New York Times, CNN, NBC, Fox “News” are all now reporting that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. CNN reports three sources have confirmed, and that the U.S. has his body and have matched it with DNA evidence.
CNN reports: “Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad along with other family members, a senior U.S. official tells CNN.”
The White House has called back the press pool to make the dramatic announcement shortly. Crowds outside the the north lawn of the White House are now gathering and cheering, as we sill await the president’s official announcement…
8:37pm PT:…
PRESIDENT OBAMA CONFIRMS: BIN LADEN HAS BEEN KILLED.
In live televised statement to the nation, the president says Bin Laden was killed today in Abbottabad, Pakistan after actionable intelligence led him to order an attack by the U.S. military. A fire fight ensued, though no U.S. forces were killed.
He added that the effort, ten years after the 9/11 attacks, comes as a result of one of his first acts in office two years ago, ordering that the capture or killing of the al-Qaeda leader would be the nation’s top priority in the “War on Terror.”
“Justice has been done,” said the President…
From his full statement:
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
8:48pm PT: George W. Bush, who after 9/11 on September 17, 2001, vowed to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive,” only to admit six months later on March 13, 2002 (video here), “I just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you,” releases a statement to say he congratulated Obama, who called him earlier tonight with the news.
10:15pm PT: “In his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama bluntly declared, ‘We will kill bin Laden,'” notes Jeff Zeleny at NYTimes in “President’s Vow Fulfilled.”
And, on Twitter, Amanda Marcotte notes, “Not to be all like we told you so, 101st Fighting Keyboardists, but you know, turned out that police actions got him and war didn’t.”
Here is a very good early accounting of the months of “police actions,” as combined with a surgical military operation today in which, according to the report, “Bin Laden himself participated in the firefight.”
10:33pm PT: From NYTimes [via David Roberts on Twitter]…
Brad,
WAY TO GO! We’re anxiously awaiting the president to make this incredible announcement. I certainly hope this puts a HUGE hole in the taliban’s ability to wage terror.
That’s nice to know I guess, when it comes to the embasy bombing in 1998. However, O.B.L was never on the F.B.I’s most wanted list, for the 9/11 attacks.
Furthermore, G.W. Bush already stated during his presidency, that he never had ANY proof, that O.B.L. was behind the 9//11 attacks either.
In conclusion, No’Bama has already proven in the past, that he will say and do anything, to get himself elected/re-elected to the White House.
…especially on a lackluster job approval rating.
I guess it’s time to raise my “false flag” patriotism again!!
..As if we were told the truth about Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch and 9/11…?!!! Puleeeze!!!
http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/15-01-2008/103426-benazir_bhutto_osama-0/
…Oh well…hundreds of thousand of dead and wounded innocents and and thousands of dead and wounded troops…Whatever it takes to save face…right?
Just bring the troops (and private contractors) home now…!
I think am am going to be sick now..
http://www.thepatriots.us
How should one take this? To state the obvious, Osama bin Laden was an influential player in terrorism, yes, but it is misinformation to state that he was the “mastermind” behind 911, when terrorist cell are largely autonomous. The mainstream news media publishes its stories with the assumption that most people will accept over-simpifications and downright lies. Sadly, their cynical assumption seems to holding true. I kind of wonder if it is a ploy to divert attention away from some really embarrassing report that is about to be published by Wikileaks or something. It all could be fabricated, and they’re certainly capable of that. Who would know for sure?
Cheers, Jeannie Dean, wherever you are. Some Closure at last.
I’m afraid the President does not know much about justice. Where was the evidence that bin Laden was responsible for 911? What judge and jury pronounced bin LAden guilty of the crime? Well tell me. What about the children gratuitously murdered by the US in getting bin Laden? May I ask what crime they committed that required execution as the penalty? Where is their justice? Just in passing who wins by bin Laden’s death? Where are the parties who wish the truth about 911 to be told in an open court for all to see and hear? Who has been protected by bin Laden’s death? Only one thing is certain (besides immediate blowback big time) and that is, now the finding of the truth has just become much more difficult.
If they produce a body with a bullet hole in the head, and dna test results, I think he is dead, and he was killed today by special operations.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/01/president-obama-announces-bin-laden-still-dead/
Excerpt:
“Tonite I saw those I find less than credible using wild and speculative words as fact, tying bin Laden to 9/11, something no court, no intelligence agency, no law enforcement group ever did.
