The killing of Osama bin Laden: Finally

By the time of bin Laden’s death at age 54, killed by U.S. special forces in a so-called mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Osama bin Laden was the face of terrorism—the personality whose sinister creativity resulted in atrocities committed around the world in the name of Islamic fanaticism. After the 9/11 terrorist acts committed by Islamic terrorists, President W. Bush made it publicly known that he wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive. However between 2001 and Obama’s presidential inauguration in January 2009, the capture or killing of bin Laden had not been the government’s major priority of the ‘war on terror.’

Bin Laden was indelibly associated with the monstrous 9/11 crime—the murder of nearly 3,000 people on September 11th, 2011, most of them dying in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City, as well at the Pentagon and the passenger plane that was forced to crash by terrorists that same day.

Notwithstanding the fact that he was an evil terrorist, he was not the cause of the explosion of American militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks but instead he was merely the pretext.

One conclusion that can be stated with certainty is that the the killing of bin Laden will not put an end either to the ‘war on terror’ for which he served as a bogeyman, nor will it stop the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in which American military forces have been deployed to secure strategic positions to protect its citizens of those nations and its oil resources that are of vital interest to Americans. Already his successor is taking bin Laden’s place as the new leader of Al Qaeda.

The U.S. Air Force, with its extraordinary range and flexibility, is the best armed air forces in the world. The U.S. Navy, with its vast aircraft carriers and global reach, has no real rivals. In technological sophistication and sheer firepower, and the subperb training of its soldiers, the American military doesn't have any close competitors, and no wonder: the U.S. government spends more on its military forces than the governments of China, Russia, France, Britain, Japan, and Germany combined. This also makes it the most powerful nation in the world. Never in the history of Mankind, as any country been this powerful.

Despite its power, for years they were unable find to bin Laden despite the fact that there was a $25 million dollar bounty on his head, dead or alive. The U.S. government had to rely on the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) which as you may recall, gave President W. Bush erroneous information about the dictator of Iraq storing weapons of mass destruction. As a direct result of that mistake, Bush invaded Iraq and that CIA mistake has cost the taxpayers of the United States as much as $790 billion dollars up to the time of the publication of this article in my blog with as much as $3,000 every second continuing to add to the debt.

Then Bush believed that bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan so he gave that nation a few days to give him up. I don’t know if the Taliban in that nation even knew where bin Laden was but Bush decided to invade that nation anyhow. It has cost the taxpayers of the United States as much as $405 billion dollars up to the time that this article is published along with $5,000 every second. The cost of those two wars alone is costing the taxpayers as much as over one trillion dollars up to the time of this publication in my blog. That is approximately eight thousand dollars every second.

Let me tell you how much a trillion of anything is. Believe it or not, a pile of $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000) can be stuffed into a grocery bag. One trillion dollars is a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros. It would take 10,000 pallets to ship a trillion dollars if they were each stacked with $100 bills. Texas is roughly 270,000 square miles. One trillion square miles would equal 3.7 million Texas size states. If you travel around the world at the equator 40 million times, you would travel one trillion miles. One trillion dollar bills laid end-to-end would stretch from the earth to the sun and back with a lot of miles to spare. If a one dollar bill was printed each second, it would take thirty thousand years for a trillion of them to be printed. I only bring this to your attention so that you understand what wars costs nowadays.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am glad that the Americans invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam and the Taliban had to go since the people of those two nations suffered terribly under their rule. But I am a Canadian so I can’t speak for the American taxpayers who are paying the bulk of the tab.

It makes me wonder however if it would have been better if the Americans had put a $50 million dollar bounty on bin Laden’s head instead of trying to find him by attacking Afghanistan. They might have found him sooner since that kind of reward would tempt almost anyone no matter how dedicated he or she is to the fugitive they are hiding.

They sought him here, they sought him there, they sought him everywhere but finding Osama bin Laden seems to have proved to be more difficult than first thought. Not that the difficulties with finding him were an indication as to how good he and other Al Qaeda main decision-makers and operatives might had appeared to have been in terms of hiding their ever-changing locations, but more as to highlight the incompetence of the various intelligence services involved.

However, despite the CIA failings, they finally did a good job in locating bin Laden however, back in 2005; the C.I.A had closed the unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. The unit, known as ‘Alec Station’, was disbanded in the latter part of 2005 and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center. When they were operating, they rushed to Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks of 2001 but in their rush to get him, they had to buy field gear at an REI camping goods store in Virginia. Some flew in on, former Soviet rickety helicopters. A few rode horses when they finally got there. What difference a decade can make.

The CIA now works with elite clandestine commandos to hunt and kill suspected terrorists, including night missions for high-value military targets in Afghanistan. Operators at CIA headquarters in suburban Langley, Virginia also have fired missiles from airborne Predator drones which have killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan and they watch on video as the drones explode.

