Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Al Qaeda figurehead felt relatively secure in his posh surroundings

Usama bin Laden appeared to be "reaching for a weapon" before he was shot by the U.S. team raiding his compound in Pakistan, a senior U.S. official told Fox News. 
The detail was among many disclosed Tuesday that helped fill out the narrative of what exactly happened during the 40-minute raid that ended with bin Laden's death. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday repeated the claim that bin Laden was not armed when U.S. forces arrived. He said only that bin Laden resisted -- that could be a reference to the claim that the terror leader reached for a weapon moments before he was shot dead. 
Other details about bin Laden's compound suggest the Al Qaeda figurehead felt relatively secure in his posh surroundings. There were no guards on site, according to a senior U.S. official. And according to the official, bin Laden had a "treasure trove" of electronic material on site -- more than one would expect from a terror leader worried about getting caught. 
He apparently had no interest in surrendering when the CIA-led Navy SEALs team did arrive for their capture-or-kill mission, the result of years of intelligence gathering and special training. The team encountered resistance "throughout the operation," Carney said. 
Carney said the raid started with one U.S. team working its way up from the first floor of the main building, where bin Laden's family and one other family lived. Another U.S. team cleared a separate building on the compound where yet another family had been living alongside bin Laden. 
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One of the most wanted men in the world and he felt secure?  How is that possilbe?  Shouldn't he have at least felt like he was on the lamb? 
Why didn’t we; why couldn’t we at least have kept the pressure on him enough to have kept him from feeling at ease?  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had a whole country, a WestPoint style military base and a community of retired Generals and Colonels surrounding him.  We cannot and should not put up with this ridiculous scenario and the halfhearted pleadings of ignorance from the Pakistani government.  Their excuses and denials are an insult to our intelligence and a defiant display of disrespect to all who perished on 9/11.  Pakistan has its own intelligence agencies, informants and security personnel.  Are we to believe that they are really that bad at their jobs?  How can this betrayal from an ally be tolerated?  I guess the 18 billion dollars in aid bought us a whole lot of obfuscation and lies.

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