Thus for example a sniper may shoot and kill an unarmed enemy officer who is not participating in combat without breaking any law. And the US has declared some years ago that it considers Al Qaeda to be enemy combatants rather than criminals. If OBL did in fact surrender and was then shot, then of course this wouldn't apply.

It might seem odd to consider an unarmed oldish man in a residential house to be an enemy combatant. But it seems even odder to consider Al Qaeda as ordinary criminals. They certainly thought of themselves as combatants. As such they need to actively surrender to avoid being shot, even if unarmed.

During the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland this was an endless bone of contention between the British government the IRA. In that conflict the British govt. declared that the IRA were not combatants and would be treated as criminals. Nevertheless British forces on several occasions appeared to just shoot IRA operatives instead of trying to arrest them. The IRA insisted they were combatants, not criminals. But they complained that they were being targeted 'extra-judicially'. Both sides had a hard time trying to explain these contradictions!

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Should the US soldiers have assumed beforehand that there would be no danger to them in Osama's hideout? Should they have assumed that Osama would not be expecting any attempt to attack him, and that he had given up terrorism to spend more time with his kids? They probably assumed the opposite and it was reasonable for them to do so. [The question of whether they were shot at is disputed - Pakistani military say no, US military say yes].

The questions you pose are repetition of what has gone before.

By the time the SEAL team reached OBL, it was quite clear that there was no significant resistance.

You've still not addressed the facts as known now that there simply weren't a lot of men there. Maybe 5 total including OBL and son, courier and courier's brother.

The rest? Apparently women and children.

Doesn't seem like a 'hot' landing zone to me.

Given the extensive multiple month long surveillance of the property, it equally seems quite unlikely that the team going in wasn't aware that there simply weren't many, if any, fighters in the compound.

Secondly you're still trying to make excuses for the action. Certainly it is conceivable that the SEAL team felt threatened, but then again I would be very interested in what specific orders they were given.

Was taking OBL alive a priority? Or was it a $1000 dead/$500 alive situation?

I don't blame the SEAL team - they do what they're instructed to do.

If they're instructed to bring back OBL dead or alive, well, dead is much easier and safer than alive.

It isn't their job to consider the non-military aspects of the situation.

But certainly it is a job in which a lot of people in the US government involved or aware of this operation are responsible for.

Well, they could have hijacked an airliner and crashed it into his house. But they didn't.

Uh, yeah, whatever.

What you don't seem to get, is that "terrorists" do what they do because it is the only way they perceive necessary change to occur.

Every single terrorist action you can name is because some ethnic or religious group desires change but is unable to effect it via conventional means, peaceful or otherwise.

This doesn't excuse their actions, but to assume that these occur solely due to the "terrorists" being rabid dogs is intellectual laziness.

Under US law, and I believe the laws of many other nations, enemy combatants can killed even if they do not pose a threat, provided only that they are not actively trying to surrender (or are incapacitated). Thus for example a sniper may shoot and kill an unarmed enemy officer who is not participating in combat without breaking any law. And the US has declared some years ago that it considers Al Qaeda to be enemy combatants rather than criminals. If OBL did in fact surrender and was then shot, then of course this wouldn't apply.

As I've noted previously - I'd like to see concrete examples of these laws.

The Geneva Conventions - as lakedaemonian attempted to use - do not in fact make any mention of unlawful combatants, or what the 'lawful combatants' are entitled to do to them.

I have long known that the definitions lakedaemonian referred to were in fact proposed by the US due to its counterinsurgency problem in Vietnam, but were never accepted by the international community.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Great post c1ue.

The questions you pose are repetition of what has gone before.

By the time the SEAL team reached OBL, it was quite clear that there was no significant resistance.

You've still not addressed the facts as known now that there simply weren't a lot of men there. Maybe 5 total including OBL and son, courier and courier's brother.

The rest? Apparently women and children.

Doesn't seem like a 'hot' landing zone to me.

Given the extensive multiple month long surveillance of the property, it equally seems quite unlikely that the team going in wasn't aware that there simply weren't many, if any, fighters in the compound.

Secondly you're still trying to make excuses for the action. Certainly it is conceivable that the SEAL team felt threatened, but then again I would be very interested in what specific orders they were given.

Was taking OBL alive a priority? Or was it a $1000 dead/$500 alive situation?

I don't blame the SEAL team - they do what they're instructed to do.

If they're instructed to bring back OBL dead or alive, well, dead is much easier and safer than alive.

It isn't their job to consider the non-military aspects of the situation.

But certainly it is a job in which a lot of people in the US government involved or aware of this operation are responsible for.



Uh, yeah, whatever.

What you don't seem to get, is that "terrorists" do what they do because it is the only way they perceive necessary change to occur.

Every single terrorist action you can name is because some ethnic or religious group desires change but is unable to effect it via conventional means, peaceful or otherwise.

This doesn't excuse their actions, but to assume that these occur solely due to the "terrorists" being rabid dogs is intellectual laziness.



As I've noted previously - I'd like to see concrete examples of these laws.

The Geneva Conventions - as lakedaemonian attempted to use - do not in fact make any mention of unlawful combatants, or what the 'lawful combatants' are entitled to do to them.

I have long known that the definitions lakedaemonian referred to were in fact proposed by the US due to its counterinsurgency problem in Vietnam, but were never accepted by the international community.

[Shakespear]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Originally Posted by Ghent12 I have yet to see any contesting of the report that he was "resisting capture," and, as I alluded to earlier, any movement from him would justify lethal force. You asked if there was any reason to suspect that he would have suicide belts or vests there, but the real question you would ask yourself, if you were involved in planning this, is this, "what is the likelihood of there not being any kind of IED?"

If you think that OBL was so brilliant as to have this device around than you are not thinking deep enough. He was supposedly on 3rd floor, takes time to get there. Great, the SEALS had to come in using helicopters making a little bit of noise (Hihihii). Are we to assume they have super silent ones so as to give OBL no time to hit the trigger? He didn't hit the trigger because he was not planning to hit one, or was he planning to talk the "intruders" out of capturing him?

Next, IF OBL was so smart why not have metal doors and make it really hard to get into his room. He had money up his butt so he could do whatever he needed for security. I could go on but it is pointless.

Whoever was in that compound was known to Pakistan. That is close to a certain or Pakistan ISA are a bunch of idiots. I would expect every poor schmook on the street of Pakistan needing a nickle being a potential eye for their needs. Someone of OBL caliber after 10 yrs. must have left a trail. Someone moves into a neighborhood, you send people to study who it is no matter where.