Because bin Laden was afraid to use his cell phone as the calls could be traced back to him, he chose to use his trusted courier to take his messages in videotapes etc., directly to where bin Laden’s associates would be waiting for them. What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work.

An Al Qaeda suspect who was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques at a secret CIA prison in early 2004 provided a clue which was the nom de guerre of a mysterious courier, that ultimately proved crucial to finding Osama bin Laden. The CIA had approved use of sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity, water dousing and other coercive techniques at the now-closed CIA ‘black site’ in Poland where the Pakistani-born detainee, Hassan Ghul, was held, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo, which cited Ghul by name. Two U.S. officials admitted that some of those now-prohibited practices were directed at Ghul. They had mentioned the name of the courier to Ghul who denied knowing him. That denial led them to believe that the man Ghul denied knowing was in fact bin Laden’s trusted courier.

Some of the detainees at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave the courier’s pseudonym to interrogators and identified him as a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the September 11th attacks. What they had to do then was to find him and follow him to bin Laden’s hideout. After nearly a decade of hunting Osama bin Laden, a breakthrough came in August of 2010 when Bin Laden’s most trusted courier was located and identified as the missing courier.

The CIA followed bin Laden’s trusted courier to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan near the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Then placed agents nearby to spy on the compound. They saw the courier go in and out of the compound but that didn’t necessarily mean that bin Laden was living in it but it was later decided that despite the risk that bin Laden wasn’t living in the compound, it should be invaded anyway because it was presumed that he probably was in fact living in the compound, a presumption that turned out to be correct.

Prior to that disclosure, rumours had been going about that bin Laden was probably residing in a city compound, rather than in a cave in a rural environment, because people in less densely populated regions would be more likely to take the time to notice him. It was also believed that the compound would have security, such as high walls around its perimeter with barbed wire on top of them and an electricity supply, all of which was determined to be true when they found the site of bin Laden’s hideout which was located at the outskirts of Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Those who planned the secret mission to get Osama bin Laden who the U.S. suspected was living in Pakistan knew it was a one-shot deal. For this reason, the U.S. deliberately hid the operation from Pakistani authorities because they predicted Pakistan’s national outrage over the breach of Pakistani sovereignty which would make it impossible to try again if the raid on bin Laden’s suspected residence of this terrorist came up dry. Despite the fact that quite a few people knew of the pending raid, the secret was tightly kept because the Americans believed and probably rightly so that the secret of the planned attack would eventually reach the ears of bin Laden if any of the Pakistani authorities knew of the pending raid. Its security was so insecure, passing information to the Pakistanis would be no different than putting flour through a sieve that has openings larger than a twenty-five cent coin.

After his inauguration, President Obama said in a public statement “Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture 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.”

The location of bin Laden’s killing was highly significant. Obama later stated after the raid that US intelligence “had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.” Obama then identified the location more precisely as being in the outskirts of the Pakistan town of Abbottabad. He did not explain that this town is located approximately 40 miles from Rawalpindi, the center of the Pakistani military establishment and only a few miles further from Islamabad, the country’s capital. This is the equivalent of a fugitive hiding next to a police station. The town of Abbottabad is located on the strategically critical Route N35, the Karakoram highway, which connects Pakistan and China.

Obama didn’t describe the nature of the “compound. However, the press was by then reporting that the ‘most wanted man in the world’ had been living in a comfortable mansion. That turned out to be a report that was made in error. Where he lived was a residence even the poorest of Americans wouldn’t want to live in. It was a dump colloquially speaking.

In another cryptic remark, Obama said that “Our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.” Quite frankly, I couldn’t find anything that would show that the Pakistanis helped the U.S. locate bin Laden. In fact, many people believe that they kept bin Laden’s whereabouts from the Americans. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that bin Laden—as many have suspected—had enjoyed, at least until his demise, high level protection from powerful forces in the Pakistani government, military and intelligence agencies.

Although Obama called on the country to “give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome,” the major factor in the killing of bin Laden was, quite clearly, a shift in the position of his long-time protectors in the Pakistani state. For reasons that will eventually emerge, the Pakistani regime has finally decided to cooperate with the Americans. After bin Laden was killed, the Pakistani authorities permitted ther Americans to interview several of his wives.

While the supposed terrorist mastermind has been presumed to have been protected by the Pakistani state, a critical ally in the ‘war on terror’, the United States has deployed a huge armed force in Afghanistan for the past ten years despite the fact that its original purpose was to find bin Laden. The American forces have been tripled since Obama took office.

Nothing in Obama’s remarks suggested in any way that the killing of bin Laden would lead to a significant change in American foreign policy—let alone an end to the relentless expansion of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Both the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, and the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which is now being bombed by US and NATO forces, opposed Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda forces are politically and militarily insignificant and have nothing whatsoever to do with hunting down bin Laden.

