What Do You Think?

[jerrys1960]

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/01/national/main20058777.shtml

May 1, 2011

Osama bin Laden is dead

President to make surprise announcement that al Qaeda figurehead is dead


The founder and spiritual figurehead for al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is dead.

Several officials confirmed the report to CBS News, and say that his body is currently in U.S. hands.

CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that bin Laden was killed by forces in Afghanistan.

The long-lost terrorist mastermind had eluded an aggressive hunt by U.S. authorities for nearly ten years since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001.

Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Twitter: "#BinLaden's death does not eliminate the threat from #alQaeda, but it is hard to see anyone playing the same organizational role he did."

[jerrys1960]

copied from:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/01/usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fnational+%28Internal+-+US+Latest+-+Text%29


Usama Bin Laden Killed in Firefight With U.S. Special Ops Team in Pakistan

Published May 02, 2011


Declaring “justice has been done,” President Obama announced late Sunday that Usama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, marking the end of the worldwide manhunt that began nearly a decade ago on Sept. 11, 2001.

The president made the stunning announcement within hours of informing congressional leaders. He said bin Laden was killed Sunday, the culmination of years of intelligence gathering. The news drew a large crowd to the front of the White House, as well as in Times Square, as people chanted “USA. USA.”

Obama, in his address to the nation shortly before midnight, thanked the Americans who have toiled in pursuit of bin Laden and applauded those who carried out the successful mission in Pakistan. Describing that mission only briefly, he said its result “is a testament to the greatness of our country.”

“For over two decades, bin Laden has been Al Qaeda’s leader and symbol,” Obama said. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.”

The president traced the death of bin Laden to a tip received last August. He said he was briefed at the time on the “possible lead,” and that after months of intelligence work it was determined bin Laden was hiding in a compound “deep” inside Pakistan. Obama said, after determining the intelligence was sound, he authorized the operation to bring him to justice last week.

He said a “small team” of Americans went after bin Laden in Abbottabad on Sunday. “After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” the president said.

Senior administration officials, in a briefing with reporters, afterward said the administration had determined by February that they would pursue the compound "custom built to hide someone of significance" in Pakistan. This decision led to a series of national security meetings starting in March to develop a course of action. Obama gave the final order to pursue the operation on April 29, officials said.

The house was 100 yards from the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution where top officers train. A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 3,000 square feet.

At 3:30 p.m. EST, a 40-man Navy Seals squadron raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing the Al Qaeda leader with a bullet to the head.

Four Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters dropped 24 men on the compound. One helicopter suffered a "hard landing" inside the compound after an experiencing a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed on the site, according to one defense official.

There was a large shootout. The residents at the compound resisted. The total raid took 40 minutes.

No Americans were killed in the mission Sunday. Officials said three adult men other than bin Laden were killed – one was believed to be bin Laden’s son, the others couriers. Two women were also injured, the officials said.

Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 a.m. local time.

"I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast," he said. "In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field."

"Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom built to hide someone of significance," he said.

Officials said bin Laden’s body, which was in U.S. custody, was given a sea burial.

In the wake of bin Laden’s death, authorities around the world are being urged to take security precautions. One source said officials are concerned bin Laden’s death could incite violence or terrorist acts against U.S. personnel overseas.

The State Department issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens abroad overnight, citing “the enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.”

Obama said Americans must continue to be “vigilant.” But he said the death of the architect of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil should be welcomed around the world.

“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims,” Obama said. “So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Sources said the vice president informed congressional leaders late Sunday night that the world’s most wanted man had been killed.

The announcement comes nearly a decade after the 2001 terror attacks which triggered the Afghanistan war and started a tireless hunt for the terrorist mastermind and Al Qaeda leader.

In recent years, that hunt had increasingly led U.S. intelligence across the border and into Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is thought to be concentrated.

The method of burial has yet to be determined, but a number of scenarios are being considered -- including sending the body to Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, his birth country. Any of these moves would require government approval and one official said it's unlikely the Saudis will accept him.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/01/usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources/


Usama Bin Laden Killed in Firefight With U.S. Special Ops Team in Pakistan

Published May 02, 2011

AP

In this April 1998 file photo, exiled Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden is seen in Afghanistan. (AP)

Declaring “justice has been done,” President Obama announced late Sunday that Usama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, marking the end of the worldwide manhunt that began nearly a decade ago on Sept. 11, 2001.

The president made the stunning announcement within hours of informing congressional leaders. He said bin Laden was killed Sunday, the culmination of years of intelligence gathering. The news drew a large crowd to the front of the White House, as well as in Times Square, as people chanted “USA. USA.”

Obama, in his address to the nation shortly before midnight, thanked the Americans who have toiled in pursuit of bin Laden and applauded those who carried out the successful mission in Pakistan. Describing that mission only briefly, he said its result “is a testament to the greatness of our country.”

“For over two decades, bin Laden has been Al Qaeda’s leader and symbol,” Obama said. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.”

The president traced the death of bin Laden to a tip received last August. He said he was briefed at the time on the “possible lead,” and that after months of intelligence work it was determined bin Laden was hiding in a compound “deep” inside Pakistan. Obama said, after determining the intelligence was sound, he authorized the operation to bring him to justice last week.

Dec. 24, 1998: Usama Bin Laden speaks to a selected group of reporters in the mountains of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. slideshow

Usama Bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian–born leader of Al Qaeda is widely known as the most dangerous terrorist on the planet, has been killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALS at a compound in Pakistan.
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He said a “small team” of Americans went after bin Laden in Abbottabad on Sunday. “After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” the president said.

Senior administration officials, in a briefing with reporters, afterward said the administration had determined by February that they would pursue the compound "custom built to hide someone of significance" in Pakistan. This decision led to a series of national security meetings starting in March to develop a course of action. Obama gave the final order to pursue the operation on April 29, officials said.

The house was 100 yards from the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution where top officers train. A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 3,000 square feet.

At 3:30 p.m. EST, a 40-man Navy Seals squadron raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing the Al Qaeda leader with a bullet to the head.

Four Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters dropped 24 men on the compound. One helicopter suffered a "hard landing" inside the compound after an experiencing a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed on the site, according to one defense official.

There was a large shootout. The residents at the compound resisted. The total raid took 40 minutes.

No Americans were killed in the mission Sunday. Officials said three adult men other than bin Laden were killed – one was believed to be bin Laden’s son, the others couriers. Two women were also injured, the officials said.

Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 a.m. local time.

"I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast," he said. "In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field."

"Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom built to hide someone of significance," he said.

Officials said bin Laden’s body, which was in U.S. custody, was given a sea burial.

In the wake of bin Laden’s death, authorities around the world are being urged to take security precautions. One source said officials are concerned bin Laden’s death could incite violence or terrorist acts against U.S. personnel overseas.

The State Department issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens abroad overnight, citing “the enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.”

Obama said Americans must continue to be “vigilant.” But he said the death of the architect of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil should be welcomed around the world.

