Four bodies are understood to have been recovered by Pakistani officials from the compound, including those of the two brothers – who have been reported to be behind the construction and management of the house. One is believed to be the crucial courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who inadvertently led the CIA to Bin Laden. A third body was that of one of the brother’s wives. The other casualty is believed to be a guard who has yet to be identified or possibly a domestic servant.
Several of the survivors, including Bin Laden’s wife, were injured in the 40-minute firefight that preceded the al-Qaida leader’s death.
The White House have confirmed that Bin Laden’s wife received a bullet wound in the calf during the assault.
No doubt two construction workers, one of their wives, a servant, and a courier with a water pistol pitched a fevered 45 minute gun battle against 19 crack special operations soldiers armed to the hilt with the latest weaponry.
I believe everything the White House says.
You seem to have a great deal of detailed knowledge of these events.
I didn’t write the Guardian article, but I do read news sources from other countries.
It just seems that way when you compare Steve to those that seem to be clueless.
And the US military is so in love with Obama. They would do anything for him. If only there were some conservatives in the military, people with morals, we would find out the truth.
Can you ever say anything intelligent?
Tony, have you always been a fan of the Bush/Cheney war on terror doctrine or are you a recent convert like so many of the Dems now that it’s Obama pulling the trigger?
Sundance,
Uh. Don’t see what I have said that makes you think I am a fan of any of this? I am just commenting on the Steve’s post.
I have my own ideas that make me think they could not take Obama alive, but that has nothing to do with what I approve of or find right or wrong.
Forgive me for sensing a tone of smug morality and judgement in your post. I was totally off base it seems.
Sundance,
you go the smug morality right, but it was not because I was being hypocritical. In fact I think it likely that barring some extremely nefarious motive military discipline would preclude most military from revealing any sort of screw up or even political maneuvering by Obama in this instance.
Fair enough Tony. In all honesty I’m very troubled and worried. My knowledge of Obama, via family and friends he did business with in Chicago, leaves me to view him in terms of the lowest common denominator (re: greed, ego, dishonesty, etc.). The political deception and misdirection rampant here, is the political stuff Obama’s made of, and that knowledge only fuels me to wonder why, when we’d captured UBL, we wouldn’t want to interrogate him? It just doesn’t seem reasonable if one’s true concern is protecting US citizens, as UBL would likely know more than any detainee. When the reasonable course of action is eliminated, I’m left searching for other possible motives for the unfolding truth which the White House seems to want to suppress. That’s when my thoughts lead to some really dark places.
Sundance,
interesting that your impression of Obama is so at odds with the people he actually has worked with.
I have a much simpler reason Osama was killed, though it is pure speculation. Having him alive would be a political nightmare for the administration. there was the potential for all sorts of downsides that they could not possibly calculate. Killing him would only bother the left and human rights groups and, mildly, our allies, and of course those that will find something wrong about anything he does. Whereas killing him, and after whatever initial reaction, mostly positive to be sure. It would be just history. They get the credit for eliminating the most notorious killer in American history, and that is pretty much it.
But I agree that it seems quite possible he could have been taken alive and the potential intelligence and propaganda value would have been much better.
Mr. Duncan as a retired naval officer I take great offense to this remark.
Mkelly,
I meant no offense to the military. I was being sarcastic about the possibility that the military would happily engage in some nefarious plot by Obama as is being implied by Mr. Goddard.
However I do consider the military quite capable of hiding secrets that could be embarrassing to the President.
The next time you claim that I said something I didn’t – you are headed to the spam folder.
Steve,
What claims have I made here? You wrote
“No doubt two construction workers, one of their wives, a servant, and a courier with a water pistol pitched a fevered 45 minute gun battle against 19 crack special operations soldiers armed to the hilt with the latest weaponry.
I believe everything the White House says.”
Does that not imply something nefarious?
There was no gun battle in the main house and the administration lied about it, as well as their intent to take Osama alive.
Since they claim to have been trying to avoid civilian casualties, the exchange was probably more like an erratic sniping shootout than a firefight or an all-out attack. An all-out attack would have taken a couple of minutes and there would be casualties on both sides.
Complaints that he should not have been killed are not well thought out. bin Laden’s weapon was his brain, masterminding the death of many thousands over the years. No one knows what he might have still been able to trigger with a sign, signal, or message. An evil mastermind like him is thus NEVER unarmed, always packing, and should be disarmed ASAP. His death was entirely appropriate, they disarmed him.
Have you seen any evidence that anyone in the house had a weapon?
I fire semiautomatic weapons on a regular basis. They leave black residue on your hands and arms. My hands are always filthy after shooting.
The hands in those pictures are very clean. Those men do not look like they have fired a weapon.
Charles, I detect you are heavily armed.
I don’t believe the Pollyanna portrayal of his brothers in this article.
They aren’t his brothers. They are Pakistanis.
So the word brothers was not referring to them being his brothers.
The men in those pictures appear to be Pakistanis, not Arabs.
I’m not questioning that. I didn’t know.
AAM, they were not Osama’s brothers.
The two men were brothers.
Barrack Obama on releasing the photos of Osama bin Laden:
“We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies…… we don’t need to spike the football.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20059739-503544.html?tag=breakingnews
This statement reveals he has stronger sympathies for Muslim terrorists than Americans. Americans are not of the opinion that seeing the photos as being a way of gloating. It’s a strange thing to say it’s a spiking of the football. He really must feel strong sympathies form Muslim terrorists in order to view it that way.
UCLA students better at Intelligence than American Intelligence Agencies.
……..five UCLA undergraduates and two geography professors came pretty close to pinpointing the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted terrorist — and they did it more than two years before Osama Bin Laden was actually found…… 88.6 percent chance that Bin Laden would be found in the area where Abbottabad is located……
http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/geographer-students-had-osama-202604.aspx
Obama may be required to release photos:
Barack Obama has finally decided against releasing a photo of Osama bin Laden’s corpse as proof of his death. But the former chief freedom of information expert for the U.S. government tells Gawker that he may not have that choice…… According to Daniel Metcalfe, the former chief of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy—a post that effectively made him the government’s top expert in the Freedom of Information Act—the odds are better than even that a FOIA lawsuit seeking the photo’s release would succeed…… Obama faces two obstacles to keeping the bin Laden photos secret: 1) Since it was (presumably) taken by a Navy SEAL working on a joint mission of the CIA and Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, it was originated by a federal agency subject to the FOIA and 2) There doesn’t appear to be a good reason under the FOIA not to disclose it……..
http://gawker.com/#!5798497/ex+justice-department-official-obama-could-be-forced-to-release-the-osama-death-photos
All the while things are distracted from this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJgY86nmEHc
And Obama may be glad of it.
Donks and their operatives in the media say that BHO made a “gutsy” call. The call to either kill or capture OBL once his whereabouts are certain is a no-brainer. In fact the special ops personnel can execute it without any Washington DC input. The subsequent calls by BHO in regard to his moves to placate the sensibilities of the Muslim would be terrorists have been a disaster.
The call to use a ground team vs wait for more info vs attack via drones was what was on the table. None of these choices were an obvious win with no risk.
Do nothing vs. attack by either ground forces or air, that’s a pretty narrow number of options. Still it’s pretty much a no brainer. Each option has it pros or cons. That’s why they’re options.