Osama bin Laden is Dead

10:47 pm EDT, the White House announced Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces. We have his body.



11:35 pm EDT, the President himself came on television with a very short speech that was good. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should have taken an hour to write, and included most of the Pledge of Allegiance at the end, but it was a good speech.



A "special operations team" (no specifics given) operating under the Joint Special Operations Command in concert with the CIA acted on months of intelligence to kill bin Laden in a firefight in a small compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They have his body. DNA tests will be conducted to confirm his identity and a video is almost certainly going to be released to provide proof to the world that bin Laden is in fact dead.



This news comes almost four months before the tenth anniversary of 9/11.


No Americans were killed in the actions that ended the life of Osama bin Laden. Five people died in the attack, including bin Laden, one of his thirteen sons, and one of his numerous wives who was used as a human shield at one point. Osama bin Laden was shot above the eye. His body was taken aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) on the Arabian Sea where it was identified, washed, and given a proper Islamic burial at sea, supposedly so his grave doesn't become a martyr's shrine.


The compound bin Laden was living in is said to be eight times larger than any other building in the city of Abbottabad, which the other wiki says has a population of 120,000. It had a three story house with eighteen foot high walls. The property is estimated to be worth $1 million. This is a substantial sized compound in a substantial sized city. How anyone could miss something this obvious for this long is beyond comprehension.


Supposedly "SEAL Team Six" lead the charge in attacking the compound, though this has not been confirmed.


According to WikiLeaks, Al-Qaeda has made a statement that they have a nuclear device hidden in a European city and that they would detonate it if bin Laden was caught or killed. Report of this document started panic in some of a "nuclear hellstorm." There is nothing more to report on this at the time.



This is a breaking story. Updates will come as they are made public.