“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims,” Obama said. “So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Sources said the vice president informed congressional leaders late Sunday night that the world’s most wanted man had been killed.

The announcement comes nearly a decade after the 2001 terror attacks which triggered the Afghanistan war and started a tireless hunt for the terrorist mastermind and Al Qaeda leader.

In recent years, that hunt had increasingly led U.S. intelligence across the border and into Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is thought to be concentrated.

The method of burial has yet to be determined, but a number of scenarios are being considered -- including sending the body to Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, his birth country. Any of these moves would require government approval and one official said it's unlikely the Saudis will accept him.

[jerrys1960]

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/01/bin.laden.obit/index.html?eref=edition_us&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fedition_us+%28RSS%3A+U.S.%29

Osama bin Laden, the face of terror, killed in Pakistan
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 2, 2011

(CNN) -- Osama bin Laden used the fruits of his family's success -- a personal fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- to help finance al Qaeda in its quest for a new pan-Islamic religious state.

The Saudi-born zealot commanded al Qaeda, a terrorist organization run like a rogue multinational firm, experts said, with subsidiaries operating secretly in dozens of countries, plotting terror, raising money and recruiting young Muslim men -- even boys -- from many nations to its training camps in Afghanistan.

Timeline: The life and times of Osama bin Laden

Bin Laden and his terrorist network were behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and are linked to others around the world.

The enormity of the destruction in the 9/11 attacks -- the World Trade Center's towers devastated by two hijacked airplanes, the Pentagon heavily damaged by a third hijacked jetliner, a fourth flight crashed in rural Pennsylvania, and more than 3,000 people killed -- gave bin Laden a global presence.

His death early Monday in Pakistan ended a nearly 10-year long manhunt for one of the world's most-wanted men.

President Obama: Bin Laden is dead

Even before September 11, 2001, bin Laden was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

He had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s.

They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.

Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.

Six days after the attack, President George W. Bush made it clear Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 suspect.

"I want justice," Bush said. "There's an old poster out West that said, 'Wanted, dead or alive.'"

Bin Laden was born in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1957, the 17th of 52 children in a family that had struck it rich in the construction business.

His father, Mohamed bin Laden, was a native of Yemen, who immigrated to Saudi Arabia as a child. He became a billionaire by building his company into the largest construction firm in the Saudi kingdom.

As Saudi Arabia became flush with oil money, so, too, did the bin Laden family business, as Osama's father cultivated and exploited connections within the royal family.

One of the elder bin Laden's four wives -- described as Syrian in some accounts -- was Osama's mother. The young bin Laden inherited a share of the family fortune at an early age after his father died in an aircraft accident.

The bin Ladens were noted for their religious commitment. In his youth, Osama studied with Muslim scholars. Two of the family businesses' most prestigious projects also left a lasting impression: the renovations of mosques at Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest sites.

As a young man attending college in Jeddah, bin Laden's interest in religion started to take a political turn. One of his professors was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar who was a key figure in the rise of a new pan-Islamic religious movement.

Azzam founded an organization to help the mujahedeen fighting to repel the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Bin Laden soon became the organization's top financier, using his family connections to raise money. He left as a volunteer for Afghanistan at 22, joining the U.S.-backed call to arms against the Soviets.

He remained there for a decade, using construction equipment from his family's business to help the Muslim guerrilla forces build shelters, tunnels and roads through the rugged Afghan mountains, and at times taking part in battle.

In the late 1980s, bin Laden founded al Qaeda, Arabic for "the base," an organization that CNN terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen says had fairly prosaic beginnings. One of its purposes was to provide documentation for Arab fighters who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, including death certificates.

Al Qaeda, under bin Laden's leadership, ran a number of guesthouses for these Arab fighters and their families. It also operated training camps to help them prepare for the fight against the Soviets.

In the early 1990s, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, bin Laden turned his sights on the world's remaining superpower -- the United States. War-hardened and victorious, he returned to Saudi Arabia following the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan.

In a 1997 CNN interview, bin Laden declared a "jihad," or "holy war," against the United States.

Bin Laden's death affects the world Video

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait provided the next turning point in Osama bin Laden's career.

When the United States sent troops to Saudi Arabia for battle against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, bin Laden was outraged. He had offered his own men to defend the Saudi kingdom but the Saudi government ignored his plan.

He began to target the United States for its presence in Saudi Arabia, home to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. With bin Laden's criticisms creating too much friction with the Saudi government, he and his supporters left for Sudan in 1991.

There, according to U.S. officials, al Qaeda began to evolve into a terror network, with bin Laden at its helm. Tapping into his personal fortune, bin Laden operated a range of businesses involved in construction, farming and exporting.

Although the U.S. government was unaware of it at the time, bin Laden was already actively working against it.

According to court testimony, he sent one of his top lieutenants, Mohammed Atef, to help train Somalis to attack U.S. peacekeeping troops stationed there. Bin Laden would later hint, during an interview with CNN, of his involvement in the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in 1993 in Mogadishu.

Also in 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York, killing six and wounding hundreds. Eventually, bin Laden would be named along with many others as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. The mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, would later be revealed to have close ties to al Qaeda.

In 1996, bin Laden took his war against the United States a step further. By then, he had been stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced by Sudanese officials, under pressure from the United States, to leave that country. He returned to Afghanistan where he received harbor from the fundamentalist Taliban, who were ruling the country.

By then, the United States had begun to recognize a growing threat from bin Laden, citing him as a financier of terrorism in a government report.

According to reports, however, the U.S. government passed up a Sudanese government offer to turn over bin Laden, because at the time it had no criminal charges against him. The Saudis, according to an interview with their former intelligence chief in Time magazine, also declined to take custody of bin Laden.

In Afghanistan in 1996, bin Laden issued a "fatwa," or a religious order, entitled "Declaration of War Against Americans Who Occupy the Lands of the Two Holy Mosques."

"There is no more important thing than pushing the American occupier out," decreed the fatwa, which praised Muslim youths willing to die to accomplish that goal: "Youths only want one thing, to kill (U.S. soldiers) so they can get to Paradise."

In his first interview with Western media in 1997, bin Laden told CNN that the United States was "unjust, criminal and tyrannical."

"The U.S. today, as a result of the arrogant atmosphere, has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist," he said in the interview. "It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us."

In February 1998, he expanded his target list, issuing a new fatwa against all Americans, including civilians.

They were to be killed wherever they might be found anywhere in the world, he decreed. This new fatwa announced the creation of the "The World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders" and was co-signed by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Egypt's al-Jihad terrorist group.

Six months later, explosions destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring 4,000 more.

U.S. prosecutors later indicted bin Laden for masterminding those attacks.

By the time three hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of the U.S. business and military might, bin Laden's terror network had become global in its reach.

The organization soon became America's prime target in Bush's war against global terrorism. Bin Laden, its founder, became the most-wanted man in the world.

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell explained al Qaeda's network this way: "Osama bin Laden is the chairman of the holding company, and within that holding company are terrorist cells and organizations in dozens of countries around the world, any of them capable of committing a terrorist act."