Heck, Pakistan is fighting a war with its own militants from Kashmir so they have been on alert for a hell of a long time and must have this sort of system of checks worked out. We didn't know is too convenient.

My bet is that it was a high rank Taliban or AQ leader. Next possibility could be the previously used look alike, living quietly the "pretend life" of OBL. If OBL was so smart he would have had 5 look alikes moving everywhere sowing confusion. The way I see it all these options are possible options, but we will not find out which is true. We are just muppets enjoying the show.

To make this crap even more bizzard we have the use of code word "Geronimo". Now this smells like fraternity prank BS to me. Which fraternity? How about this one for a start.
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/is.../notebook.html

This is all just a huge Circus for the colosseum crowd, and it is working like charm.

Enjoy but don't forget that the bills still need to be payed every month !!!

[D-Mack]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K—t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T—[Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."

Maybe they exhumed dead Bin Laden and put him safely into the sea

[unlucky]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

By the time the SEAL team reached OBL, it was quite clear that there was no significant resistance.

You've still not addressed the facts as known now that there simply weren't a lot of men there. Maybe 5 total including OBL and son, courier and courier's brother.

The rest? Apparently women and children.

Doesn't seem like a 'hot' landing zone to me.

Given the extensive multiple month long surveillance of the property, it equally seems quite unlikely that the team going in wasn't aware that there simply weren't many, if any, fighters in the compound.

Law enforcement officers arresting a suspect are not allowed to use deadly force unless there is an imminent threat to safety. But that rule does not apply to soldiers confronting an enemy combatant in the field. Soldiers may kill any enemy combatant who is not actively surrendering, there is no requirement for 'resistance'.

Secondly you're still trying to make excuses for the action. Certainly it is conceivable that the SEAL team felt threatened, but then again I would be very interested in what specific orders they were given.

Was taking OBL alive a priority? Or was it a $1000 dead/$500 alive situation?

I don't blame the SEAL team - they do what they're instructed to do.

If they're instructed to bring back OBL dead or alive, well, dead is much easier and safer than alive.

It isn't their job to consider the non-military aspects of the situation.

But certainly it is a job in which a lot of people in the US government involved or aware of this operation are responsible for.

I think it's very arguable that killing OBL was in the interests of the US. Trying to put him on trial would have been a mess. However I doubt that the team were explicitly ordered to kill regardless of circumstances. Such an order would probably have been illegal, and politicians tend to be careful about that.

I should add - clearly the WH could have ordered the team to capture OBL if possible, and that order wasn't given either. Was that immoral, or a bad political decision? The WH can argue that they did not know in advance he would be easy to capture, that they have no moral obligation to put him on trial, and that putting him on trail would be dangerous and ineffective. It's not obvious to me that it was an immoral decision.

You mentioned the Nuremburg trials as a better way to do things. But the soldiers sent into Europe in WWII were not under orders to capture Nazis so they could be put on trial. The rules for them would generally have been the same as now - kill the enemy unless they surrender. The fact that some Nazis did in fact surrender meant they had to be dealt at the end of war, either released as ordinary POWs, summarily shot (illegal), or put or trial for crimes.

What you don't seem to get, is that "terrorists" do what they do because it is the only way they perceive necessary change to occur.

My airliner comment may have been facetious, but my point is that you are asserting moral equivalence between this raid specifically, and the actions of terrorists - and I am saying that when you put them side-by-side there is no moral equivalence. (I'm making no comment about other actions of the US govt.)

You also made that the point that governments must abide by the rule of law, and I believe in this case they probably did - unless OBL actually surrendered before he was shot.

Every single terrorist action you can name is because some ethnic or religious group desires change but is unable to effect it via conventional means, peaceful or otherwise.

This doesn't excuse their actions, but to assume that these occur solely due to the "terrorists" being rabid dogs is intellectual laziness.

OBL undoubtedly had his reasons, but he was not fighting for peace and justice. I am not under any illusion that the US is either. I don't think he was a rabid dog, but I do note that his reaction to whatever problems he saw in the world was to try to kill innocent people. We all have a choice, so did he.

As I've noted previously - I'd like to see concrete examples of these laws.

The Geneva Conventions - as lakedaemonian attempted to use - do not in fact make any mention of unlawful combatants, or what the 'lawful combatants' are entitled to do to them.

I have long known that the definitions lakedaemonian referred to were in fact proposed by the US due to its counterinsurgency problem in Vietnam, but were never accepted by the international community.

The laws and customs of war forbid the killing of enemy combatants who are surrendering, but they don't explicitly state when it is permissible to kill. The circumstances in which soldiers can kill the enemy are I believe usually spelt out by the military in their rules of engagement. The New Yorker had a (long) article a few years back in which it spelt out what some of those rules mean:

For many years, soldiers have also been permitted to kill people because of who they are, rather than what they are doing—such people are “status-based targets.” During the Second World War, an American infantryman could shoot an S.S. officer who was eating lunch in a French café without violating the Law of War, so long as he did not actively surrender. The officer’s uniform made it obvious that he was the enemy. In Iraq, the R.O.E. listed about two dozen “designated terrorist organizations,” including Al Qaeda, and, if it can be proved that someone is a member of one of these groups, that person can legally be killed. For a time, the R.O.E. designated as a status-based target any armed man wearing the uniform of the Mahdi Army—the militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. (After Sadr called a truce, in 2004, the militia was provisionally taken off the list.) But most insurgent groups in Iraq don’t wear uniforms, so their members must be “positively identified” by informants or other forms of intelligence before they can legally be killed. An insurgent is positively identified if there is “reasonable certainty” that he belongs to a declared hostile group.

The debatable part is largely over OBL's status as an enemy combatant. I agree that the US attempt to define "illegal enemy combatants" has been a failure, largely because the Bush administration ruled that they could do whatever they want to these people, including torture. But in my opinion, Al Qaeda should not have rights superior to those of a 'normal' enemy combatant.

[Ghent12]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

The debatable part is largely over OBL's status as an enemy combatant. I agree that the US attempt to define "illegal enemy combatants" has been a failure, largely because the Bush administration ruled that they could do whatever they want to these people, including torture. But in my opinion, Al Qaeda should not have rights superior to those of a 'normal' enemy combatant.

Well said, and thank you for your perspective.

The difference between "criminal" and "enemy combatant" is an important distinction. No one deserved the latter title more at the time of his death than Osama Bin Laden, illegal or otherwise. As has been repeated several times, just about the only way he would have been captured is if he were actively surrendering. So far, nobody seems to be contesting that he was not.

