# Why WASN'T Osama Bin Laden Armed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 5, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820 "2011-05-05T06:48:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/1 "2011-05-05T06:48:30Z")
If I was on the third floor of a building, and I heard what I could only assume were enemy helicopters approach (and in the case of one of them, crash), and then people shooting their way up the first two floors, I sure as hell would have a gun in my hand. Why didn’t Osama? He’s a fanatic, so he would want to die fighting. He’s not a moron, so he would know he would probably not be taken alive, and would most likely be tortured if he was. Makes no sense. ---
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/2 "2011-05-05T07:08:41Z")
I just watched Nightline, which reported that the Seals used stealth helicopters, which the neighbors said they didn’t hear until they were almost directly overhead. So that cuts the time Osama had to grab a gun from maybe 3-5 minutes to more like two minutes. Still seems like plenty of time. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/3 "2011-05-05T07:14:34Z")
Is there any evidence that Osama ever held a gun in his life? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/4 "2011-05-05T08:00:53Z")
I don’t understand why the OP thinks that he would have been armed? You’ve got X number of the world’s biggest badasses coming at you with guns. If you get into a gun fight with them, _you are going to die_. It’s much better to throw any weapons that you could possibly use far away from yourself, hold up your arms over your head, and hope. Your idea that he’s a fanatic goes against basically all profiles of cult-type leaders. In the US we have any number of nationalist, neo-nazi, and other groups that officially seek to overthrow the government. Yet, none of them ever _do_ anything. The only instance, the Oklahoma City bombing, wasn’t because the guy wanted to start the revolution at last, it’s because he was mocked in front of a jury by a judge, which rankled his machismo, and so he went back and bombed the building. Revolutionaries and cultists who actually want what they say they’re going for are a rare breed, let alone ones who are actually skilled at it. ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/5 "2011-05-05T08:11:30Z")
There were children in the compound. Maybe they slept near Osama and he didn’t think it was safe to keep a gun in the room with them. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/6 "2011-05-05T08:35:58Z")
From what i’ve read, Osama’s killing was near the end of the 40-minute siege. He was certainly aware that the SEALs were clearing the compound room-by-room by the time they made it up to the third floor where he was. Perhaps he had decided at that point that he was going to die one way or another? ---
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/7 "2011-05-05T09:28:19Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Is there any evidence that Osama ever held a gun in his life? There is a video of him shooting an AK47 during what seems like target practice. Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/8 "2011-05-05T09:40:34Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Is there any evidence that Osama ever held a gun in his life? He was involved in training Mujahideen during the invasion of Afghanistan (the first one, by the Soviets). This implies he was at the very least book-smart in weapon handling, battlefield tactics and such. He may not have been a down-in-the-mud soldier, but he probably was officer material. I know, I know, not a compliment 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/9 "2011-05-05T10:53:33Z")
> [@Dog80](#): > > There is a video of him shooting an AK47 during what seems like target practice. > > Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk If you got close enough to Osama to send videos of him, why the hell didn’t you tell anybody where he was? (Not right then, especially considering that he had an AK47, but later?) ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/10 "2011-05-05T11:24:50Z")
My concern about this OP is that so far almost everything we have been told about what happened during that raid has been changed. At this stage, I’m not confident enough to be sure whether he was armed or not. Come on, Obama - get your story straight. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/11 "2011-05-05T11:37:37Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > My concern about this OP is that so far almost everything we have been told about what happened during that raid has been changed. At this stage, I’m not confident enough to be sure whether he was armed or not. Come on, Obama - get your story straight. Almost everything? Really? I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/12 "2011-05-05T11:40:50Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Almost everything? Really? I don’t think so. May I refer you to [this article](http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/78538,news-comment,news-politics,barack-obama-on-osama-bin-laden-a-volcano-of-american-lies?DCMP=NLC-daily)? The author may be being a bit vitriolic, but you dispute what he says? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/13 "2011-05-05T13:41:53Z")
> [@brocks](#): > > Why didn’t Osama? The latest reports say that he had an AK-47 and a pistol “within reach.” Since the details have changed several times since Sunday night, I don’t blame anybody who wants to wait and see. But the administration yesterday said he was not armed but “resisted,” which could be seen as implying he went for the guns. Why he wasn’t holding them is an open question; we do know his wife was in the same room and he probably wasn’t going to shoot her. That being said, you can also believe he was unarmed, maybe had guns in the room, and was going to be shot whether or not he made a move to pick them up. I don’t think we’re ever going to have a clearer picture than this of what happened in his final moments. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/14 "2011-05-05T13:43:21Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > May I refer you to [this article](http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/78538,news-comment,news-politics,barack-obama-on-osama-bin-laden-a-volcano-of-american-lies?DCMP=NLC-daily)? The author may be being a bit vitriolic, but you dispute what he says? The vitriol is exactly why I can’t trust that source. It’s so extremely biased that it’s ridiculous. And it doesn’t make sense. The first three things he mentioned aren’t lies. And I can’t even figure out what he’s trying to get at with the last one. And it’s all used as proof that Obama is crap. It’s an opinion piece, and, while it uses some sources, it doesn’t connect them to anything but the author’s own biases. I’m currently looking for any other source to know what the heck he’s talking about. But, seeing the conspiracy theorists in the comments, I’m not hopeful. CTs don’t just show up at a website. These people must have a record of reporting this type of stuff. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/15 "2011-05-05T13:46:05Z")