"It's not enough to get one individual, although we'll start with that one individual," Powell said.

iReport: Send us your reactions

In statements released from his hideouts in Afghanistan after September 11, bin Laden denied al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks.

A videotape of bin Laden later obtained and released by the U.S. government, however, showed him saying he knew the September 11 attacks were coming, chuckling and gloating about their toll. Even with his knowledge of the construction trade, he said with a smile, he did not expect the twin towers of the World Trade Center to collapse completely.

Speaking in an earlier video recording that was first broadcast over the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera, bin Laden said America is "filled with fear from the north, south, east and west. Thank God for that."

"These events have split the world into two camps -- belief and disbelief," he said. "America will never dream or know or taste security or safety unless we know safety and security in our land and in Palestine."

Bin Laden had taken advantage of his time in Afghanistan, cementing his ties to the Taliban.

He was particularly close to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. He built a mansion in Kandahar but spent most of his time on the move around the country, according to intelligence sources.

Al Qaeda had a network of training camps and safe houses where recruits from around the world were brought for combat and weapons training and indoctrination.

As long as the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, bin Laden, his four wives and more than 10 children were able to avoid capture.

Before September 11, the Afghan government refused U.S. requests to turn over bin Laden. "Osama's protection is our moral and Islamic duty," one Taliban official was quoted as saying in July 2001.

As the United States bombing campaign helped the Afghan opposition drive the Taliban from power, however, bin Laden's days were numbered.

The reward on his head grew to $25 million. Countless leaflets advertising the bounty were dropped from U.S. airplanes, which flew with impunity over Afghan skies.

"We're hunting him down," Bush said on November 19, 2001. "He runs and he hides, but as we've said repeatedly, the noose is beginning to narrow. The net is getting tighter."

But he eluded U.S. and allied authorities during the war in Afghanistan, vanishing in December 2001, apparently fleeing during the intensive bombing campaign in the rugged Tora Bora region near the border with Pakistan.

"He's alive or dead. He's in Afghanistan or somewhere else," then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in April 2002 when asked about bin Laden's whereabouts.

No more videos showing bin Laden were released during the spring and summer of 2002 and there was speculation that he may have died during U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan.

But audiotapes released in October and November 2002 and broadcast on Al-Jazeera were allegedly were from him. U.S. government experts analyzed the tapes and said the voice on the tapes was almost certainly bin Laden's.

On February 11, 2002, a new audio message purportedly from bin Laden called on Muslims around the world to show solidarity against U.S.-led military action in Iraq.

The tape was broadcast on Al Jazeera, which originally denied its existence. The voice on tape added that any nation that helps the United States attack Iraq, "(Has) to know that they are outside this Islamic nation. Jordan and Morocco and Nigeria and Saudi Arabia should be careful that this war, this crusade, is attacking the people of Islam first."

Days later, U.S. government reports suggest that bin Laden had survived sustained bombing and could be near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Then, in May 2002, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is quoted in a Saudi-owned publication, "Sheikh Osama is still alive, praise God." A Russian newspaper publishes a similar report likewise quoting Omar, saying, "Osama helped us during the war with the (Soviets), he would not leave us now."

Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, said in July of that year that bin Laden was in good health, despite being wounded in an attack on his base in Afghanistan the previous December. Atwan said then that bin Laden's followers had told him that the al Qaeda leader would not make more video statements until his group launched another attack on the United States.

That appeared to prove prescient, as there were no further attacks on U.S. soil in subsequent years -- though there were several high-profile attempts, purportedly linked to al Qaeda -- and few signs of bin Laden.

Muslim clerics in Spain turned the tables on bin Laden in March 2005, issuing the first fatwa against the terrorist leader. The Islamic edict called him an apostate and urged other Muslims to denounce him.

More details about bin Laden came out in October 2009, in the form of a book written by one of his wives and sons titled, "Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their World."

A few months later, the U.S. government admitted a "lack of intelligence" on his whereabouts -- suspecting that he could be in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But he reappeared on the world's radar in January 2010, with the release of two audiotapes released in the span of a week.

In the first, he purportedly claimed responsibility for the alleged Christmas Day attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk AbdulMuttallab to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it neared Detroit, Michigan, from Amsterdam, Netherlands. In that tape, the voice -- thought to be bin Laden's -- warned the United States of more attacks.

Days later, Al Jazeera released an audiotape purportedly from bin Laden in which he condemned the United States and other industrial nations for causing climate change.

Then, in January of this year, a speaker claiming to be the terrorist mastermind warned French troops to leave Afghanistan -- or else two French journalists abducted by militants there could be killed.

The speaker thought to be bin Laden said on the audiotape, which also aired on Al Jazeera, that France's alliance with the United States will prove costly.

One U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN at the time that the tape "sends a chill up your spine," as it refers to "a couple of human beings whose lives are at stake."

For several months before that last tape's release, however, U.S. officials had received specific information about where bin Laden may have been hiding in Pakistan, according to President Barack Obama.

On Sunday, the president said he ordered an operation -- carried out by a handful of U.S. troops -- to get bin Laden in Pakistan. The al Qaeda leader resisted and was killed in an ensuing firefight, and U.S. forces took custody of his body. He was later buried at sea, with one U.S. official saying his body was handled in the Islamic tradition.

"His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity," Obama said in a speech announcing bin Laden's death. "Justice has been done."

[jerrys1960]

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/03/bin.laden.photo/index.html?eref=edition_us&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fedition_us+%28RSS%3A+U.S.%29

Will bin Laden death image silence doubters or fan flames?

By Ed Hornick, CNN
May 3, 2011

Washington (CNN) -- While the White House and the CIA deliberate whether to release a photo of Osama bin Laden's body, there's debate outside the White House on what impact such graphic images might have.

There is a school of thought inside the White House that the photo release is unecessary because there is "no question" that bin Laden is dead, a senior administration official told CNN's Gloria Borger.

"We've got the DNA, the facials, the wife (identification) and measurements," the source said. "There is no real issue that he didn't get killed ... What's the point of putting them out when everyone knows he's dead?"

Those opposed believe that "if the point is just to have some shock value, why do it?" the source added.

The decision, the source said, will likely come down to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among other national security officials.

A key counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama said that if the White House does decide to release images, it wants to do it in a "thoughtful manner."

"We also want to anticipate what the reaction might be on the part of al Qaeda or others to the release of certain information so that we can take the appropriate steps beforehand," John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, said on CNN's "American Morning" on Tuesday. "So any other material, whether it be photos or videos or whatever else, we are looking at it and will make the appropriate decisions."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, said he was conflicted over whether the administration should release an image of bin Laden.

"It's something that we're gonna have to work through," Rogers said. "We want to make sure that we maintain dignity, if there was any, in Osama bin Laden, so that we don't inflame problems other places in the world, and still provide enough evidence that people are confident that it was Osama bin Laden."

A senior government official involved in the discussions told CNN's John King that the photo release "could" come Tuesday by the CIA, adding that no decision has been made at the White House.