If you think that OBL was so brilliant as to have this device around than you are not thinking deep enough. He was supposedly on 3rd floor, takes time to get there. Great, the SEALS had to come in using helicopters making a little bit of noise (Hihihii). Are we to assume they have super silent ones so as to give OBL no time to hit the trigger? He didn't hit the trigger because he was not planning to hit one, or was he planning to talk the "intruders" out of capturing him?

I suspect that the intelligence regarding the compound's defenses was not entirely complete. All relevant assumptions have to be made before the raid during the planning stage, not during the raid itself. As such, it is in fact quite likely that there was an assumption that the compound would be guarded by more than just walls--by personnel or booby-traps, etc.

However, the physical threat posed by the man himself is not the biggest determining factor in whether he gets captured or killed. His status as a combatant, as a military target that is not surrendering, makes him eligible to be killed at the discretion of any of our military at any opportunity.

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I always hesitate to refer to Fox, but at least here is some detail which seems to be lacking from other sources. Subject to much review and examination in the days to come...

President

Bin Laden Killing: How the White House, Pentagon and CIA Botched the Storyline

By James Rosen
Published May 06, 2011
| FoxNews.com

AP
May 2: President Obama pauses in the East Room of the White House in Washington while speaking about the capture and killing of Usama bin Laden.

From the very first moment the world learned that American forces had killed Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, even the tiniest details from the momentous event have captivated the nation. Every single nugget of data has been the stuff of breaking news, handheld "alerts" and watercooler discussion, in a way the country has never previously witnessed.

No landmark event of the 20th century, from World Wars I and II to the Cuban missile crisis, from the moon landing to the fall of the Soviet Union – not even the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- have been as widely transmitted, reported on, written about, and talked about by as many people, across so many different platforms of communication, as the killing of bin Laden. Within days, it has become a singular event of the Information Age.

President Obama's decision to withhold the classified photographs and video associated with the mission has ironically served to deny this most modern of events one of the key ingredients present in virtually all other watershed news events in recent memory: pictures. We've had them from the Kennedy assassination and its Zapruder film to 9/11 and its camcorders. The Arab Spring comes via YouTube cell phone video, linked to from Twitter.

Indeed, in their sheer number of rate of disclosure, the details of the bin Laden mission have formed their own digital assault: They've poured forth virtually non-stop since the president finished speaking in the East Room of the White House, at 11:44 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday night, May 1, nine minutes after he had begun.

The riotous cacophony of claims and counter-claims has emanated from official podiums and anonymous sources, reputable reporters and unknown websites, everything, it seems, equipped with a screen, a speaker, or a mouth. Yet so grandly cinematic is our collective vision of the heroism displayed by the U.S. Navy SEALs and intelligence operatives who pulled off this astonishing mission that we have hung on every word of their exploits. As TIME magazine's Michael Crowley tweeted on Tuesday: "Impossible to focus today: every 10 minutes some new fact comes along that would be the most interesting thing I've heard in a typical week."

The true irony is: From the first moments, a good number of the details about bin Laden's killing, on points large and small, have been wrong.

* * *

President Obama was the first senior U.S. official to disclose the operation, formally, in his East Room address. It was from his lips that we first heard that a "firefight" had taken place during the raid on bin Laden's fortified compound in Abbottabad.

The president's lone sentence describing what happened -- "After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body" – did not specify whether the 9/11 mastermind had actually participated in the firefight; but it seemed to imply that he had.

In a conference call with reporters convened by the White House less than twenty minutes after Obama finished speaking, a trio of “senior administration officials” took things a few steps further. Asked if bin Laden was "involved in firing [a weapon] himself or defending himself," one of the briefers replied: "He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight."

That answer marked a significant elaboration on the president’s baseline narrative: Now bin Laden had perished not after a firefight, but in one. In addition to altering the timeline of events, this assertion also strongly implied that bin Laden had been an armed participant in the firefight.

Elsewhere in the transcript of the late-night call, presided over by National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, one of the senior officials brazenly mischaracterized what President Obama had told the nation. The briefer stated: “As the President said this evening, bin Laden was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound.”

In fact, the president had told us only that bin Laden had been killed “after a firefight.” How long after the firefight? Was the lethal bullet the last shot fired in the exchange of gunfire? Or had the killing of bin Laden truly come after the firefight – by ten or fifteen minutes, or an hour or two? With reports still trickling in from Pakistan, the president’s studiedly vague formulation had wisely left all that unclear. Now his aides were committing him to a more distinct narrative.

Before wrapping up their conference call at 12:24 a.m. on Monday morning, May 2, one of the briefers added another detail that was to prove problematic. After noting the presence of “several” women and children at the scene, the senior official related: “One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant.”

* * *

Amazingly, for those select Obama administration officials entrusted with the solemn duty of relating the official storyline of the great event to the news media, the next twelve hours – the critical first overnight period during which the Navy SEALs and their superiors were reporting back to Washington – produced not greater clarity about what had happened, but less.

At 11:30 a.m. on Monday morning, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell convened another press briefing, this one featuring “senior Defense officials” and, participating via conference call, “senior intelligence officials.” Here for the first time, the Obama administration advanced the notion that the “resistance” bin Laden had exhibited, against what the White House briefer had called “the assault force,” had come during this fabled firefight.

One reporter asked: “Last night, you said that he had resisted, but you didn't specify what the resistance was. What was the resistance that the American team met in that compound?” “The American team engaged in a firefight, and as indicated last night, Usama bin Laden did resist,” one of the senior Pentagon officers said. The implication was clear: that bin Laden had resisted during the firefight. To mention a firefight and then, in the next breath, the resistance of the central figure at the scene is effectively to link the one to the other.

This same official then elaborated on the statement made during the White House briefing about a woman having been killed “when she was used as a shield by a male combatant.” After scoffing at bin Laden’s luxury lifestyle compared to his surroundings, the Defense briefer picked up on this thread: “He and some other male combatants on the target appeared to use – certainly did use women as shields.”

Note here that the number of offenders has at least tripled, from solely bin Laden to “[bin Laden] and some other male combatants” – a formulation that suggests that at least three men demonstrated this particular brand of cowardice. Presumably, as well, bin Laden and his cohorts did not all hide behind the same woman; thus the briefer’s pluralized reference to “women.”

Note also the Pentagon officer’s mid-sentence recalibration, which saw him jettison the cautious construction “appeared to use…women as shields” for the ostentatiously more confident “certainly did use women as shields.” This certainty was to prove misplaced.