I don’t expect the government to tell us what really happened. Maybe they don’t want to give the Islamists any reason to think he “died fighting”. We’re also told that no Americans were injured. I don’t believe that either. We will never know one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/16 "2011-05-05T14:04:45Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > If you got close enough to Osama to send videos of him, why the hell didn’t you tell anybody where he was? (Not right then, especially considering that he had an AK47, but later?) Just based on a quick web search: the video was taken in 1998 by bin Laden’s people. So it was filmed for propaganda purposes by people who would never turn him over. He did meet in person with journalists a few times before September 11th, but just because they met him does not mean they knew where they were when they met him. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/17 "2011-05-05T14:15:17Z")
I’m starting to think that we shot him in cold blood. And I’m ok with that. When you corner a rattlesnake, you shoot it in the head. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/18 "2011-05-05T14:17:01Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > May I refer you to [this article](http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/78538,news-comment,news-politics,barack-obama-on-osama-bin-laden-a-volcano-of-american-lies?DCMP=NLC-daily)? The author may be being a bit vitriolic, but you dispute what he says? I absolutely dispute what he says. That piece looks like bullshit from start to finish, although I admittedly stopped after finding out that most of the initial allegations are either bullshit or purely fantastical speculation. First, there’s this claim: > [@](#): > > There was scarcely a sentence in the President’s Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records. Here’s a link to the transcript of what Obama said: [http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-02/world/bin.laden.announcement\_1\_qaeda-bin-afghan-border?\_s=PM:WORLD](http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-02/world/bin.laden.announcement_1_qaeda-bin-afghan-border?_s=PM:WORLD) You tell me which, if any single one, of those sentences has been retracted. Cockburn certainly does not take the time to provide such information. Then there’s this charge: > [@](#): > > The White House photograph (above) of Obama, Clinton and top security advisors supposedly watching real-time footage of the Navy Seals’ onslaught on the Abbottabad compound, their killing of two men and a woman (excuse for the latter killing: the standard “caught in crossfire”) and liquidation of OBL himself turns out to have been a phony. OB and friends could have been watching basketball replays. Panetta has admitted the real-time video link stopped working before the Seals got into the compound. What’s the evidence that it was a phony? All I can tell is that Panetta said that 20 to 25 minutes of the video were not available real-time. If the reports of a 40 minute duration were accurate, that means that 10 to 15 minutes _were_ available. Perhaps they are reacting to the hard landing of one of the helicopters. Perhaps they are watching the approach. If any claim was made that the photo was of the specific time when bin Laden was killed, I haven’t yet heard that. > [@](#): > > An admitted fan of the herb, Osama may have been stoned as part of his pain management programme since there was a marijuana patch outside in the allotment and, like any world star in retirement, Osama liked to smoke a lot of weed and made DVDs of important speeches which stacked up forlornly on the bookshelf next to the bottles of pills and the Koran, hoping to get picked up by Al Jazeera or HBO. How does Cockburn know that bin Laden was high? Or is it okay for him to pull wild shit out of his ass while calling others to task for a lack of specifically accurate information? > [@](#): > > • The official “back story” released Sunday night by Obama is that US intelligence learned of the Abbottabad compound only last August and spent the following months watching the place, following Osama’s trusted couriers and concluding that it was highly likely, though not certain, that Osama was there. Who ever said that the US intelligence services first learned of the compound last August? Here’s what Obama said: > [@](#): > > 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 ground. Here’s what Brennan said: > [@](#): > > MR. BRENNAN: In counterterrorism work and doing what’s called targeting analysis, it is exceptionally tedious and painstaking as far as taking a little bit of data and piecing it together and trying to correlate it with something else. And as a result of the information that we had in a very generic way about these couriers and individuals who were cohorts with bin Laden, over time we were able to piece together additional information, get the name he was known by, his nom de guerre, associate that then eventually with his real name, associate that then with other things that that real name was associated with, and track it until we got to the compound in Abbottabad. > > And then over the past six months, with trying to ensure that we had the best visibility in terms of understanding what was happening at the compound, that body of evidence accumulating to the point when the President said, I want to have operations against this compound, I want to know what the pros and cons are of them, I want to have options, and I want to make sure that we’ve taken into account the safety and security of the American people — or of the Americans that would be conducting this operation, that we look at it from the standpoint of limiting collateral damage, and making sure that we’re able to maximize the chances of mission success. Cockburn is making up false allegations in order to build a case. The volcano of lies in that piece is his own. Why do you believe what Cockburn wrote? ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/19 "2011-05-05T14:24:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The only instance, the Oklahoma City bombing, wasn’t because the guy wanted to start the revolution at last, it’s because he was mocked in front of a jury by a judge, which rankled his machismo, and so he went back and bombed the building. Cite? Not saying it’s not true, but I’ve never heard this, and always assumed that McVeigh’s main motivation was that he was pissed about Waco. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2011, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820/20 "2011-05-05T14:41:33Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > You’ve got X number of the world’s biggest badasses coming at you with guns. If you get into a gun fight with them, _you are going to die_. It’s much better to throw any weapons that you could possibly use far away from yourself, hold up your arms over your head, and hope. They’re Navy SEALs. They’re not bulletproof. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wasnt-osama-bin-laden-armed/580820.md?page=2)