A government official familiar with intelligence matters says deliberations are leaning toward release and said that there is "growing consensus" to release the photo but emphasizes, "it isn't unanimous and everyone has understandable hesitation."

A senior U.S. official told CNN's Jessica Yellin that the photos were taken at a hangar in Afghanistan. The official described it as a clear picture of bin Laden's face, but he has a massive open head wound across both eyes. Other photos include the raid on the compound and bin Laden's burial at sea.

Emad El-Din Shahin, a professor of religion at the University of Notre Dame, said the administration is in a "tough situation."

"On the one hand, it needs to prove to the world that bin Laden is dead; on the other, it also needs to avoid provoking the sentiments of Muslims and enraging bin Laden's followers. It would be better if the U.S. can prove bin Laden's death without showing his grisly death photos, Shahin said.

Some have suggested that the U.S. release a video of bin Laden's burial at sea, but Shahin said that's an affront to Islam.

"The head of al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest religious institution, described the disposal of bin Laden's body in the ocean as, 'an affront to religious and human values.' I think showing this video will not be wise and will reflect an image of American hubris."

At a news conference on Tuesday, Sen. Diane Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she saw no need to release an image since there is other evidence to prove bin Laden is dead.

"I just don't see a need to do it," she said. "The DNA has been dispositive. People may still doubt that therefore there may be cause -- I don't know -- to release the photo which I understand is very graphic."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN's "The Situation Room" on Monday that "I don't need to see it."

"He's dead. We all know that," Powell said. "His body has been buried at sea, and I'll leave it up to the administration as to whether it serves any purpose or not."

An advocate of releasing the a image said it would allow the nation to move on.

"The photo should be released no matter how graphic it is," said Mark Pasetsky, a social media strategist, in a Forbes commentary. "The most important thing is to ensure the nation moves forward and experiences closure on this horrific tragedy. A photo of bin Laden dead will do just that and would serve as an exclamation point on Obama's historic announcement."

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman said Monday that it "may be necessary" to release an image to erase any doubts.

"My own instinct is it's probably necessary to release those pictures, but, you know, I will respect whatever decision the president makes," Lieberman said. "I will tell you this: For my own part, based on information that I've received, I am absolutely convinced that the man who was killed yesterday was Osama bin Laden."

Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking minority member on Lieberman's committee, also said that while she has no doubt that bin Laden is dead, she understands that doubters will need proof to put the matter to rest.

"I recognize that there will be those who will try to generate this myth that he's alive and that we missed him somehow," she said. "And in order to put that to rest, it may be necessary to release some of the pictures or video or the DNA test to prevent that from happening."

Powell said he doubts releasing an image will satisfy doubters.

"There will be skeptics out there as you know whether in the Middle East (or elsewhere)," Powell said. "Even if you show the picture, there'll be skeptics. That's just the nature of the world. Because they'll say it was Photoshopped."

There seems to be no doubt about his death among bin Laden's followers -- chatter on the radical websites that bin Laden's terrorist network used to speak to the world mourned his passing with an edge of defiance, celebrating him as a martyr and vowing al Qaeda will continue despite its leader's death.

There were doubters in the Arab world after the U.S. announced that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in a gun battle in July 2003. The Bush administration released images of the two after a mortician had cleaned up their bodies.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-slams-outrageous-hamas-condemnation-of-bin-laden-killing-1.359698

may 3 2011

U.S. slams 'outrageous' Hamas condemnation of bin Laden killing

Hamas leader says bin Laden killing was a 'continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood'

By Natasha Mozgovaya


U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner slammed comments on Monday made by a Hamas leader who criticized the U.S. for killing 'holy warrior' Osama bin Laden.

Ismael Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, said in response to the U.S. operation against bin Laden "we regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood."

Toner said Haniyeh's comments were "outrageous."

"It goes without saying bin Laden was a murderer and a terrorist. He ordered the killings of thousands of innocent men, women and children, and many of whom were Muslim," Toner said.
Ismail Haniyeh - Reuters - May 2, 2011

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh speaking to the media during a news conference in Gaza City May 2, 2011.

Though he noted doctrinal differences between bin Laden's al-Qaida and Hamas, Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."

Toner said of bin Laden that "did not die a martyr. He died hiding in a mansion or a compound far away from the violence that was carried out in his name. And his defeat is a victory for all human beings seeking to live in peace, security and dignity."

Toner also talked about the planned Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal which is set to be signed in Cairo on Wednesday.

Representatives from Hamas and Fatah announced their intention to reconcile last week, after a four-year-long bitter and at times violent rift, which saw Hamas administering the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under the control of the Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority.

"Our long-stated policy on this is that if Hamas wants to play a political role or a role in the political process, then it needs to abide by the Quartet principles," Toner said. "It needs to accept those principles, which are renouncing violence and terrorism, recognizing Israel's right to exist and abiding by previous diplomatic agreements."

[jerrys1960]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13280128



4 May 2011
World 'failed to track' Bin Laden


The BBC's Orla Guerin looks around the perimeter of Bin Laden's compound


Pakistan's prime minister says spy agencies worldwide share the blame for his country's failure to capture Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US forces.

"We have intelligence failure of the rest of the world including the United States," PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said.

Pakistan has been criticised for not locating Bin Laden, who was living near the country's main military academy.

The CIA head has said the US did not tell Islamabad of the raid in advance, for fear it would be jeopardised.

Meanwhile the US has revised its account of how the operation took place.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday that Bin Laden was not armed when his compound was stormed by US special forces in the early hours of Monday.

"There was concern that Bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and, indeed, he resisted," he said.

Initially US officials had said the al-Qaeda chief was shot while taking part in a firefight. Mr Carney blamed the initial confusion on the need to provide detailed accounts of a complex military operation quickly.

US officials have said they are considering when to make public their photographs of his body.
'Incompetent'

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Paris on Wednesday, Mr Gilani said: "There is intelligence failure of the whole world, not Pakistan alone."

He added that Pakistan needed "the support of the entire world" to combat militants.

"We are fighting and paying a heavy price," he said, adding that his government was "fighting not only for Pakistan but for the peace, prosperity and progress of the whole world".

Earlier his foreign minister questioned the suggestion by CIA Director Leon Panetta that Pakistan could not be trusted with details of the operation.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told the BBC that this view was "disquieting" and his country had a "pivotal role" in tackling terrorism.

He said the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was shot dead had been identified as suspicious some time ago by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

But it took the greater resources of the CIA to determine that it was the al-Qaeda leader's hiding place.

"Most of these things that have happened in terms of global anti-terror, Pakistan has played a pivotal role," said Mr Bashir.

On Tuesday, Pakistan's foreign ministry defended the ISI and issued a lengthy statement in which it expressed "deep concerns and reservations" about the US action.

"As far as the target compound is concerned, ISI had been sharing information with CIA and other friendly intelligence agencies since 2009," it said.

Bin Laden, aged 54, was the founder and leader of al-Qaeda.

He is believed to have ordered the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, as well as a number of other deadly bombings and was American's most wanted man.

