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...Osama bin Laden kept a hand-written journal filled with planning ideas and details of operations. The journal was seized in the dramatic US raid...

For a week people have been asking, "Why won't the president release Osama bin Laden's photo?" That's the wrong question. We should be asking, "Why was Barack Obama in such a hurry to tell us bin Laden was dead?" The White House says the information in bin Laden's compound is the equivalent of a "small college library," potentially containing incalculably valuable and unique data on al-Qaeda operations, personnel and methods. ________ But that's exactly what President Obama did. He raced to spill the beans. The man couldn't even wait until morning. At just after 9:45 p.m., the White House communications...

OK, the incredible details of the operation to silence Osama bin Laden are, indeed, irresistible -- but our government's been saying way too much about them, tipping off al Qaeda and clueing in other bad guys. You can't blame the press; its job is to get the story. But you can finger the White House and other government officials for not keeping enough of a zipped lip on some elements of the historic operation. For instance, what about the early, broad -- and repeated -- disclosure of a "treasure trove" of information taken during the raid on Osama's compound in...

Pakistani chutzpah By JPOST EDITORIAL 05/10/2011 22:13 Pakistan, like Israel, was created as a result of the disintegration of British colonialism, is, unlike Israel, turning out to be a failure Pakistan was created in 1947 as an Islamic state for the Muslims of India. But it is the Yiddish word chutzpah that best describes what seems to the country’s scandalous behavior. For those with a grasp of Pakistan’s history – in particular the self-defeating penchant by Pakistanis for blaming the country’s many failures on its perceived deviance from the most extreme, reactionary version of Islamic faith – it came as...

Just on Greta; reporter from Pak stated that ISI officials claim another person was taken alive by the US team; on another note, he stated that there were 'several minutes' of conversation with OBL before he was shot

PRESIDENT Barack Obama was so keen to ensure the mission to nab Osama bin Laden was successful he even kept it secret from his wife. The al-Qaeda chief was shot dead in his bedroom at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, last week. Obama, 49, said: "I didn't tell most people here in the White House. I didn't tell my own family. "It was that important for us to maintain operational security." The president kept the plan secret from wife Michelle, 47, and spent the weekend before the raid visiting tornado victims, speaking at a space shuttle launch and attending the...

WASHINGTON – Killing Osama bin Laden was a big victory for the U.S., but how exactly the raid went down is another story — and another, and another. Over two days, the White House has offered contradictory versions of events, including misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed and wrongly saying bin Laden's wife died in gunfire, as it tries to sort through what the president's press secretary called the "fog of combat" and produce an accurate account. Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that officials were trying to get information out as quickly as possible about the complex...

"The terrorist leader was killed by American commandos who burst into his room and feared he was reaching for a nearby weapon, U.S. officials said." ... "The officials who gave the latest details said a U.S. commando grabbed a woman who charged toward the SEALs inside the room. They said the raiders were concerned that she might be wearing a suicide vest." ... Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress the operation was "entirely lawful and consistent with our values" and justified as "an action of national self-defense." Noting that bin Laden had admitted his involvement in the events of nearly...

Did Barack Obama want to assassinate Osama bin Laden? He may have at some point, because he gave the ultimate order, or allowed it to happen. But I suspect the president was deeply ambivalent. It’s not just his postmodern worldview that suggests this reluctance. It is the discombobulated aftermath of the killing, the weirdly botched reportage featuring such events as cabinet members in the situation room supposedly watching a (we learned) non-existent streaming video of the action and the statement that bin Laden — who had been under surveillance for months from a CIA safe house — was living in...

Siren only

President Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for U.S. forces to raid a northern Pakistan housing compound based on "what was probably a 50-50 chance that Osama bin Laden was there," his national security adviser said. "At the end of last year, we assessed that al Qaeda had been diminished ... to its weakest since 2001," said the security adviser... On April 28, Obama attended the last of several National Security Council meetings focused on finding and going after the al Qaeda leader. During that meeting, some advocated for the commando raid while others advised against it, Donilon said, given there...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama ordered the commando raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after deciding the risks were outweighed by the possibility "of us finally getting our man" following a decade of frustration, he said in a Sunday broadcast interview. The helicopter raid "was the longest 40 minutes of my life," Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes," with the possible exception of when his daughter Malia became sick with meningitis as an infant.

