Hurray!! Osama Bin Laden is DEAD!

[Granny B]

News is being reported on the television that Osama Bin Laden was killed by a predator drone in northwestern Pakistan in the last few days.  They waited until this evening to announce it, because they wanted to make sure it was him.

The authorities got an order to take possession of Bin Laden's sister's brain, after she died in the US from brain cancer.  DNA tests showed that it actually was Bin Laden who was killed in the attack.

It took 10 years, but our military finally found him and killed him.  Hurray for our military!  Congratulations!  Job well done!

They just said he was shot and his body was recovered, his DNA was matched.

[Wicket]

That's awesome!! Congratulations USA  Even our Prime Minister said the world is a safer place tonight. God Bless the US Military 

[Russki]

Bit late I would say and he is now a martyr. It also puts into sharp focus how much of a non ally Pakistan is. The UK is full of them.
Frenchy

[0000]

Good job USA, he deserved everything he got. 

Just have to be on our toes for any potential retaliation, this one is going to hit the morale of the terrorist community hard.

[AnneTheBelgian]

Today is a great day for the USA and for the world

This rubbish is dead and I want to say : "You lost scumbag !".

We will never forget his crimes and this big tragedy...

God bless the United States of America and the American Army !

You are the heroes !!!


 

Bye bye Bin Laden Have a great day in Hell...










Anne

[leopard32]

So nice to get up to some good news on a Monday morning!!

[AnneTheBelgian]

I have found this video (it is the website of a Belgian newspaper) :

http://www.dhnet.be/infos/monde/article/352081/oussama-ben-laden-est-mort.html

(it is the last video with people in front of the White House and with American flags)







Anne

[v1976ra]

I heard the news from a friend in the embassy a cpl of hours before it hit the news. They were already sure it was him. Glad the bastard is finally dead...   

[time2prtee]

Wonderful news! Bye Bye!

Remember the victims of al-Qaida!

Say Hi to Saddam in hell! 

Amazing they got the DNA that fast!

[Angelstorm]

Well worth the wait!  Pity it wasn't earlier!  We can all sleep just a little safer knowing he's gone from the face of the earth.  Well done US forces 

[ggbop]

I heard an interesting fact on the UK News today......

1st May 1945 - Hitler confirmed dead
1st May 2011 - Bin Laden confirmed dead

Good coincidence

Has anyone else noticed that Granny's original post is timed at 0911?

This operation has taken meticulous planning.  According to news reports here in the UK, the CIA got word that Osama was holed up in that villa way back in August 2010.  The USA would not want anything to go wrong as there would be too much to lose.

Congratulations to all the military personnel involved.  We may never know your names as you are part of the Special Forces, but the World is grateful to you just the same.   

[Granny B]

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

Published May 02, 2011
FoxNews.com


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 “U-S-A. U-S-A.”

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.


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.


Compound in Pakistan


Osama Bin DEAD Laden


Americans celebrating at Ground Zero


Americans celebrating in Times Square in New York


Americans celebrating in Times Square in New York


Americans celebrating at the White House and singing National Anthem.


Americans celebrating at the White House.

Obama: Usama bin Laden Is Dead
President confirms terror leader killed


Bin Laden's Death Ends Life of Terror

Hunt for Al Qaeda mastermind over

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 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. One woman was killed when she was used as a human shield and two other 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.

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.

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

The announcement comes nearly a decade after the 2001 terror attacks that 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.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Justin Fishel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/01/usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources/#ixzz1LD16Xk7l

[Granny B]

Bin Laden: How They Got Him -- And What Happens to al Qaeda Now

Posted by Mark Thompson Monday, May 2, 2011 at 1:39 am


Ugly Mug Osama Bin DEAD Laden


His compound

The reports started coming in more than a month ago: Osama bin Laden was on the move, and the U.S. had its eye on him. Stressed by the turmoil sweeping his part of the world – tumult he had no roll in sparking – bin Laden was trying to bolster al Qaeda's credibility as young people Tweeted and Facebooked about a future that didn't involve him, or al Qaeda.