The compound in which he was killed is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Abbottabad says that if Bin Laden had been there for as long as five years, it raises questions about the Pakistani authorities.

Either they were incredibly incompetent or were harbouring the al-Qaeda leader, our correspondent says.

Two couriers and one woman died in the assault, while one of Bin Laden's wives was injured.

The US has not commented on anyone it captured or had planned to capture, other than saying it had taken Bin Laden's body, which was buried at sea.

US officials are discussing how and when to release pictures of Bin Laden's body to counter conspiracy theories that he did not die.

Mr Carney said the "gruesome" image could inflame sensitivities, but Mr Panetta said there was no question it would at some point be shown to the public.

[jerrys1960]

http://arabnews.com/world/osama_bin_laden/article381312.ece



Phone call by Kuwaiti courier led US spies to Bin Laden

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: May 3, 2011

WASHINGTON: When one of Osama Bin Laden’s most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led US pursuers to the doorstep of his boss.

That monitored phone call, recounted by a US official, ended a years-long search for Bin Laden’s personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led US intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan.

Inside the CIA team hunting Bin Laden, it always was clear that Bin Laden’s vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let Al-Qaeda foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone Bin Laden trusted with his life.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA’s secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti who was close to Bin Laden.

After the CIA captured Al-Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing Al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with Al-Qaeda.

Then in 2004, top Al-Qaeda operative Hassan Gul was captured in Iraq. Gul told the CIA that Al-Kuwaiti was a courier. In particular, Gul said, the courier was close to Faraj Al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as Al-Qaeda’s operational commander.

“Hassan Gul was the linchpin,” a US official said.

Finally, in May 2005, Al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, Al-Libi admitted that he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing Al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that Al-Kuwaiti was very important to Al-Qaeda.

If they could find the man known as Al-Kuwaiti, they’d find Bin Laden.

Mohammed did not discuss Al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said.

It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier’s real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found.

Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.

Ahmed was identified by detainees as a mid-level operative who helped Al-Qaeda members and their families find safe havens. But his whereabouts were such a mystery to US intelligence that, according to Guantanamo Bay documents, one detainee said Ahmed was wounded while fleeing US forces during the invasion of Afghanistan and later died in the arms of the detainee.

But in the middle of last year, Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone being monitored by US intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity. Ahmed was located somewhere away from Bin Laden’s hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch Ahmed.

In August 2010, Ahmed unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where Al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire.

Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that Bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.

In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since Bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.

Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to Bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia.

By mid-February, the officials were convinced a “high-value target” was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action.

Obama tapped two dozen members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six to carry out a raid with surgical accuracy.

Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country’s radar systems, a US official said.

The helicopters lowered into the compound, dropping the SEALs behind the walls. No shots were fired, but shortly after the team hit the ground, one of the helicopters came crashing down and rolled onto its side for reasons the government has yet to explain. None of the SEALs was injured, however, and the mission continued uninterrupted.

With the CIA and White House monitoring the situation in real time — presumably by live satellite feed or video carried by the SEALs — the team stormed the compound.

Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, US forces knew they’d likely find Bin Laden’s family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said. The SEALs secured the rest of the property first, then proceeded to the room where Bin Laden was hiding. A firefight ensued, Brennan said.

Ahmed and his brother were killed, officials said. Then, the SEALs killed Bin Laden with a bullet just above his left eye, blowing off part his skull, another official said. Using the call sign for his visual identification, one of the soldiers communicated that “Geronimo” had been killed in action, according to a US official.

Bin Laden’s body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian sea, a senior defense official said. There, aboard a US warship, officials conducted a traditional Islamic burial ritual. Bin Laden’s body was washed and placed in a white sheet. He was placed in a weighted bag that, after religious remarks by a military officer, was slipped into the sea about 0600 GMT Monday.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143892


Published: 05/04/11

US and Britain Furious at Hamas for Mourning Bin Laden

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu


Hamas has managed to infuriate the United States and Britain for mourning Bin Laden – while at the same time Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ties the knot with the terrorist organization and tries to gain Western support for declaring a PA a state.

As Hamas and Fatah leaders arrived in Cairo Monday to sign a unity agreement, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said, responding to Bin Laden's elimination, "We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.

“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and martyrs. If these [sic] news are true, then this makes it part of the American policy based on oppression and bloodshed in the Muslim and Arab world,” the official Hamas website stated in Haniyeh's name.

The United States swiftly and angrily responded to what U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said were ”outrageous” remarks. Bin Laden “ordered the killings of thousands of innocent men, women and children... many of whom were Muslim. He did not die a martyr. He died hiding in a mansion, or a compound, far away from the violence that was carried out in his name,” Toner stated.

In Britain, Foreign Secretary William Hague used much softer language. He said that the new Fatah-Hamas unity would help promote peace with Israel “if it was possible to show across many different divides in the world a good deal of unity about what happened on Sunday night and the removal of the author of some of the world's greatest terrorist acts from the scene.

"It would have been better for Hamas to join the welcome to that. That would have been a boost in itself to the peace process."

The Quartet, which includes the United States and Britain, has specifically said in the past that Hamas cannot be recognized as legitimate if it does not recognize Israel and renounce violence, conditions which Haniyeh steadfastly rejects, all the while advancing the proposed unity accord with "peace-seeking" Fatah.

Toner left the door open for Hamas. “If Hamas wants to play a role in the political process, then it needs to abide by the Quartet principles …renouncing violence and terrorism, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and abiding by previous diplomatic agreements."

Neither the United States nor Britain has stated that the unity pact is not acceptable under present circumstances. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew to Britain Wednesday morning to make his case against the pact and against Abbas’ diplomatic campaign to convince the United Nations to declare the PA as a state based on the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Abbas still demands that Israel expel nearly 600,000 thousand Jews living in united Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, cede all of the land and building to the PA, and accept the immigration of several million foreign Arabs into Israel.

The Prime Minister is scheduled to conclude his European diplomatic campaign with a visit to France. Later this month, he will address the U.S. Congress, where he is expected to make an historic speech.. There is much speculation about how its content has been affected by Hamas-Fatah unity.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bin_laden_neighbors_saw_little_amiss/2011/05/03/AF0alFjF_story.html?wprss=rss_world



Bin Laden’s neighbors saw little amiss


By Karin Brulliard, Wednesday, May 4, 9:10 AM

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — It is easy to imagine how Osama bin Laden lived a peaceful, if sequestered, life in this city.

Outside the high walls of his compound, chickens meander across neat fields of potatoes and mint. Forested hills line the horizon. And the neighbors, by their own admission, kept to themselves, figuring that the two brothers in the large house were simply rich men.


The third man, neighbors said, never came outside.

One day after Pakistan awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in this garrison city, authorities allowed journalists to approach the exterior of the compound where he spent at least his final days. Police refused to open the metal gates.

It was hardly a palace: The security walls were made of unpainted concrete and crude bricks. The white paint on the house was peeling. A large dirt yard, separate from the main structure and visible from the roof of a nearby house, looked as though it was meant for livestock. A blue water container sat on the roof, and bars lined the windows.