A few other discordant notes were struck before Morrell wrapped the group. One of the intelligence briefers, responding to a question about whether bin Laden died “peacefully” or “violently,” repeated his Pentagon colleague’s earlier line and answered somewhat impatiently: “He died during a firefight, Barbara.” A Pentagon official volunteered that “two women were wounded” in addition to the one killed. Finally, a DOD briefer provided the first estimate of how long the gunfire lasted. “[T]hrough most of the 40 minutes during which U.S. special operators were on the compound,” he said, “they were engaged in a firefight.”

Two hours later, the president’s Assistant for Homeland Security and Counter-Terrorism, John Brennan, joined White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, determined to add still greater detail to the administration’s narrative of the momentous event. Here the problems with that narrative were compounded.

Establishing his intimate level of familiarity with the details, Brennan described to the White House press corps how he, Obama, and the rest of the national security team had kept tabs on the action. “We were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation,” Brennan said. “I'm not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there, but it was -- it gave us the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis.”

This tantalizing account of Brennan’s “real time” tracking of the SEALs, as they fought their way up to the third floor of the compound – bin Laden’s floor – imbued his other assertions with greater authority. The Al Qaeda chief, he said, “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house,” and “was killed in that firefight.” The image of bin Laden going down in a hail of bullets, while firing off his own as-yet-unspecified weaponry, was now indelible.

Brennan also scorned the late terrorist for “hiding behind women who were put in front of him as shields” – evidence, to the White House’s eyes, of “how false [bin Laden’s] narrative has been over the years.”
Yet it was Brennan’s own narrative, of the last twenty-four hours, that was soon shown to be false.

* * *

The storyline came under attack the next day. “So Brennan in his briefing yesterday made a couple of, I guess, misstatements – or statements that later appeared to be somewhat incorrect,” began the first question at Carney’s televised press briefing. The reporter listed as false both the idea that bin Laden’s wife had been used as a shield – that anyone at all had been used as a shield – and also that bin Laden had been armed, and a participant in the firefight. “Are you guys in a fog of war in this,” Carney was asked, “or what gives?”

Still new to the job, Carney, a respected former TIME magazine Washington bureau chief, defended the administration’s record of disclosure on the story, even as he tacitly – though not explicitly – admitted that key parts of it had been wrong.

“[W]hat is true,” he began with a touch of defensiveness, “is that we provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you and, through you, the American public about the operation and how it transpired…And obviously some of the information was -- came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on.”

Then Carney retreated to a prepared statement, drafted by officials at the Department of Defense, beyond which he would spend the rest of the briefing refusing to stray. “I have a narrative that I can provide to you on the raid itself,” he said. (Precisely because it emerged in such tangled form, the record of the bin Laden killing is replete with uses, by both officials and reporters alike, of the word “narrative.”)

What followed was an account of the mission, 349 words long (including Carney’s momentary stumbles), that comprised the most extensive chronicle of the events in Abbottabad yet offered. And it contained this crucial new detail: that bin Laden was “not armed.”

This opened up a world of new questions Carney did not want to have to face. “[I]f he didn’t have his hand on a gun, how was he resisting?” asked one member of the press corps. “I think resistance does not require a firearm,” Carney shot back. “But the information I gave you is what I can tell you about it. I’m sure more details will be provided as they come available.”

Still, Carney clung to the notion that the “volatile” firefight, which he said had comprised “a great deal of resistance,” had persisted “throughout the operation.” This left the impression that although bin Laden himself was unarmed, the shooting battle had taken place throughout the forty-minute duration of the raid.

Pursuing the question of how many women had been used as human shields, and which ones, the reporters bore in on the “discrepancy” in “the narrative.” Carney grew flustered and effectively called a time out. “I apologize,” he told reporters. “Even I’m getting confused.”

And it was at this point that the press secretary allowed himself to be bulled into doing something he had repeatedly vowed he wouldn’t: yielding information about the operation that had not been contained in the DOD “narrative.” “Bin Laden’s wife was unarmed as well?” a reporter asked. “That is my understanding,” Carney replied. The DOD account had not mentioned whether Mrs. Bin Laden was armed or not. Was anyone else in the room with bin Laden and his wife? “I don’t know that,” Carney admitted.

“In the narrative,” a reporter continued, “which of those women was being used a human shield, as Mr. Brennan suggested yesterday?” Here, at last, Carney acknowledged the haziness of “the narrative.” “[W]hat I would say about that is…to use your phrase, fog of war, fog of combat,” Carney said. “[T]here was a lot of information coming in. It is still unclear. The woman I believe you’re talking about might have been the one on the first floor who was caught in the crossfire [and killed]. Whether or not she was being used as a shield or trying to use herself as a shield or simply caught in crossfire is unclear. And we’re working on getting the details that we can.”

* * *

President Obama, meanwhile, had not proven entirely immune to the fog. His misstep came while he was addressing a bipartisan dinner with congressional leaders in the East Room on Monday night. The president introduced the subject of the week’s great accomplishment in the war on terror by mentioning the “sense of unity” that had prevailed in the country after Americans learned about the “operation that resulted in the capture and death of Usama bin Laden.”

Applause at that moment obscured the detail the president had let slip: that bin Laden had been subjected not only to death but also to “capture.” One of bin Laden’s daughters, only twelve years old, breathed further life into this notion when she told Al-Arabiya that U.S. forces had indeed captured her father, and shot him dead within the first few minutes of the raid. CIA officials soon waved reporters off the claim, dismissing Obama’s remark to the lawmakers as a simple misstatement.

By the following night, one of the heaviest hitters on the president’s national security team – CIA Director Leon Panetta – would join the fray, and add some final touches to the degree of confusion surrounding the raid and its aftermath.

The contributions to the confusion by Panetta, a savvy operator whose public service stretches back to the first term of the Nixon administration, were notable for their setting as much as their content. The CIA director, freshly nominated to succeed Robert Gates as defense secretary, spoke out as the first member of the national security team to consent to an extended sit-down interview. That format, unlike the helter-skelter of a conference call or a crowded briefing room, offers the questioner the opportunity for subtle and skilled follow-up, and therefore makes the interviewee more susceptible to errors of speech.

Panetta, in fact, conducted two extended sit-down interviews. The first was with PBS’ Jim Lehrer, who pressed for more information about how Obama and his aides were able to track the progress of the mission. “Did you have access to video of what was actually happening in the compound, et cetera?” asked Lehrer. “We had live-time intelligence information that we were dealing with,” Panetta replied cagily.

