According to Jeremy Scahill, the team that got bin Laden was the same bunch that took out the Somali pirates, Seal Team 6.
Howard Stern said today, “Sean Penn should GIVE Scarlett Johansson to the Navy SEAL that killed bin Laden” - I belly-laughed.
Otherwise known as Team Hardcore Motherfuckers!
Has it been confirmed yet if it was Osama that hid behind his wife or if it was someone else that did that?
Please, please, let it be Bin Laden that hid behind a woman in his final moments.
Even if you loathe her position on domestic politics, everyone of every political stripe should really watch the first segment of Rachael Maddow’s show this evening. She lays out the case against Pakistan, digging up some really obscure but powerful information to support it.
You know what that looks like?
A Pulitzer Prize, that’s what.
Talk about capturing emotion in the moment. Look on the faces. You can read their minds. People peeking from the back, let me see, let me see. the look on Obama’s face is phenomenally intense, worried, a sense of anger, he is almost willing things to go right, thinking “God, please, give me his head, give me his head…”
If you can take simultaneously out three pirates on a bobbing boat 30 yards away, shooting Osama bin Laden through the eye is pretty easy.
I’ll bet the situation room photo was taken by the official White House photographer, so I don’t think it’s eligible for the Pulitzer Prize.
Oh, I linked to that same picture in one of the other threads. (Can we get some of these merged?)
There are video screens on practically every wall panel of the room, except the part we see in that one image. This is looking the other way, at a different moment during the day.
To be fair, when you’re laying prone for an hour on a boat deck, you have a hell of a lot of time to plan and mentally rehearse your shot. When you’re storming a fortified compound at midnight, you’ve got to make split second reactions and be sure that you’re looking at an enemy and not a teammate. They’re both extremely difficult feats, but also quite different.
it was reported that the team had cameras on, so they saw what was happening from the seal team’s pov. that must have been very, very, intense.
The reports are that the SEAL team went through a couple of dress rehearsals using an exact duplicate of the compound. Some General on Fox was saying they had the raid planned almost to the round. They were ready for eventualities too. For example, they already knew exactly what to do with the helicopter that went down. This thing was planned and scripted to a tee.
Here’s an Islamic cleric on burial at sea: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/my-take-burial-at-sea-shows-compassion-of-islamic-law/?hpt=T2
I suspect that photo was taken in a conference room that’s part of the White House SitRoom complex, but not the actual SitRoom itself. Looks too small and cramped for the big room; maybe the Air Force officer needed a separate place to set up: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/White_House_Situation_Room_Friday_May_18_2007.jpg
That’s Pete Souza. His pictures of Obama have been amazing.
Here is some more of his work.
This sounds like there is a real live Jack Bauer out there somewhere.
It was. It’s being credited to Pete Souza, who is the Chief White House Photographer.
Yep. That’s what they do.
That photo really makes the room look claustrophobic.
I have been walking around in the weirdest mood all day, trying to process this. Osama bin Laden is gone. It’s kinda like the day after Saddam was hanged, but bigger somehow. Osama bin Laden is no longer with us. He is no longer alive. He is no longer a threat to us, almost ten years after 9/11. We don’t have to worry about him any more. Sure, there are other people out there, and we’ll always have threats of terrorism I suppose, but we’re past this marker. It’s a new day.
Sure, but this is an inherently more fluid situation than the Somali pirates. There’s no way to know for sure how many people were in the compound, exactly how they were armed, where they would be. With those pirates, the SEALs knew exactly where all the pirates were; there were fewer variables. The helicopter is a perfect example-- that wasn’t unforeseeable*, but it sure as hell wasn’t part of the plan A. The SEALs had to shift and adapt, which they did admirably, because this was an inherently more complex situation. The fact that they’d prepared for a host of possible problems doesn’t change the fact that storming a compound of armed men in near-total darkness is a different situation, one that involves a lot more individual discretion because there simply isn’t time to radio for permission to shoot when someone’s pointing an AK-47 in your face. It makes the success of this mission all the more impressive.
*By which I mean they had two backup helicopters waiting for just such an eventuality, which clearly counts as “foreseen.”
The first reports were that “one of the men” did it. More recent reports have been that it was bin Laden and that the woman involved was one of his wives. So far I haven’t seen official confirmation.
Please, for the love of all that is good in the world, let that video eventually be released.
Imagine if we had video of Hitler killing himself.
I have to have a video of Bin Laden hiding behind a girl while being shot. It would just be…so perfect.