The scalloped metal awning on one third-story window hung askew, suggesting it might have been damaged the morning before, when a U.S. assault team swooped into the property. Mangled remnants of one helicopter — destroyed after what U.S. officials described as “mechanical failure” — lay in a field outside.

Yet despite the placidity of the area, most neighbors seemed to agree on one thing: It was unfathomable that a terrorist of bin Laden’s stature could have lived in their midst — on property that is part of the military cantonment, not far from the border with Pakistan’s archenemy, India — without being detected by authorities.

“He cannot,” said Sardar Mohammed Aslam, 65, whose property sits across a verdant field from the bin Laden house. “He would be noticed very easily.”

The military and intelligence agencies are viewed as all-knowing in Pakistan, and monitoring is considered common. Pakistani officials have denied knowing bin Laden’s whereabouts, and they say that intelligence they supplied earlier helped U.S. forces carry out the mission.

Residents said the military played little role in their day-to-day lives. The neighborhood in which bin Laden lived, Bilal Town, is a civilian development that lies inside the Abbottabad military cantonment, but it is not restricted or fenced. Neighbors said that it is overseen by a civilian-staffed board, a common arrangement in Pakistani military cities.

Still, on the main road that provides the only access from the development to the city, occasional military patrols and identity checks are routine, residents said. Bin Laden, they conceded, could have avoided them if he never went out. Police do rounds in the neighborhood, but they typically only enter houses if suspicious activity is reported, residents said.

And there was apparently little reason to report anyone in bin Laden’s house. Neighbors said two mustachioed, fair-skinned brothers lived there. Most agreed they were Pashtuns — members of the tribe that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — though some said they spoke Urdu, which would suggest they were from other parts of Pakistan.

At least four children came out in the streets every afternoon to play, said Attiq ur-Rehman, a physician who lives a few houses away. The house had four water meters and two electricity meters, suggesting “large consumption,” he said, but even that was not viewed as suspicious.

“That house is in an army area. What kind of standards does the Pakistan army have — they’re fools? If you think they’re fools, okay, Osama’s here,” said ur-Rehman. He said that he and others in the area have concluded that bin Laden was not there and that the United States staged a “drama.”

By all accounts, early Monday was dramatic. Raja Kamran Khan, a community leader who lives along the main road, said he was awakened by helicopters — a sound never heard before at that hour — then a series of loud blasts. At first he thought India was attacking, he said.

The blasts shattered two windows at Aslam’s house. Samina Yasim, a relative who lives with him, said she was sure she was about to die.

Upon reflection, Khan said Tuesday, Abbottabad may have been a wise choice for a refuge. The military would never imagine bin Laden would hide next door to them, the United States could not target the city with drones, and the area is not known for religious radicalism, he said.

“The guy was hiding. He was not going out to get milk and potatoes,” Khan said. “The guy could find peace here.”

[jerrys1960]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/security-agencies-were-clueless-but-neighbourhood-kids-on-the-ball/story-fn8ljzlv-1226049478573?from=public_rss


Security agencies were 'clueless' but neighbourhood kids on the ball

* Amanda Hodge in Abbottabad
* From: The Australian
* May 04, 2011 12:00AM


OSAMA bin Laden may have fooled Pakistan's security establishment, but the neighbourhood kids knew something was amiss when they started making healthy profits every time a ball sailed over the barbed wire-topped wall separating the world from its most-wanted terrorist.

"If a ball went into bin Laden's compound the children would not be allowed to get it," said local ice cream vendor Tanvir Ahmed. "They were given money instead; 100-150 rupees ($2-$3) per ball." And there were other signs.

Sixteen-year-old Daniel Alvi, one of those who regularly played soccer and cricket in the field in front of the compound, said he daily saw a man in a red Suzuki van drive into the compound with a live goat, while the milkman only delivered outside the security gate and never rang the doorbell.

In a friendly neighbourhood, where most other houses are built close together, the compound was built in the middle of a vast field across the road from other houses. Anyone who dared lean on the wall was warned to move on.

"There was a rumour in the neighbourhood that the man who lived there was Baitullah Mehsud's nephew," said Daniel, referring to the late chief of the Pakistani Taliban. "I went over on two occasions after I hit the ball over there and there was no one there. I think there was a $20 million reward for bin Laden, but I never imagined it was him."

It was a common refrain yesterday along the unsealed streets of the leafy, mountain-framed suburb of Abbottabad, where the might of the US military finally caught up with the al-Qa'ida leader on Monday morning.

In the shadow of the bin Laden compound, local Zahid Khan shrugged in bewilderment that so many could have been so clueless.

"The last big issue here was over the renaming of the province to Khyber Pakhtunkwa," Mr Khan said.

"Ten people died here because we didn't want to be part of that (Pashtun-dominated province)."

While police and army security locked down the suburb yesterday, Mr Khan happily guided The Australian through the back lanes of Bilal Town - a reconstructed suburb of two-storey and three-storey concrete homes that have risen out of the destruction brought by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

Newspaper delivery man Sherdil Khan said he dropped off a newspaper every day to the army major who lived next door. Apparently not even a serving army major had any idea that behind the 5.5m high walls and security cameras of the neighbouring compound - known colloquially as Waziristan Haveli after the Pakistan border region now a militant hotbed - was the world's most wanted man.

"There were grilles, a lot of security and a lot of physical security," Mr Khan said. "It was a mysterious house, but I never went there."

By late afternoon, the security cordon was lifted around the suburb and the neighbours and media crews crowded the perimeter of the property.

Police refused entry, but close inspection of the exterior revealed a foreboding picture of security-paranoid residents, a story confirmed by all who gathered in the dusty back lanes and surrounding fields sweet with the overwhelming aroma of wild marijuana.

Barbed wire tops the high concrete walls, modified to prevent curious passers-by staring through cracks.

In the house across the lane, an angry young man, barefoot and black-clad, said his father was arrested by the army within hours of the Monday military operation.

"They did not tell him the reason," Zhan Mohammed said. "I want my father back, my whole family is angry."

Mr Mohammed, who helped build the property, but insisted he knew nothing about its residents, said only that he had seen two Pashtun men in their 30s come and go and occasionally two or three wives and their children. The women stood out for their black burkas in a moderate Islamic neighbourhood of businessmen and retired army officers.

Abbottabad is one of Pakistan's more lovely towns, a mountain eyrie of leafy streets and colonial buildings dating back to British rule, located on the old Silk Route to China.

Its population is majority moderate Hazara Muslims rather than Pashtun - the conservative Islamic people who populate the rest of the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkwa province, as well as the ranks of the Tehrike-e-Taliban that just two years ago terrorised the region and threatened to march on Islamabad.

Abbottabad is also a garrison town, book-ended by a large ordnance factory, several air bases and the country's largest and most prestigious military academy, less than 2km down the road.

How is it that a city in which every third house is occupied by a police or army officer could have harboured not one, but two, of the world's most wanted terrorists?