“Did you actually see Usama bin Laden get shot?” Lehrer followed up. “No,” Panetta answered. “No, not at all. We - you know, we had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound.”

Here was the first time any senior Obama aide admitted to being in the dark for some parts of the raid – to enjoying access to something less than what Brennan had described, with deliberate broadness, as “real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.”

Since Panetta had tracked events from a special command post at CIA headquarters in Langley, Lehrer pressed the issue still further. “So…did the president see the shots fired at Usama bin Laden?” the veteran newsman asked. “No,” Panetta answered again. “No, not at all….[W]e knew that the helicopters had - were on the ground, that the teams were going into the compound. And that was the kind of information that we were following. Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost twenty or twenty-five minutes where we - you know, we really didn't know just exactly what was going on.”

Again, this represented a stark contrast with Brennan’s description of the vantage point enjoyed by Obama and his aides. It was the counter-terrorism adviser who had assured the White House press corps, the day before, that while he couldn’t go into detail about “what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there,” they did have “the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis.” Now here on PBS was Panetta, the head of CIA, acknowledging that the president and his advisers had spent approximately 63 percent of the operation – the majority of it – in a state of ignorance where they “really didn't know just exactly what was going on.”

Panetta was the first official to disclose the number of Navy SEALs deployed in the mission – twenty-five – and also the first to refer to the exchange of gunfire in the plural. He told Lehrer “there were some firefights that were going on as these guys were making their way up the staircase in that compound.”

On NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Panetta went a step further, venturing into territory no Obama aide had yet trodden: the question of whether any of the photographs of bin Laden’s corpse would be released. “I don't think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public,” Panetta told Williams, adding: “[W]e got Bin Laden and I think we have to reveal [that] to the rest of the world.”

* * *

Of course, President Obama would reach a contrary decision where the photographs were concerned, explaining to Steve Kroft of CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Wednesday – now it was the president himself who was braving the perils of the extended interview – that release of such grisly documents might endanger U.S. troops abroad. “[W]e don't need,” the commander-in-chief said, “to spike the football.”

That forced Carney, at the daily press briefing on May 4, to dodge some pointed questions about the CIA director:

QUESTION: So was [Panetta] misinformed, or was he overruled? And what --
MR. CARNEY: The decision -- a final decision had not been made.
QUESTION: So he spoke out of line, out of turn?
MR. CARNEY: The President made a decision. It was -- there are obviously arguments to be made on each side of this, but the final decision was not made until today.
QUESTION: So he was wrong?
MR. CARNEY: The final decision was not made until today.

As reporters worked government sources outside of those entrusted with briefing them, a fuller, more accurate picture of the raid began to emerge – albeit in piecemeal fashion, with reporters within and amongst different news organizations often contradicting one another.

Still, as the raid is now commonly understood to have transpired, the “firefight” that was said to have lasted for “most” of the forty-minute operation (as the senior DOD briefer alleged), or “throughout” it (as the statement that DOD prepared for Jay Carney stated), which was said to have persisted even as the SEALs “were making their way up the staircase in that compound” (as Leon Panetta told PBS), and which was believed to have “killed” bin Laden (as John Brennan claimed), was later revealed to have been, in fact, a volley of gunfire that erupted at the very outset of the raid; ended quickly; and involved only one resident of the compound: Abu Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti, the courier to bin Laden who was the first to confront the Navy SEALs. The Americans shot and killed Al-Kuwaiti, and a woman with him, in a guesthouse they had to traverse before reaching the main house, on whose third floor bin Laden himself awaited. After the shoot-out with Al-Kuwaiti, the U.S. forces were never fired upon again.

It was in the main house that the SEALs encountered Al-Kuwaiti’s brother, whom they shot and killed before he could reach a weapon; bin Laden’s adult son, Khaled, who lunged at them, and was also shot to death; and finally bin Laden himself, in the presence of his wife. She is said to rushed the assault team, at which point she was shot in the leg. Here, bin Laden was said to have exhibited the “resistance” officials had cited, later reported to have been a reach for one of two nearby weapons – an AK-47 assault rifle and a Russian-made 9 millimeter Makarov semi-automatic pistol – that led the Americans to shoot and kill him.

Citing two sources involved in the mission, Fox News has reported that bin Laden behaved in a “confused…scared…cowardly” manner, and that in a desperate bid to fend off the SEALs, he “shoved” his wife at them. This is what may have given rise to the notion that one or more women had been used as “shields” during the raid.

From a somewhat more official source – the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee – came still another version of events. Late Thursday, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) told reporters, in separate interviews with the Atlanta Journal Constitution and National Journal, that the SEALs had first fired on bin Laden when they saw him poke his head out of his room and observe them down the third-floor hallway. This first round of fire missed bin Laden, Chambliss said, adding that the SEALs fired again – and killed the Al Qaeda leader – once they reached his room and looked inside to see him near the two weapons.

Chambliss expressed irritation at the shifting “narrative” of the raid offered by the White House, the Pentagon, and CIA. “Every day it seems like somebody is having to straighten out some fact,” he told the AJC. “You’d think that twenty-four hours after the fact, they’d be able to ferret things out a little more.” He told NJ, more sharply: “Twenty-four hours after it happened there should have been more clarification than what I heard coming out of Brennan.”

* * *

On Thursday morning, May 5, as he and President Obama flew aboard Air Force One to Manhattan to commemorate the killing of bin Laden at Ground Zero, Carney again faced the news media. “Can you talk about the latest revision to the Sunday narrative,” asked one reporter, “that in fact it was not a 40-minute firefight, as White House officials had initially said?”

“I don't have any updates on the narrative,” Carney said wearily. He mounted another defense of his efforts to dispense information as quickly as he could, under trying circumstances – a process, he admitted, that had “resulted in the need to clarify some facts.” But Carney allowed as how it “is to our credit that when we discovered that clarification was needed we did put them [sic] out.“ But the White House has not clarified this point on the record, the reporter pressed. Carney, unwilling to be pushed into divulging information again, punted. “As I said yesterday, the Defense Department can take questions you have about further details on the mission or clarifications. We're still in a process of gathering all the facts of that operation.”

One individual who had stood where Carney was, had faced the intense pressure he was receiving from the relentless press corps, and who empathized with him now – without excusing the Obama administration for its flawed handling of the public disclosure of the mission – was Dana Perino, the last White House press secretary under President George W. Bush.