Surprisingly, he didn't die a standoff death from an unseen Predator drone, as most would have expected. Instead, a team of U.S. special-operations forces helicoptered into a high-walled compound deep inside Pakistan and killed him and four others in a firefight, including a son of bin Laden and a woman allegedly being used as a human shield.

Dispatching a joint Navy SEAL-CIA team of four choppers into Pakistan makes two things crystal clear: the U.S. believed its intelligence was solid, and it wanted proof he was dead; they wanted his corpse. One of the choppers involved in the raid malfunction and was destroyed; no U.S. personnel were injured in the operation, which lasted about 40 minutes.

The whereabouts and fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, remain unknown. Whether bin Laden's death sparks a spasm of violence – or marks the end of al Qaeda as a potent terror force – also remains unclear. Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born doctor, recently encouraged Muslims to fight the U.S. and its allies in Libya. "I want to direct the attention of our Muslim brothers in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and the rest of the Muslim countries, that if the Americans and the NATO forces enter Libya then their neighbors in Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria and the rest of the Muslim countries should rise up and fight both the mercenaries of Gaddafi and the rest of NATO," Zawahri said, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. (More on Time.com: See photos of bin Laden's family album)

There was a quiet giddiness among U.S. military personnel late Sunday as word began to spread that Osama bin Laden had been killed. This is scant consolation to the survivors of the 3,000 killed that late summer day, but it represents sweet vindication nonetheless.

U.S. intelligence had learned that bin Laden might be holed up in a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, some 50 miles northeast of Islamabad, last August. Basically a suburb of the capital, the well-to-do city is home to many retired Pakistani military officers as well as Pakistan's military academy. That may explain the extraordinary secrecy surround the operation: few top officials in the U.S. government knew such an operation was afoot, and news of it wasn't shared with any allies, including Pakistan. How bin Laden was able to reside in a posh compound for months, if not years, surrounded by former Pakistani military officers remains unknown.

A U.S. official said a key clue to tracking bin Laden down was learning the name of a trusted courier, which led U.S. intelligence to the compound raided on Sunday. After noting the compound had few electronic links to the outside world – and incinerated its trash, rather than putting it out to be picked up – Obama gave the go-ahead on Friday for a helicopter raid into the compound, after rejecting the idea of a bombing attack. Bin Laden “did resist the assault force,” the U.S. official said, but was shot in the head and killed “as our operators came into the compound.”

It would be churlish, but accurate, to point out that he had eluded a worldwide manhunt for close to a decade after eluding a tightening, but fraying, U.S.-Afghan net at Tora Bora on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in December 2001. As hundreds crowded around the White House to celebrate bin Laden's demise, it's also relevant to note that bin Laden's impact peaked on 9/11, and has dwindled ever since. Nonetheless, the symbolic impact of his death cannot be under-estimated, either in the war on terror or on Obama's re-election prospects. (More on Time.com: See the top 10 defining moments of the post 9/11 era)

The Pakistani firefight only codified what a younger generation, where women are playing a major role, has made clear: OBL was a force in a region ruled by autocrats in the 20th Century; he had much less resonance among the younger cohort now taking over.

Pentagon officials have said that al Qaeda has played only a minor role in Afghanistan in recent years. The Americans and their allies there are primarily fighting the Taliban, an indigenous force of Pashtuns whose homeland straddles the Af-Pak frontier.

Bin Laden's death only excises a tumor. The cancer that he represented remains in wide swaths of the world where local populations have been forced into have-not-dom while their leaders have lived well. Whether his demise marks the end of a particularly virulent strain, or will trigger a violent recurrence, remains unknown.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/05/02/bin-laden-how-they-got-him-and-what-happens-to-al-qaeda-now/#ixzz1LD8Fn9Vu

[Granny B]

Official: Bin Laden Buried at Sea
By AP / MATT APUZZO


A video grab dated June 19, 2001 shows Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden in a video tape said to have been prepared and released by bin Laden himself.
AFP / Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. official says Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea.

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea. (See more on why bin Laden was buried at sea so quickly.)

The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2068878,00.html#ixzz1LD9OHQT9


Updated 11:21 AM ET

Why Was Bin Laden Buried At Sea So Quickly?
By: Glen Levy (7 hours ago)


Dead  Bin Laden
Maher Attar/Sygma/Corbis

After spending many years hunting down the world's most wanted man, why did the U.S. bury Osama bin Laden at sea within 24 hours of killing him?