Four months before US Navy Seals swooped over the border from Afghanistan and killed Osama bin Laden, Umar Patek, an al-Qa'ida-linked Indonesian militant suspected of helping to mastermind the 2002 Bali bombings, was arrested in Abbottabad.

Pakistani officials had kept Patek's detention on January 25 secret until last month, when the information was suddenly and inexplicably released - a revelation that would surely have sent alarm bells through the bin Laden compound.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/osama_bin_laden_resisted_assault_but_was_unarmed_us_officials_say/2011/05/03/AFpKmdhF_story.html?wprss=rss_world


Osama bin Laden ‘resisted’ assault but was unarmed, U.S. officials say


By Greg Miller and and Joby Warrick,
Wednesday, May 4, 2011


The White House retreated Tuesday from its most provocative assertions about the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, acknowledging that the al-Qaeda leader was neither armed nor hiding behind a female “human shield” when U.S. commandos fatally shot him during a predawn raid.

The disclosures put the Obama administration on the defensive about whether it had exaggerated elements of earlier accounts for propaganda gain. At the same time, additional details surfaced Tuesday that depict a mission launched amid far greater political and operational uncertainty than had been revealed.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, who supervised the operation, said in interviews that U.S. intelligence agencies never had photographs or other proof that bin Laden was living at the compound in Pakistan that was targeted. Panetta told Time magazine that analysts were only 60 percent to 80 percent confident that bin Laden would be found.

“We never had direct evidence that he in fact had ever been there or was located there,” Panetta said in a separate interview with “PBS NewsHour.” “The reality was that we could have gone in there and not found bin Laden at all.”

President Obama nevertheless approved the operation, Panetta and other U.S. officials said, because there was little chance of obtaining more definitive intelligence on bin Laden’s location, which had amounted to a guessing game for the better part of 10 years.

U.S. commandos carried out not only bin Laden’s body but also a cache of computers and other material found at the compound, “more than we were expecting to find,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others would discuss operational details only on the condition of anonymity.

“There’s written material, pictures — there’s all kinds of stuff,” the official said. The material, portions of which appear to have been bin Laden’s personal property, were being shipped to CIA headquarters in Virginia for analysis. Some digital files were transmitted electronically.

The backpedaling on the narrative of the operation created an awkward moment for the Obama administration in what has otherwise been an overwhelmingly positive week. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, chided the White House for appearing to exploit bin Laden’s demise.

“I think we can get in trouble if people try to misuse this for political or propaganda gains,” Rogers said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think that’s going to be helpful at the end of the day.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney attributed the missteps to the administration’s “great haste” in trying to share details even while operational updates were still pouring in. He and other officials stressed that the White House corrected the inaccuracies voluntarily as the quality of the information improved.

Other officials attributed some of the confusion to conflicting information in field reports assembled by military officials still trying to document the details of a complex and chaotic operation that unfolded in 40 minutes in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.


page 2

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/osama-bin-laden-resisted-assault-but-was-unarmed-us-officials-say/2011/05/03/AFpKmdhF_story_1.html

The account Carney presented differed in key respects from one that White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan provided the previous day. Brennan spoke mockingly of bin Laden’s behavior, saying the al-Qaeda leader had cowered behind his wife in the lavish hideout before being shot in an intense gunfire exchange.

“He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered,” Brennan said, adding that bin Laden had been “hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield.”

Brennan said that it was unclear whether bin Laden had actually fired a weapon. “Whether or not he got off any rounds, I, quite frankly, don’t know,” he said. He also said it was possible that the woman in the line of fire, “presumed to be his wife,” may have been acting of her own will.

Carney made major changes to that account, saying that bin Laden’s wife had “rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”

Carney and others defended the administration’s assertion that the team of 25 U.S. Navy SEALs and other operatives was prepared to take bin Laden alive. “He resisted the U.S. personnel,” Carney said. When pressed how he did so without a weapon, Carney said that “resistance does not require a firearm.”

Panetta said that the rules of engagement would have required U.S. forces to take bin Laden into custody if he had “thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn’t appear to be representing any kind of threat.”

But, he said, “I don’t think he had a lot of time to say anything,” adding that when the lead Navy SEAL reached the third-floor unit where bin Laden was located, “there were some threatening moves that were made . . . and that’s the reason they fired.”

A U.S. official briefed on the raid said the first SEAL to confront bin Laden perceived a hostile intent. “He was not lying on the floor or trying to surrender,” the official said. “He was resisting.”

Carney declined to elaborate on the nature of bin Laden’s resistance, and referred reporters to the Defense Department. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said officials would not provide further details.

U.S. officials briefed on the operation said the American forces faced enormous risks, and encountered some obstacles for which they hadn’t prepared. One official said that the stairway to bin Laden’s level was protected by barricades that weren’t envisioned in operational plans or included in the replicas on which the SEALs had trained.

Rogers said U.S. forces had to contend with the possibility that bin Laden had rigged the building with explosives. “They didn’t know if he had his finger on a button,” the congressman said. “Think of all the things that are possible with someone who has killed 3,000 people.”

Before encountering bin Laden, U.S. commandos fatally shot two of his protectors on the ground floor, as well as a woman caught “in crossfire,” Carney said. Brennan had said earlier that the woman killed in the operation was thought to be bin Laden’s wife and had served as a shield.



page 3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/osama-bin-laden-resisted-assault-but-was-unarmed-us-officials-say/2011/05/03/AFpKmdhF_story_2.html

Brennan’s comments were part of a broader effort to portray the al-Qaeda leader as a cowardly figure at the culmination of a decade-long manhunt led by the CIA.

“Here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield,” Brennan told reporters on Monday. “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.”

Bin Laden’s wife, who identified the al-Qaeda leader’s body after the raid, has been treated for injuries and is in the custody of Pakistan’s intelligence service. A U.S. official said she told Pakistani authorities that bin Laden had lived in the complex, at least part of the time, since it was built in 2005. The official said that the United States’ request for access to the woman has been denied.

The CIA became suspicious that the heavily fortified complex might house bin Laden after discovering that it was the residence of a courier with close ties to the al-Qaeda leader.

U.S. spy satellites scrutinized the site for months, but were unable to capture an image of bin Laden. At one point, Panetta told PBS, “we noticed an individual who was pacing in the courtyard who at least had some of the appearances” of the al-Qaeda chief. “But we were never able to verify that in fact it was him.”

In early fall, the CIA called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to help pinpoint the compound’s location. Using satellite images, information from sources and transcripts of intercepted phone calls, the NGA produced imagery analysis that described in detail the compound’s dimensions, features and even the “pattern of life” behavior of its residents, a senior NGA analyst said.

But even in the raid’s aftermath, confusion remains over the identities of some of the surviving occupants of the compound, which was home to a dozen or more women and children.

U.S. officials think that at least two of the women were bin Laden’s wives and that he had fathered several of the children, but their names and ages were not immediately known. Bin Laden is believed to have taken at least four wives and fathered at least 11 children. Whether his family expanded further while in hiding in Pakistan was also not immediately clear.