“In a crisis or an unfolding news situation, first reports are almost always wrong,” she explained in an interview with Fox News, where she is a contributor. “And you can understand when you get the tide of the media calls coming in and you want to provide information as quickly as possible. You want to be responsive and you want to frame the argument first. Sometimes though, if then you end up having to redefine that narrative, or correct things that you originally said, you end up sullying your original message. And I think that's what's happened to them.

“I am perplexed how they got so much wrong,” she added. “I don't think it takes away from their achievement. I think that criticism will be relatively short-lived. However, for those people who might be critics of the administration, or have a little bit of distrust for the stories that are coming out of the White House, this will feed that. And it doesn't help build credibility.”

Again, the truth of what is above cannot be determined, but the general facts are still as noted before:

1) there were few if any armed personnel in the compound
2) OBL was unarmed
3) The SEAL team wasn't being fired on when confronting OBL

Additional information which may or may not be true:

a) 25 SEALs, no more than 5 men among the targets
b) OBL's wife was shot in the leg after 'attacking' the SEAL team, but OBL was shot in the head twice
c) OBL was on the 3rd floor of the building, and thus had at least some warning of the approach of hostiles - though this may not be true depending on just what happened (i.e. one or two shots from the defenders with assault team using silenced weapons)
d) There was no real time surveillance by the White House

Whatever the arguments about OBL's military significant/target status - the narrative that he could have been captured alive for trial continues to strengthen.

I'd also point out the inherent contradiction in many of the 'military significance/military target/unlawful combatant' viewpoints expressed above:

What exact code of conduct should a terrorist be treated as? None at all?

Because that seems to be the ultimate conclusion of that train of thought.

Who defines what a terrorist is vs. a freedom fighter?

OBL was a freedom fighter when he was fighting a US opponent, but is now a terrorist.

[WildspitzE]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Maybe they were watching awful US TV

Hillary Clinton Says Al Jazeera Is Putting American Media To Shame



She says a major reason the State Department needs money is because "we are in an information war and we are losing that war."
Clinton said private media is not good enough to handle the job: "Our private media cannot fill that gap. Our private media, particularly cultural programming often works at counter purposes to what we truly are as Americans. I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all the men wrestled and the women walked around in bikinis because the only TV he ever saw was Baywatch and World Wide Wrestling."
Meanwhile she says Al-Jazeera, CCTV and Russia Today are killing it: "Al Jazeera is winning. The Chinese have opened up a global English language and multi-language television network, the Russians have opened up an English language network. I've seen it in a couple of countries and it's quite instructive."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hilla...#ixzz1LVgCgQwm

while i agree that sometimes our programming has much to be desired, some of what she implies as a suggestion is a little disconcerting but not surprising coming from her.

Or she was marveling at the stealth helicopters ?

Stealth helicopter: Did SEALs have a secret weapon in bin Laden attack?

Stealth helicopter rumors erupt as experts say the helicopter scuttled by SEALs during the attack on Osama bin Laden doesn't look like any known chopper in the US fleet.


Though US forces attempted to destroy the helicopter that was downed inside the compound's courtyard, its tail remained relatively intact on the other side of the wall. As pictures of the wreckage have emerged, aviation experts say the helicopter appears to share characteristics of both a Black Hawk helicopter and a stealth fighter jet.

i'm glad i wasn't the only one to see that! when i saw that tail section in the reuters pictures, i was like "WTF helo is that?!" ... why they "destroyed" the helicopter for the disclosed "intel" reasons made more sense. not saying it was a stealth helo, as i don't have a clue, but it looked not like something i've seen before. originally, i thought they blew the choppers up b/c they might have been painted like pakistani military helos.

[D-Mack]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Some speculative pictures


http://cencio4.wordpress.com/

http://cencio4.wordpress.com/2011/05...ack-helo-down/

There was a stealth helicopter in the past, I used to fly that as a kid on my computer.

The Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche was an advanced U.S. Army military helicopter intended for the armed reconnaissance role, incorporating stealth technologies. It was also intended to designate targets for the AH-64 Apache.^[2] The RAH-66 program was canceled in 2004 before it was fielded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing/...AH-66_Comanche

[unlucky]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I always hesitate to refer to Fox, but at least here is some detail which seems to be lacking from other sources. Subject to much review and examination in the days to come...

There's no doubt that the WH tried to 'spin' these events in a way that would make them acceptable to an audience who think of OBL primarily as a criminal, and who are familiar with the context of 'law enforcement' operations against criminals.

Whatever the arguments about OBL's military significant/target status - the narrative that he could have been captured alive for trial continues to strengthen.

Based on what we know now, it's clear that the seals could probably have over-powered and captured OBL if that had been their main objective. I say 'probably' because he did apparently have weapons in the room. The WH may or may not have known they could easily capture OBL before the raid.

I'd also point out the inherent contradiction in many of the 'military significance/military target/unlawful combatant' viewpoints expressed above:

What exact code of conduct should a terrorist be treated as? None at all?

Because that seems to be the ultimate conclusion of that train of thought.

Who defines what a terrorist is vs. a freedom fighter?

OBL was a freedom fighter when he was fighting a US opponent, but is now a terrorist.

Personally I would rate OBL as a combatant who was also a war criminal. So he could be killed in action unless he surrendered, in which case he could be tried and hanged.

[don]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Media Scrambles as Bin Laden Story Crumbles

by Alex Newman


While the establishment media was busy parroting President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s supposed assassination, reporting the unsubstantiated claims as if they were unquestionable facts, much of the so-called “alternative” press was far more cautious — and accurate, it turns out. But more importantly, with the new official storyline indicating that bin Laden was in fact unarmed, bigger and much more important questions are beginning to emerge. In terms of coverage, it turns out that the skeptical approach proved far superior in terms of getting it right. Countless mainstream sources were so confident in Obama’s word that they reported many of the claims as fact without even attributing them to the President.

But the official White House narrative has been changed so many times in recent days that now it’s almost unrecognizable. There wasn‘t even a fire fight; yet this was one of the crucial elements of the original story that justified the assassination of a person the government painted as the most valuable source of information on the planet — the leader of al-Qaeda. And in reporting the statements as fact, the establishment press has officially been left with egg all over its face again.

"[Bin Laden] was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said terror czar John Brennan. Similarly, Obama said that “after a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” The next day, however, the White House spokesman admitted bin Laden “was not armed." Trying to save face and justify the killing of an unarmed man, the spokesman added, without elaborating, that “resistance does not require a firearm."