The reason is bound up within Islamic practice and tradition. And that practice calls for the body of the deceased to be buried within 24 hours, according to a U.S. official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.

"We are ensuring that it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition," confirmed the official. "This is something that we take very seriously. And so therefore this is being handled in an appropriate manner."

But the lingering question is why at sea? The official said that finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, so the decision was made to bury bin Laden at sea. Furthermore, one suspects that the U.S. would not have wanted there to be a physical grave site for fear of it turning into a place of worship for bin Laden's followers. There are rumors, however, that the U.S. asked Saudi Arabia to take the body (bin Laden was born in Saudi) but they allegedly refused.

It's also believed that DNA testing would have been carried out beforehand (though CNN is reporting that DNA matching is under way on samples from the slain terrorist leader) to verify that the body was that of bin Laden, as well as being proof against any conspiracy claims that could emanate to suggest that his death didn't take place. The exact location of the burial was not revealed. (via ABC)

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/02/why-was-bin-laden-buried-at-sea-so-quickly/#ixzz1LD9jBYwR

[Granny B]

Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Son Speaks
By Andrew Lee Butters
October 27, 2009


Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection (2)

For Omar bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden's 20 known children, the awful realization that his father was a terrorist mastermind who was plotting a global conspiracy that would destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and even his own family came gradually. Of course, there were warning signs: Omar's childhood was marked by regular beatings and survivalist training; the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father "Prince"; and that Afghan mullah who had given his father an entire mountain in Tora Bora.

But as he recounts in a book co-written with his mother, Omar — now 28 years old — found it hard to give up hope that a man who had killed so many people might one day turn his back on violence and become a normal father. The younger bin Laden fled Afghanistan only when it become clear that Osama was planning a massive attack on the U.S., but he still couldn't accept that his father was responsible for 9/11 until months later, when he heard the familiar voice on audiotape claiming credit for the attacks. "That was the moment to set aside the dream I had indulged, feverishly hoping the world was wrong and it was not my father who brought about that horrible day," he writes. "This knowledge drives me into the blackest hole." (See pictures of the life of Osama bin Laden.)

As the first book written about Osama bin Laden with help from anyone in the bin Laden family, Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World (St. Martin's Press) is a valuable — if limited — glimpse into the personal life of the world's most wanted man. In recollections from Omar and his mother Najwa bin Laden (the first of Osama's five known wives), and with the assistance of American author Jean Sasson, the book paints a picture of Osama as a towering figure whose noble demeanor inspired fierce loyalty, but also an absolute authoritarian who wanted as many wives and children as possible in order to have foot soldiers for Islamic jihad. "My sons, your limbs must react to my thinking as though my brain was in your head," he told his children when they complained about their life in al-Qaeda camps.

However, Osama the father remains almost as elusive to his son (and the reader) as he is to the FBI — too consumed by jihad to care much for his children, too distant to seem like a full person. But Omar's memoir — which forms the core of the book — presents a strange and fascinating coming-of-age-story about a young boy who was groomed by his father to take over a worldwide terrorist enterprise but who instead chooses to get a job, start a family and play with animals. If the book suffers somewhat from the limitations of translation and overly formal prose, the thrill of being a fly on the wall of the bin Laden family drama quickly takes over. (See TIME's al-Qaeda covers.)

Omar's early childhood is both charmed and abusive. Though the family inhabited a mansion in the Saudi city of Jeddah and owned horse ranches in the desert, their father refused to let them have toys, take modern medicine or use almost any modern conveniences except for lightbulbs, automobiles and firearms. Though Osama would punish his boys for laughing or smiling and send them on forced marches in the desert without water, Omar and his brothers could at least console themselves with the honor of being sons of the man who helped defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, a hero in both the Muslim world and the West. "When I was a young boy, I worshipped my father, whom I believed to be not only the most brilliant, but also the tallest man in the world," Omar writes. "I would have to go to Afghanistan to meet a man taller than my father. In truth, I would have to go to Afghanistan to truly come to know my father."