Tonite I heard many things I knew were untrue to help sell the import of bin Laden’s death, a death reported long ago by Benazir Bhutto.”
Who is stupid enough to believe this rubbish ?
Obama is looking as stupid as G W Bush now.
OBL killed on last sunday ,yea right !
Even Fox News knew …
bin Laden is dead, alternative perspective (because we’ve never been lied to by our government before.) economy is about to go entirely tits up, corporate profits and bonuses following the bailout have increased dramatically and nobody has gone to jail over anything. the natives are getting restless. even the mindless republicon tea army is waking up to the fact that nobody is representing them.
they’ve been holding the ace for a long time now, waiting for the public to be strained until just before breaking (the ace is just too good to waste on any old crisis…it’s been saved for the perfect storm.)
consider…he was shot in the head. waiting to see reports on how he was identified. my skeptic side says there will be no convincing photographic evidence. emphasis on convincing. body is being handled according to muslim tradition. don’t know what that means, but convenient if it means no pictures
sad that i don’t trust my government. about anything. always believed bin Laden would turn up dead at some critical juncture. and so he has. nothing is ever on the level.
but nevertheless…yay us, I guess. can we stop spending so goddamned much on war now please.
There were reports that Al Queda had said that if Osama bin Laden was captured or killed, they would release a “nuclear hellstorm” on us. So he must have been killed before Fukushima.
… Mark E. Smith keep an eye on Cheney and his friends .Your wish is his ….
Wow, it is like watching a high school football team, after 42 losing seasons, finally win.
or,
a bunch of Bonobos slinging poo.
Buried at sea so no one could see, but so all could increase their faith.
Like in voting.
bin laden packs johnsonville sausages – the choice edible meat-like-substance of terrorists around the world.
scott walker, paul ryan, and the repugs are just economic terrorists and they all get support from the ugly facists at johnsonville.
boycott their cheaply made and unhealthy products! If you must eat feces-laden intestines, do yourself a favor and don’t eat the smell crap from johnsonville like bin laden did.
#15
Buried at sea so no one could see, but so all could increase their faith.
Pithy.
I’m with Diane and Mick above.. OBL was dead around the time of Tora Bora action in 2003, and was killed by a CIA/ISSI owned lieutenant that Bhuto stated in her interview with Sir David Frost shortly before she was assassinated.
9/11 was never proven to be an action by OBL and was decidedly the Bush Administration’s finger pointing right after the event.
An event that was used to strip US citizen rights and suspend habeas corpus through the passing of the (un)Patriot Act…. with a little extra policy and coverage help from anthrax terrorism (major media + Sen. Leahey + Sen. Daschle), and plane crash (Sen. Wellstone) events.
I believe the OBL person they killed was the double used for all the videos after 2003, the analysis of which concluded such.
Whether he was CIA and/or ISSI (Pakistani intelligence) run is yet to be proven.
Wonder how close to general public opinion in the U.S. the dissatisfaction and disbelief evident in the 1st eighteen comments I just read here is.
I also wonder about possible differences in how this plays in the rest of the world vs here.
David Lasagna,
Good questions.
How does one seek out and find the answers?
Do we have to listen to only “one side” of the story, “both sides” of the story then compromise to “middle ground”, or something else?
Or do we analyze it from a skepticism of ideology flowing from power centers that have a local as well as a world wide agenda (they want you to believe “x” but not “y”)?
Reality / truth is not as simple as taking an obstinate, opinionated stand then sticking to it.
One of the better dynamics might be to analyze via thought experiment the young person’s reactions when they are told by someone bearing bad news that their mommy or daddy has another lover.
That young person feels a surge from the amygdala rising up to challenge that news, to hate that news bringer, and a potent offer of the elixir of denial.
“Save yourself, save your world, do not believe it” is powerful stuff in such circumstances.
We all want it to be “this way” or “that way”, but such wants are not the stuff of reality, such techniques are all too often the stuff of fantasy.
We each choose and perpetuate our own version, so let’s hope we “get it right”.
Where did they get the DNA to match it?
From his time in the U.S. military hospital for dialysis in the ’90’s?
Or does this story now conveniently disappear from history?
I remember when someone asked Dumbya (close acquaintance if not friend of Osama’s older brother) about his time in the hospital and why he wasn’t captured then, and he brushed it off as being “past history.”
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
So remind me now, why are we in Afghanistan if we are going to be staying there until 2014 or later?
Osama was blocks away from the Pakastani version of West Point. We were being scammed. Let’s get out before we lose more troops and waste more money over there.