More than a few other important parts of the storyline have been altered, contradicted, or simply exposed as false, too. Everything from which of bin Laden’s sons was supposedly killed to the claim that his wife was killed after being used as a “human shield” — all of it has changed for some reason or another. The transcript after Brennan’s speech was altered to change the name of the dead son. The new and improved narrative now says that not only was bin Laden’s wife not killed, but that she was not used as a human shield.

Originally the White House also suggested top officials watched the raid live through a video feed. Terror czar Brennan, for example, claimed that they “had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.” CIA boss Leon Panetta later exposed that claim as false in an interview with PBS, saying: “There was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."

That means the “photo op” of Obama and other officials intently “watching” the operation in the “Situation Room” was almost certainly staged for the press. And almost every media outlet that ran the picture used inaccurate captions parroting the White House claims.

And there’s more. The night of the raid, one administration official told reporters that a helicopter was lost due to mechanical failure. During that same briefing, another administration official said, "We didn't say it was mechanical." Now they claim the crash had something to do with the temperature at bin Laden’s supposed compound.

A poorly photo-shopped image of a dead bin Laden embarrassed a large swath of the world press and several Senators, too. Shortly after newspapers and television stations around the globe ran the image, it was exposed as a shoddy forgery that had been circulating for years. Now Obama said he “decided” not to release any pictures — or any other evidence that any element of the story is true, for that matter.

And then there’s the burial issue. The Obama administration originally claimed no country would accept the body; so, it was dumped at sea — Mafia style — in accordance with what Obama alleged were Islamic traditions and customs. When prominent Muslim theological leaders repudiated that lie and noted that it was actually a violation of Islamic tenets to bury Osama bin Laden in the ocean, the new line was that the decision was to avoid the creation of a “shrine.” That lie fell apart, too, when it was widely reported that bin Laden’s brand of Islam calls for unmarked graves — building any sort of shrine would have been blasphemous. So far, no new excuses have been concocted for allegedly feeding the body to the fish.

After the numerous discrepancies and falsehoods in the storyline became painfully obvious, the Associated Press, USA Today, Fox News and other outlets slowly and begrudgingly started to report it. “From the first moments, a good number of the details about bin Laden's killing, on points large and small, have been wrong,” admitted a Fox reporter in one of the more candid acknowledgements to appear in the mainstream press.

But of course, most of the media were also dutifully offering and parroting all manner of excuses. “Fog of war” was to blame for the confusion, claimed the White House spokesman after that excuse was suggested to him by a member of the “press” corps asking a question. Virtually every major news outlet reporting the changes in the official story promptly blamed “fog of war,” too.

An apologist reporter at USA Today wrote that “the administration did its best to get the story quickly,” adding “it's common situation with military action.” The paper quoted a Pentagon spokesperson under the Bush administration to bolster its case.

The AP offered a similar excuse along with the “fog of combat” line offered by the White House. “The contradictions and misstatements reflect the fact that even in the case of a highly successful and popular mission, the confusion inherent in a fast-paced, unpredictable military raid conducted under intense pressure in a foreign country does not lend itself immediately to a tidy story line,” the reporter claimed, citing “some experts.”

Several excuses for the ever-changing story were offered by other publications, too. The possibility that they were deliberate lies or worse was virtually never addressed. But the U.K. Independent noted: “The impression persists that the administration sought to cast the operation in the most heroic light possible, at the expense of the facts.”

Now, the President and his spokespeople and subordinates are refusing to offer more details or explanations. The government has also announced that it will not be releasing pictures or any other evidence to support its claims even as suspicions continue to mount.

But as analysts pointed out, the newly revealed fact that there was no fire fight begs the question about where the “fog” may have come from. And even more importantly: Why, in the absence of a fire fight, would U.S. forces put a bullet through the brain supposedly containing the most valuable intelligence on the planet? What if bin Laden knew where that alleged nuclear bomb in Europe was located that was set to detonate after his capture or death? None of those questions have been addressed so far.

But prominent critics are sounding the alarm. “When such a foundational story as the demise of bin Laden cannot last 48 hours without acknowledged ‘discrepancies’ that require fundamental alternations to the story, there are grounds for suspicion in addition to the suspicions arising from the absence of a dead body, from the absence of any evidence that bin Laden was killed in the raid or that a raid even took place,” noted Paul Craig Roberts, a senior official in the former Reagan administration in a piece entitled “The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event.”

Roberts raised several important questions, too, as well as some comparisons. “The entire episode could just be another event like the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin event that never happened but succeeded in launching open warfare against North Vietnam at a huge cost to Americans and Vietnamese and enormous profits to the military/security complex,” he suggested, citing a series of government deceptions that have led to war based on lies and other atrocities.

Roberts suspects there are more lies about the bin Laden narrative than those exposed so far. And he’s certainly not alone. It emerged recently that the man who owned the house next to bin Laden’s supposed compound doesn’t even believe the story either. “To be honest, it’s not true,” he told Al Jazeera.

As the official story continues to be re-written by the administration and those in the media who simply re-package government press releases, critics and skeptics would seem to be justified in wondering what other lies and "fog of war" changes may emerge in the coming weeks and months. And perhaps even more importantly, we might also wonder if there are lies that may never be exposed in their entirety?


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=24669

[Slimprofits]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

It's time for the Pentagon to put the "dope on the table".

Noon-time briefing to display plunder from the Bin Laden McMansion.

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

Indeed, the narrative continues to worsen...

http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news...bin-Ladens-end

Pakistan's military paints a different picture than the United States of Osama bin Laden's final days: far from the terror mastermind still trying to strike America, he's seen as an aging terrorist hiding in barren rooms, short of money and struggling to maintain his grip on al-Qaida.

But the CIA is saying he was in touch with key members of al-Qaida, playing a strong role in planning and directing attacks by al-Qaida and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, senior U.S. officials said Friday, citing documents found during the Monday morning raid in which bin Laden was killed.

Three of bin Laden's wives were living with him in the compound and are being interrogated by Pakistani authorities, who took them into custody after Monday's raid, along with 13 children, eight of them bin Laden's.

Their accounts could help shed light on the U.S. military operation that killed the al-Qaida leader and reveal how he was able to avoid capture for nearly 10 years.

One of the wives, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, told interrogators she had been staying in bin Laden's hideout since 2006 and never left the upper floors of the large but sparsely furnished building, said a Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy.

The official did not indicate whether bin Laden was with her the whole time, a period in which the Pakistani military says the al-Qaida chief's influence and financial status eroded.

Disputes over money between bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, led the group to split into two factions five or six years ago, with the larger faction controlled by al-Zawahri, according to two senior Pakistani military officials. Bin Laden was "cash strapped" in his final days, they said.