The nightmare began in earnest after the Saudi government banished Osama from the kingdom for railing against Riyadh's decision to allow American soldiers on Saudi soil to repel Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. From the new family home in Sudan, while Osama plotted to overthrow the Saudi monarchy and the American government, Omar noticed some dangerous new arrivals in their Khartoum neighborhood, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of an Egyptian Islamist movement who would become al-Qaeda's second-in-command. When members of another extremist group raped one of Omar's male friends, al-Zawahiri took justice into his own hands — by executing the victim.

Step by step, Omar found himself stuck on the violent path of his father's choosing. Forced by American pressure to leave Sudan for Afghanistan, Osama settled his family in stone huts high on a mountain in Tora Bora, despite the fact that Najwa was pregnant with her 10th child. Osama sent his sons to al-Qaeda training camps, to the front lines of the Afghan civil war and to attend hours of mind-numbing jihadist indoctrination. Omar and his father narrowly survived a U.S. cruise-missile strike that was launched in retaliation for the al-Qaeda bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa. All the while Osama expected Omar to become his second-in-command. The young man had somehow managed to develop into a serious, capable young adult even as many of his siblings appeared to have suffered from one kind or another of personality disorder related to their extreme upbringing. One day while sitting together on the bin Laden mountain, Osama revealed to Omar his plan to destroy the U.S. from within by making it bleed through constant war until Muslims ruled the world. But Omar wasn't interested. "I sat mute, feeling not one jolt of passion for my father's life," he writes. "I only wanted him to be like other fathers, concerned with his work and his family." (See pictures from a jihadi's scrapbook.)

Still, ever the dutiful Saudi son, Omar couldn't bring himself to break with his family until the day that his father asked his sons to volunteer for suicide missions. When Omar protested, Osama replied, "You hold no more a place in my heart than any man or boy in the entire country. This is true for all my sons." Omar writes, "I finally knew exactly where I stood. My father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons." With rumors of a massive attack on bin Laden's enemies on the way, Omar finally managed to leave Afghanistan, with his father's permission.

After the carnage of 9/11, there was no going back. Many of Omar's siblings who stayed behind are probably dead, and his father is the most famous mass murderer alive today. "During these years of loss and sorrow, I have had to reconcile myself to the truth about my father," writes Omar. "I know now that since the first day of the first battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, my father has been killing other humans. I often wonder if my father has killed so many times that the act of killing no longer brings him pleasure or pain. I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace." (Read "Eight Years After 9/11: Why Osama bin Laden Failed.")

In an interview with TIME, Omar said that as a private citizen working for the construction company owned by his father's estranged family, he had little insight on how the U.S. should fight al-Qaeda. He turned down a U.S. government offer of asylum for cooperation in finding his father. "I said you — the CIA and the FBI — you should know where he is, but I can't help you because I don't," Omar said by phone from a Middle Eastern country he refused to name either for fear of his safety or residency status. He has technically been reinstated as a Saudi subject.

Intelligence agencies and scholars of extremist movements might do well to pay attention to Omar's al-Qaeda childhood for clues about how to inoculate young people against radicalism. His remarkable achievement — to have maintained humane beliefs despite being pulled from school at the age of 12 and exposed to a near constant deluge of hateful propaganda, isolation and family pressure — seems to have been helped by a love of animals. A constant collector of pets — against his father's wishes — and an avid horseman, Omar's awareness of the madness of al-Qaeda was fueled in part by several acts of animal cruelty by his father's men. When they lived in Sudan, one of the family guards killed Omar's pet monkey by running it over with a truck, explaining that the creature was in fact a Jew turned into a monkey by the hand of God. Later, Omar learned that it was his father who taught the guard that monkeys were Jews.

Now an adult and free from his father, Omar talks about starting a worldwide peace movement. But having spent much of his life in the wilds of Afghanistan, his ideas about how the world works are hazy. The U.S. government is unlikely to start a dialogue with Osama bin Laden, as he suggests. Another idea, a horse race across North Africa, seems more appropriate. Perhaps a world where people are kinder to animals will be one where they are kinder to one another.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932318,00.html#ixzz1LDCDx3KV