The WhiteHouse and in a press release by President Barack Obama has reported that Osama bin Laden is dead, in a blog post on the WhiteHouse website titled “Osama bin Laden Dead”.
During the Bill Clinton years and his office term, Osama bin Laden has been on the FBI most wanted list for terrorist actions that was undertaken against US embassies in 1998. Bin Clinton even in an interview a while ago on Fox News stated that he wanted to send in a small force into Afghanistan to take out bin Laden. Though it was largely seen as a “missed opportunity” to take out bin Laden several years before the incident which happened on the 11th of September 2011. – To which it was claimed that bin Laden had approved bombings of the twin towers in New York.
In the press release by President Obama he stated that “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA to make the killing of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network”. Then went onto to saying “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 the ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding with a compound deep inside 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 a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.” – President Barack Obama
No Americans were harmed and US forces tried to avoid all civilian casualties according to the President. Obama later went onto to say that the US force which acted in Pakistan had killed Osama bin Laden and had taken possession of his body.
You can view the entire press release/speech here by President Obama:
Osama bin Laden dead, body captured, speech by Barack Obama on YouTube
It is definitely a very high achievement to have killed a very high profile person who the US and other allies have looked for, for over a decade.
The problem with this I would guess is that security teams are on or should be on high alert for reprisal attacks, as I don’t think killing a leader who ranks at the top does not bode too well to any group. All I can say is that I’m glad this man has been caught and for those dead under the action of his group and this mans leadership, justice has been served. I have heard on the news with several reports suggesting he was killed 2 weeks ago.
The problem of course with groups like this is that there is always a number 2 to come take over the operation. He could be just as worse or as devious as bin Laden, so we don’t know what territory we are stepping into right now. But of course this should be a huge demise and blow to al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan regions and around the world.