I hope they got Osama’s secret machine that suspends the laws of physics so now we can make steel framed buildings collapse into their own footprint from fire alone and make flying a plane easier than parking a car.
We will have some wonderful times ahead now we have that amazing machine .I wonder if he also had a “cloaking device” ,after all he managed to elude the worlds greatest military power for over 9 years and 7 months ,maybe he stole it off Harry Potter ?
Obama is looking more like GWB everyday .
Is the timing related to this ?
“Iranian state TV carries report of Israeli build-up”
Continue reading …
Just one more …
“Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake”
Link …
Ding dong the witch is dead ….
Hey Brad, I have this terrific bridge in Brooklyn for sale. It’s in really great shape.
Imhomtep II said above (along with others who sahred the same sentiment):
You know what’s odd? One would think that 9/11 Truth folks, so (appropriately) demanding of evidence, would not confuse Benazir Bhutto’s opinion with actual evidence. And yet, if Bhutto said it, it’s true, no evidence needed, and everybody else is lying.
Seriously, guys, you can do better than that, no? If not, then please don’t demand evidence from anybody else if you don’t require it to support your own arguments/beliefs.
I’m sure i’m being cynical but i don’t see this as the end game for which this story came about. I sincerely hope i’m wrong but this leaves the door wide open for a real or false flag event.
We’ve proven ourselves capable as a country of harboring high levels of anti-Muslim sentiment so if an event does occur, and with the crazies in control of the House, this country will take that last hard right shift into ….you know.
Someone talk me off the ledge, haha
Government is in the faith business, from elections to wars.
Some are true believers, some go along for the social benefits, some are agnostic, and the rest go along for the ride.
“evidence” does show the photo’s are fake.
And what do people think of the body being dump at sea ?
Do you trust the “official story” of the OBL kill ?
Just one more Republikkkan mess finally being cleaned up by the Democrats… much like B Clinton cleaned up the deficit spending years ago, it takes another adult to clean up this former CIA asset turned international terror leader.
How Republicans still have any credibility is beyond my comprehension.
You’re a good reporter, Brad, and your heart is in the right place. But just look at the crowd of goofballs you’ve attracted.
Give it some thought.
Mike @ 30 said:
That’s not “evidence”, Mick. Those fake photos (presumably the ones that circulated again on line last night purporting to be a dead bin Laden shot through the face) were posted years ago by truthers. Not sure what those photos have to do with “evidence”.
I think it’s incredibly tone deaf, and I hope that they knew that in advance and will offer actual evidence to counter the bulk of the skeptics. If not, they have only themselves to thank for that idiocy.
On the other hand, if it keeps folks from attacking my family members shipped off to Afghanistan, perhaps someone decided that was a price worth paying.
I trust nothing without evidence. So far, the story seems to track, however. That said, I’ll look forward to more and more evidence to support the claim in the days ahead. Don’t you?
Sorry, but for some reason I find it hard to believe anything Mr. O’Lyingsackoffetidshit says. Just my humble opinion…
If you “join” the invaders and get attacked in the country you’ve invaded that justifies the alleged assassination how ?
Well, Mick, ya see, Prince Duhbaya told us bin Laden and Saddam were dirty rotten terrists, just as O’Murderer told us Khadaffi, Chavez, bin Laden (a glaring lack of originality there), et al., are bad, bad men who deserve to die gruesome deaths. Unlike that dirty rotten traitor Bradley Manning, who only deserves to be tortured and taunted forever, according to O’Mayherotin hell. You gotta love what the U$ has turned into!
And Brad, I know it’s a bad feeling to be threatened, but mercenaries have never been very popular in the lands they’re commissioned to invade, conquer, and pillage. I think the U$ should just declare Peace on Earth!
There is of course a difference between “evidence” and “proof”.
My definition of the two is “proof is evidence that convinces the trier-of-fact, mere evidence is something that moves the case along, but not far enough along to convince the trier-of-fact.”
What we can be sure of is the degree of the “burden of proof” we should hold government to.
I hold the government to “beyond a reasonable doubt”, which is a notch up from “clear and convincing”, which is a notch up from “a preponderance”.
You can loose your home in a lawsuit under the “preponderance” standard, your child under the “clear and convincing” standard, and your life or liberty under the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.
Our forefathers got the beyond a reasonable doubt idea right as far as I am concerned.
The government has the burden of proof and the burden of persuasion IMO.