60 Minutes aired the interview Steve Kroft conducted with President Obama on Wednesday at the White House in which the Commander-in-Chief discussed the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden. "I felt very strongly there was a strategic imperative to go after him," the President said even though he admitted they had no photograph and no direct evidence of bin Laden's presence. The President also said he was "about as active as any project that I've been involved with since I've been President... I was not involved with designing the initial plan but each iteration they'd bring to me, make...

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still cheering for Team USA in the daring Mayday raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. And it was the President that first used a football analogy, when comparing a release of UBL’S death photos to “spiking the football.” (Did a coach that called a winning play ever spike a football?). But this whole operation needs more explanation, and so far, we’ve only heard from had the Gang That Couldn’t Spin Straight. The whole thing brings to mind the double-reverse, “flea-flicker” play used on September 24, 1978, by the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers against the undefeated (and...

Obama: No sleep lost over bin Laden killing By Michael O'Brien - 05/08/11 07:15 PM ET President Obama said he didn't lose any sleep over Osama bin Laden's killing. The president said he had no hesitation over ordering bin Laden's death, though he admitted to nervousness about sending U.S. special forces troops into Pakistan or the dangerous -- but ultimately successful -- mission. "As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done," Obama said Sunday on "60 Minutes" on CBS. "And...

Here are just a few of the contradictions which have come out in the last week or so regarding Osama bin LadenÂ’s death. misidentifying which of bin LadenÂ’s sons was killedclaiming bin LadenÂ’s wife killed by gunfire / shot in the legclaiming bin LadenÂ’s wife was used by bin Laden as a human shieldclaiming bin LadenÂ’s wife jumped in front of him in an attempt to save himclaiming bin Laden was unarmed vs. holding a gun vs. reaching for a gun vs. resistingclaiming that Obama and advisors were watching the raid liveclaiming that they had about 25 minutes where they...

Declaring that “we must not make the mortal remains of a worthy adversary into some sort of ‘big game trophy,’” President Barack Obama declined to provide any material proof to verify that al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was the person killed by US forces in a raid on his “safe-house” in Pakistan on May 1. “The President of the United Stateshas assured the world that Osama bin Laden is the person we killed,” said Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney. “To demand more than his word is an insult of enormous magnitude. Besides, it’s easy to doctor photos, falsify documents,...

The spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion admitted on Thursday that he felt “very uncomfortable” with the killing of Osama bin Laden when he was unarmed. Contrary to initial reports that bin Laden had engaged in a 40-minute gun fight with U.S. Navy Seals, it emerged on Wednesday that the al-Qaida leader had been unarmed when he was shot dead in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. Answering a question about the killing at a press briefing, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams also criticized conflicting reports coming from the White House about the events surrounding bin Laden’s death....

The photos released of the fortified villa in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden died on Sunday night, May 2, show a satellite dish as well as cables and wires snaking along the outer and inner walls. Smashed computers appear in shots of the interior rooms. Far from dispensing with electronic devices and Internet connections as widely reported, the fortress that was the al Qaeda leader's last haven proves to have been equipped with both. All this up-to-date electronic technology would have opened the six-year old building wide to outside intelligence penetration and surveillance. Bin Laden additionally suffered from a...

Excerpted:Videos seized from Bin Laden’s compound and released by the Obama administration on Saturday showed him wrapped in an old blanket watching himself on TV, like an aging actor imagining a comeback. A senior intelligence official said other videos showed him practicing and flubbing his lines in front of a camera. He was interested enough in his image, the official said, to dye his white beard black for the recordings. His once-large entourage of Arab bodyguards was down to one trusted Pakistani courier and the courier’s brother, who also had the job of buying goats, sheep and Coca-Cola for the...