[truth1111]

http://www.agi.it/english-version/world/elenco-notizie/201105040724-cro-ren1003-bin_laden_injured_wife_identified_was_his_favored


BIN LADEN: INJURED WIFE IDENTIFIED, WAS HIS "FAVORED"

04 MAy 2011

(AGI) Washington - Bin Laden's wife, wounded during the Abbottabad raid, has been identified. Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah has been identified by US authorities thanks to a Yemeni passport. According to a Pakistani TV station, her document has been found in the mansion-fortress occupied by the terrorist and his entourage. The young lady, probably the Osama's favored wife, is 29 and was given as a gift to the prince of terror by her tribal family when she was just an adolescent.

[Cymberly]

and the controversy begins.


copied from:
http://arabnews.com/world/article382223.ece



Daughter ‘saw killing of unarmed Bin Laden’



By AGENCIES

Published: May 5, 2011

ISLAMABAD: The 12-year-old daughter of Osama Bin Laden, now in custody with a Yemeni wife of the Al-Qaeda leader, saw her father shot dead, a Pakistani intelligence official said on Wednesday.

The child “was the one who confirmed to us that Osama was dead and shot and taken away,” said the official from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Al Arabiya television went further, suggesting that Bin Laden was first taken prisoner and then shot.

“A source in the Pakistani security quoted the daughter of Bin Laden as saying that the leader of Al-Qaeda was not killed inside his house, but had been arrested and was killed later,” Al Arabiya said.

Amid raging controversy over the Al-Qaeda leader’s swift burial at sea, in what many say was a violation of Islamic custom, White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama had decided not to release photos of Bin Laden’s body.

He said Obama had seen the photographs US forces took of Bin Laden after they killed the Al-Qaeda leader.

US administration officials discussed whether to release the images, but the president ultimately decided he did not want to make available graphic photos that could become a propaganda tool.

The spokesman said the president believes the DNA and facial analysis proves the man US forces shot was Bin Laden, and the photos are not needed as further proof.

US Attorney General Eric Holder earlier stressed that the US raid was “lawful” and “an act of national self-defense.”

But human rights campaigners and religious leaders urged the US and Pakistan to explain fully the circumstances in which Bin Laden died and buried.

“In Islam, we don’t have this tradition of throwing the dead in the sea,” said Saudi journalist Asem Al-Ghamdi, arguing that the burial was a deliberate distraction.

Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Royal Court, said: “That is not the Islamic way. The Islamic way is to bury the person in land (if he has died on land) like all other people.”

Amidhan, a member of Indonesia’s Ulema Council (MUI), said he was more concerned about the burial than the killing.

“Burying someone in the ocean needs extraordinary situation. Is there one?,” he said.

A senior Muslim religious leader in New Delhi, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, said US troops could have easily captured Bin Laden.

“America is promoting jungle rule everywhere, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan or Libya. People have remained silent for long but now it has crossed all limits.”

There has been little questioning of the operation in the US, where Bin Laden’s killing was greeted with street celebrations.

A New York Times/CBS News poll showed President Obama’s approval jumped 11 points to 57 percent after the operation, though Americans feared revenge attacks.

The CIA said it kept Pakistan out of the loop because it feared Bin Laden would be tipped off.

Pakistan, meanwhile, blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect Bin Laden.

“There is an intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone,” Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said in Paris.

“(If there are) ... lapses from the Pakistan side, that means there are lapses from the whole world.”

Geoffrey Robertson, a prominent London-based human rights lawyer, said the killing “may well have been a cold-blooded assassination” that risked making Bin Laden a martyr.

US helicopters carrying the commandos used radar “blind spots” in the hilly terrain along the Afghan border to enter Pakistani airspace undetected in the early hours of Monday.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn compared the latest incident with the admission in 2004 that one of the country’s top scientists had sold its nuclear secrets.

“Not since Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to transferring nuclear technology to Iran and Libya has Pakistan suffered such an embarrassment,” it said.

The streets around Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad remained sealed off on Wednesday, with police and soldiers allowing only residents to pass through.

In Afghanistan, the Taleban challenged the truth of Bin Laden's death, saying Washington had not provided “acceptable evidence to back up their claim” that he had been killed.

[Cymberly]

http://arabnews.com/world/article382295.ece


By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN | AP

Published: May 5, 2011 01:41 Updated: May 5, 2011 03:50

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: The leader of Apache warrior Geronimo’s tribe is asking President Barack Obama for a formal apology for the government’s use of the revered figure’s moniker as a code name for Osama Bin Laden.

Fort Sill Apache Tribal Chairman Jeff Houser sent a letter to the president Tuesday, saying equating the legendary Apache warrior to a “mass murderer and cowardly terrorist” was painful and offensive to all Native Americans.

The letter was posted Wednesday morning on the Oklahoma tribe’s website.

“Right now Native American children all over this country are facing the reality of having one of their most revered figures being connected to a terrorist and murderer of thousands of innocent Americans,” Houser wrote. “Think about how they feel at this point.” Houser noted Obama was elected on a message of compassion and change. Forever linking the memory of Geronimo to “one of the most despicable enemies this country has ever had” shows neither compassion to Native Americans nor change in perception of Indians or their struggle, he said.

The White House referred questions on the matter to the US Defense Department, which said no disrespect was meant to Native Americans.

The department wouldn’t elaborate on the use of “Geronimo,” but said code names typically are chosen randomly so that those working on a mission can communicate without divulging any information to adversaries.

Meanwhile, news about the code name spread quickly across Indian Country and on social network sites, resulting in a groundswell of criticism against the government. Several tribes and tribal leaders issued statements of disapproval, while many Facebook and Twitter posted angry comments, some using historical photos of the Apache leader for their profile pictures.

Geronimo is a legend among Apaches and other Indian tribes for the fierce fighting he brought on during the 19th century as he tried to protect his land, his people and their way of life from encroachment by US and Mexican armies.

Stories have been passed down about the Chiricahua Apache leader being able to walk without leaving footprints, helping him evade the thousands of soldiers and scouts who spent years looking for him throughout the Southwest.

In his letter, Houser told Obama that his tribe — like the rest of the nation — was ecstatic about learning of Bin Laden’s death during a raid in Pakistan. But those feelings were tempered as details about the code name emerged.

“Unlike the coward Osama Bin Laden, Geronimo faced his enemy in numerous battles and engagements,” Houser wrote.

“He is perhaps one of the greatest symbols of Native American resistance in the history of the United States.” Geronimo was born in 1829 in what would later become the state of New Mexico. Aside from leading resistance efforts for his people, he was also known as a spiritual leader.

After the families of Geronimo and other Apache warriors were captured and sent to Florida, he and 35 warriors surrendered to Gen. Nelson A. Miles near the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1886.

Geronimo eventually was sent to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he died of pneumonia in 1909 after nearly 23 years of captivity. He was buried in the Fort Sill Apache prisoner of war cemetery.