Mick @ 35 quoted my response and asked:
As my response to you @ 33 shows, I was answering — in the part of my response which you’ve quoted — your question about dumping the body at sea, not about whether the “alleged assassination” was justified or not.
Please try, even in your zeal, to respond honestly, rather than turning my responses (or anybody else’s) into what you wish them to be, rather than what they are. Thanks.
Dredd @20
I’ve given a lot of thought to the question of how to discern what’s real in this weird, largely dysfunctional hodge podge media world.
I’m still working on it.
Here are some of my own personal guidelines so far.
1. Read a lot–from as many sides as I can get.
2. I look at the way writers/journalists present their version of reality. What kind of tone/bias/point of view do they bring to the discsussion? Do they acknowledge that they have a point of view? Or pretend they don’t? Do they give a fair/honest presentation of opposing points of view? Do they respond with evidence and reason? Do subsequent events validate their previous reporting or bring it into question?
3. How closely does a story track with my own personal experience of reality?
4. Try to maintain consistency between my values and evolving attitudes towards everchanging developments.
Something like that.
I’m with you Archie1954 @ #6. The real evidence trail just took a hit. I also concur with those asking about a dna test (compared by outside government doctors) at hospitals where obl was treated in the past. blowyourface off is sighing an approving sigh of relief, the BS story goes forward, now with comforting closure. How convient! Everybody can forget they allowed it to happen because we got the boogeyman.
Remember the people who disposed of the evidence after 911 have now “disposed of the evidence” of Osama Bin Laden death .The former, steel to Asia ,the later the body dumped at sea !
Now Obama Been Lying is keeping the Osama Bin Laden death photo’s secret because they are to “graphic” ,yea right !
Anyone seen Saw ,Saw2 or Saw3 ?
David @20,
That works.
correction to my @42:
David #39, not David @20
BTW … the establishment has stated that they will not provide photos of what they say is OBL’s dead body which is now said to be with the fish in the deep blue yonder.
Brad @33,
“tone deaf” …
The White House has officially admitted that some of the official story was
tone deaffabricated.It is convincing and does come across as true. However, that’s also the case with most successful con-jobs. Perhaps the most compelling evidence to support that it actually did happen was a lone twitterer who witnessed something that helps corroborate the changing US government version of events. I suspect the attack really happened, only because of the tweets, and maybe Osama Bin Laden really was there who knows. That said, any screenwriter could have come up with a way to include a third party in the script. US governments lie so much, is it any wonder why people doubt their word. The corporate-owned US government is so corrupt and entrenched in its lies and criminal behavior, they advocate imprisoning (for any reason they can conjure) or even assassinating any whistle-blower who dares expose its lies and crimes against humanity (eg Julian Assange).
Brad,
Your most convincing argument that “this story tracks so far” is that 911 Truthers do not believe Obama. Ironic given all the retractions and self contradicting of the Obama admin.
Every other issue you have covered on Obama, you recognize that the only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama does not want to do the heinous things he does (or his admin does) while Bush obviously enjoyed his crimes. Bush et al sprinted headlong at fascism. Obama backs up so fast in the same direction, most are confused into thinking he is playing chess again where others are playing checkers.
Please give us one piece of evidence of any kind that any of this is true. As stated above, we are seeing in the days to come how truthful the Bush III admin will be. Is anyone writing here the least bit convinced?
More to the point, any of the better informed folk writing here care to rate the odds on a scale of 1 to 100 that the US will now get out of EmpireCollapsistan and make some kind of difference here at home? 100 being the US gets completely out of heroin production and quits wasting trillions in military aid to prop up dictators on asian and african continents. 1 being the same old lies we have grown so used to and comfortable.
Move along now. There is nothing here to see. These are not the droids you are looking for. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Brad,
this thread may be dead. in case you are still scoping it out:
might want to change the caption on the photo.
“Photo from the Situation Room: Watching the Mission Live…”
white house came out with fact that they too were blacked out for 38 minutes. they did not watch the mission live.
Lies work because most Americans believe everything the TV tells them .Remember this farce ”
“BBC Proves Jessica Lynch “Rescue” Story Was A Hoax ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-J20YbAHSw&feature=share
or this …
“CIA Admits Making Fake Osama bin Laden Videos – Wanted to Create Fake Saddam Porn Video ”
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/05/cia-admits-making-fake-osama-bin-laden.html
I thing this is fake story about bin laden death and the core plan behind this is to set next target on Pakistan the world strongest Islamic country. thanks.