The officers spoke to a small group of Pakistani reporters late Thursday, and their comments were confirmed for The Associated Press by another top military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues. The officer didn't provide details or say how his agency knew about bin Laden's financial situation or the split with his deputy.

The image coming out of Washington based on information seized from bin Laden's compound was far different.

It shows that bin Laden was a lot more involved in directing al-Qaida personnel and operations than sometimes thought over the last decade, officials said. And it suggests bin Laden was "giving strategic direction" to al-Qaida affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, one defense official said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have long debated how big a role bin Laden and core al-Qaida leaders were playing in the attacks launched by affiliated terror groups, particularly al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, and al-Shabab in Somalia.

Bin Laden's first priority, an official said, was his own security. But the data shows that he was far more active in providing guidance and telling affiliated groups in Yemen and Somalia what they should or should not be doing.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive material.

The confiscated materials revealed al-Qaida plans for derailing an American train on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism officials say.

They believe the plot, which seemed to be formulated in February 2010, was only in the initial planning stages, and there was no recent intelligence about any active plan for such an attack. The FBI and Homeland Security issued an intelligence bulletin with details of the plan to law enforcement around the country. The bulletin, marked "for official use only," was obtained by the AP.

Already tense military and intelligence relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been further strained by the raid that killed bin Laden.

Both countries have an interest in their version of bin Laden's hidden life.

A weak bin Laden would make Pakistan's failure to unearth his hiding place in Abbottabad, a military town just two-and-a-half hours' drive from the capital, seem less of a glaring embarrassment, while a menacing bin Laden would make the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed him a greater triumph.

The proximity of the al-Qaida chief's hideout to an elite military academy and the Pakistani capital has raised suspicions in Washington that bin Laden may have been protected by Pakistani security forces while on the run.

Pakistani officials have denied sheltering him and have criticized the U.S. operation as a violation of their country's sovereignty. Pakistan's army, a key U.S. ally in the Afghan war, threatened on Thursday to review cooperation with Washington if it stages any more attacks like the one that killed bin Laden. The army is considered the strongest institution in Pakistan, but its reputation has taken a beating in the wake of the raid.
Risking more tensions, a U.S. drone strike on Friday killed 15 people, including foreign militants, in North Waziristan, an al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuary close to Afghanistan, said Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Such attacks were routine last year, but their frequency has dropped this year amid opposition by the Pakistani security establishment and people on the street.

Hundreds of members of radical Islamic parties protested in several Pakistani cities Friday against the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden.

"America is celebrating Osama bin Laden's killing, but it will be a temporary celebration," said Abdullah Sittar Chishti, a member of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party who attended a rally in Khuchlak, a town in southwestern Baluchistan province.

"After the martyrdom of Osama, billions, trillions of Osamas will be born," Chishti said.

Some of the protesters expressed doubt that bin Laden was actually killed since the U.S. has refused to release pictures of his body.

Al-Qaida confirmed bin Laden's death in an Internet statement Friday and warned that it would seek revenge by attacking the United States. And the Afghan Taliban issued a statement saying the al-Qaida leader's death would boost morale among insurgents battling the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and his associates did not offer significant resistance when the American commandos entered the compound, in part because "stun bombs" thrown by the U.S. forces had disoriented them, two Pakistani officials said late Thursday, citing accounts by bin Laden's wives and children.

Pakistani authorities found an AK-47 and a pistol in the house, with evidence that one bullet had been fired from the rifle, said one of the officials.

"That was the level of resistance" they put up, he said.

His account is roughly consistent with the most recent one given by U.S. officials, who now say only one of the five people killed in the raid was armed and fired any shots, a striking departure from the intense and prolonged firefight described earlier by the White House and others in the administration.

U.S. officials say three men and a woman were killed alongside bin Laden, including one of his sons.
Bin Laden's wife, Abdullfattah, was shot in the leg and did not witness her husband being killed, a Pakistani military official said. One of the al-Qaida leader's daughters did see the Americans kill her father, he said.
CIA officers have not been given access to the women or children in custody, the official said.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Kimberly Dozier and Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington. Rasool Dawar reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

13 children, at least 4 women.

1 shot fired by the 'bad guys', only 1 of which was actually armed.

OBL apparently concussion grenaded, but was 'resisting arrest'.

[c1ue]

Re: Osama bin Laden dead

I thought it couldn't get worse - if Inhofe's original interview comment is true then it actually is: that OBL was photographed 3 times before being 'shot while resisting':

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn05132011.html

But now the former professor of constitutional law is really and truly an American. He’s flashed his long, long Cadillac of a birth certificate, not merely the unconvincing shorty going the rounds for years. Better still, he has cojones. Bigger cojones than those of George Bush, who said that the capture of Osama was of no interest to him. Obama didn’t task the Navy SEALs: “if Osama shows no sign of resistance, it is your duty under Rules of Engagement to bring him home alive to face a fair trial.” No. He said “Make sure it’s Osama, then kill him.”

We have Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma to thank for making Osama’s orders clear. In an interview with CNN’s Eliot Spitzer he described the photographs, thus far denied the American people but available to members of Congress.
Inhofe:

“Three of the first 12 pictures were of Osama when he was alive. And they did this for the purpose of being able to look at those and seeing the nose, the eyes and his relationship for positive identification purposes. And that was good.

“One of the shots went through an ear and out through the eye socket, or it went in through the eye socket and out - and then exploded. It was that kind of ordinance that it was. Now that caused the brains to be hanging out of the eye socket, so that was pretty gruesome.

“But the revealing shots really, I thought, the pictures, were the three that were taken on the USS Vinson in the Northern Arabian Sea, and they were the ones that showed him during the cleanup period…they had taken enough blood and material off his face so it was easier to identify who it was.”

So the SEALs grabbed Osama, took the live pics, then shoved his kid to one side and gave him the business, twice in the head, once in the chest. Mind you, Inhofe seems to be varying his account of the photos somewhat. In a Fox interview he apparently says that the three photos of Osama alive were old ones, thus denying the brusque live/dead sequence implied by Inhofe to CNN's Spitzer, whose remarks in the transcript cited above seem to be entirely clear -- particularly with the phrase “And they did this…” I’ve called Inhofe’s office, with no response yet forthcoming “due to high volume of calls” – no doubt from George Monbiot trying to forge an alliance with Big Jim from Oklahoma for expanded nuclear power. If old photos, then how old? Also, if the SEAL's helmet camera was working, there would have been live/dead images in sequence anyway.