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The ever-changing “narrative” from the White House about the U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden has shed some doubt on the events that took place that historic day, and that’s not the way the government should have handled such a historic moment argues National Journal’s Major Garrett. In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, Garrett explained how the White House went wrong in the days after President Barack Obama’s late Sunday night announcement. “One quick point about that,” Garrett said. “I believe the administration should be justifiably criticized for the ham-handed nature of telling this story. This...

WASHINGTON – Only one of the five people killed in the raid that got Osama bin Laden was armed and fired a shot, a senior defense official said Thursday, acknowledging the new account differs greatly from original administration portrayals of a chaotic, intense and prolonged firefight. The sole shooter in the al-Qaida leader's Pakistani compound was quickly killed in the early minutes of the commando operation, details that have become clearer now that the Navy SEAL assault team has been debriefed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

<p>The president, revealing himself to be Barack Obungle, has done what nobody else could have done, not even the spectacularly hapless original New York Mets, who drove Casey Stengel to his famous cry of terminal frustration.</p> <p>The White House converted a picture-perfect military operation into a public-relations disaster that will be cited as what not to do and how not to do it in flackery textbooks for a hundred years. Days after the raid on Osama bin Laden’s “mansion” they still can’t get the “fact pattern,” in the language of the White House, even close to straight.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Americans who raided Osama bin Laden's lair met far less resistance than the Obama administration described in the aftermath. The commandos encountered gunshots from only one man, whom they quickly killed, before sweeping the house and shooting others, who were unarmed, a senior defense official said in the latest account. In Thursday's revised telling, the Navy SEALs mounted a precision, floor-by-floor operation to find the al-Qaida leader and his protectors - but without the prolonged and intense firefight that officials had described for several days.

Sources involved in the operation that took down Usama bin Laden told Fox News the terrorist leader acted "scared" and "completely confused" in his final moments, "shoving his wife" at the Navy SEAL who ultimately shot him. The information helps clarify the conflicting details about what exactly happened toward the end of the 40-minute raid on bin Laden's northern Pakistan compound. Sources who were part of the mission said bin Laden acted in a "cowardly manner" when confronted. Fox News has also learned that while bin Laden was unarmed, he was standing near the door within reach of two weapons...

U.S. commandos missed with their first shot at Osama bin Laden, when the world’s most wanted man poked his head out of a third-floor room to see what was headed his way, according to U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Bin Laden ducked back in, and the Navy SEALS quickly followed and finished the job, Chambliss said in a telephone interview this afternoon. The missed shot was a new detail in the emerging story of the 40-minute raid on the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. Chambliss also said commandos found a pistol and AK-47 in...

The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Operations forces this week, U.S. officials said. The secret CIA facility was used as a base of operations for one of the most delicate human intelligence gathering missions in recent CIA history, one that relied on Pakistani informants and other sources to help assemble a “pattern of life” portrait of the occupants and daily activities at the fortified compound where bin...

He placed a wreath at Ground Zero, met with 9/11 firefighters and vowed that, “when we say ‘we will never forgot,’ we mean what we say.” But it seems like the president did overlook one detail — putting names on the invitations to 9/11 families. The administration apparently sent out form-letter invites to 50 hand-picked relatives of 9/11 victims, which began “Dear 9/11 family member.” At least one family has turned down the request, saying that they felt the letter was impersonal. “If this form letter was the invitation, it was kinda lame,” said John Vigiano, who lost two heroic...

Pres. Obama has decided NOT to release any photos. - Chuck Todd, NBC

The terse announcement came just after 9:45 p.m. Sunday from Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10:30 PM Eastern Time,” he wrote on Twitter, sharing the same message that had just been transmitted to the White House press corps. According to Brian Williams, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor, some journalists received a three-word e-mail that simply read, “Get to work.” *snip* That speculation was not aired out on television immediately, but it did erupt on Twitter and other social networking sites. Wishful thinking about bin Laden’s death ricocheted across the Web —...

First, there was that weird burial at sea “in accordance with Islamic tradition.” There, the White House managed to annoy most everyone. There are those like me, who thought Bin Laden’s corpse was treated with too much respect, to those in the Islamic world now inflamed because it wasn’t really done properly after all. Then there was the president’s oddly bloodless speech Sunday night. For almost ten years we’d been trying to get the guy who murdered 3,000 Americans, attacked our military HQ, and ripped the heart out of the New York City skyline. The effort spanned two continents, four...

By James Oliphant and Lisa Mascaro May 3, 2011, 11:33 a.m. The White House on Tuesday continued to refuse to make public gruesome photos affirming Osama bin Laden’s death, despite calls from some corners among politicians, the families of 9/11 victims and some skeptics for it to do so. "There are sensitivities here in terms of the appropriateness of releasing photographs," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, who added that the photos of Bin Laden's corpse "could be inflammatory."

I turned FOX on at 2PM..caught the WH press briefing, and then the first few minutes of Shep Smith's program. The presser was a disaster. Unmitigated. Here's a fearless predicition..within one or two more news cycles, we will hear that the SEALS killed an unarmed Bin Laden who was trying to surrender. Several journalists tiptoed around the question, and Shep actually "wondered" aloud how an "old man" could have resisted SEALS. And as I type, he actually asked if this operation was "illegal."

A major question lingers unanswered at the center of this story: Why was bin Laden killed? Michael Scherer has reported that the Navy Seals who landed at Osama bin Laden’s safehouse were not given orders specifically to kill, but were on a “kill or capture” mission. That implies they were prepared to accept bin Laden’s surrender. It didn’t work out that way. But despite earlier reports to the contrary, including from White House counter-terror adviser John Brennan, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that bin Laden was in fact unarmed. (“Resistance does not require a firearm,” he said.) So,...