Media commentators repeatedly expressed the hope that the killing of bin Laden would restore the morale of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and justify the loss of thousands of lives. Only time would tell us if that hope has become a reality.
Now let me tell you about the raid that finally resulted in bin Laden being killed.

His compound was eight times bigger than neighbouring residences and the walls were topped with barbed wire. Access was highly restricted. Although valued at over US$1million, the residence had no phone or internet connection and as I implied earlier, the furniture is best described as junk.

The plot of land was roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area. It was built in 2005 on the outskirts of town. The residents in the compound burned their trash, unlike their neighbors. That info by itself would make anyone suspicious. There are no windows facing the road. One part of the compound has its own seven-foot privacy wall at the balcony on the upper floor of the building. The CIA’s analysis convinced them that the compound held a high-value terrorist target and that there was a strong probability that it was bin Laden.

Imagine of you will, a elongated triangle in which the sides are as follows. The longest side is 385 feet (117.3 metres) in length. Its wall is ten feet (3 metres) in height. The first of the other two sides is 202 feet (61.5 metres) and ten feet in height and the other part is 285 feet (86.8 metres) in length and part of it is 12 feet in height and the other part is 18 feet in height. The triangle is divided into three parts. The centre part is where bin Laden, his wives and children, and the courier and his wife lived. The courier and his wife lived in a one-story building and bin Laden and his family lived in a three story building n which they actually lived in the upper floor of that house. There is a passage way that runs along side of the enclosed compound where bin Laden and the others lived. There is a main gate and at the other end of the passage way is another gate leading towards the smaller building where the courier and his wife lived. From his residence, they could then go into the yard in which bin Laden’s residence is at the other end.
The job was given to a SEAL Team 6 unit. The members of the invading force had a layout of the property which they probably got from Google Earth. They build a facsimile of the compound and practiced the steps necessary for the raid to be successful. Keep in mind that they would not have known then as to what the inside of the two residences would be like.

Once the go ahead was given, five helicopters flew from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with three school-bus-size Chinook helicopters landing in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way to bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. Aboard two Black Hawk helicopters were 23 SEALs, an interpreter and a tracking dog named Cairo. Nineteen SEALs would enter the compound and three of them would look for bin Laden. Aboard the Chinooks were two dozen more SEALs, to be used as backup if necessary.

Two teams of Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team Six), of the Joint Special Operations Command and working with the CIA paramilitary operatives, stormed bin Laden's compound in two helicopters.

Once the raiders reached their target at around 1 a.m., Pakistan time, things started to go awry almost immediately. The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the gram, with weather factored in. Unfortunately, during the night of the mission, it was hotter outside than expected. The plan unraveled as the first helicopter tried to hover over the compound. The Black Hawk skittered around uncontrollably in the heat-thinned air, forcing the pilot to land within the walled area just next to the inner passageway. As it did, the tail and rotor got caught on one of the compound’s 3.6-metre walls. The pilot quickly drove the aircraft’s nose into the dirt to keep it from tipping over, and the SEALs clambered out into an outer courtyard.

The second helicopter pilot chose not to attempt hovering and instead, landed outside the compound This was the helicopter that was supposed to hover over the main building while SEAL members rappelled down to the roof, landed on the ground outside the compound.

The raiders had ditched a foundering helicopter right outside bin Laden’s main door to his residence, thereby ruining their plan for a surprise assault. That forced them to abandon their plans to run a squeeze play on bin Laden — simultaneously entering the building stealthily from the roof and the ground floor.

Meanwhile, the 12 men outside the walls had lost the element of surprise. They blew out the metal doors of the entrance and ran along the inside passageway and after getting through the second gate that led them to the guest house, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Osama bin Laden’s courier, opened fire from behind a door of the guesthouse. The invaders killed the courier. Unfortunately, his wife was caught in the cross-fire and was also killed.

Three of men whose helicopter landed inside the area between the guest house and the main building barged into the building and after a brief firefight ensued on the main and second floors, they forced their way up to the top level where they had assumed bin Laden — if he was in the building would be.

To get into the main building, the invaders blew open the front door of the main building as well as a brick wall behind it. They had trained for this and started blowing their way up the three-level building with explosives through walls and doors.

On the first floor, they saw the courier’s brother, whom they believed was preparing to fire his weapon. They shot and killed him. They had to blow their way through barriers at each stair landing, firing back as one of the men in the building fired at them. They shot and killed three men as well as one woman, whom U.S. officials have said lunged at the SEALs. One of men they killed was bin Laden’s son, Khalid as he lunged toward the SEAL team.

Small knots of children were on every level, including the balcony of bin Laden’s room at the top level of the building. As three of the SEALs reached the top of the steps on the third floor, they saw bin Laden standing at the end of the hall. The Americans recognized him instantly. Bin Laden also saw them, dimly outlined in the dark building and immediately ran into his bedroom.

The three SEALs assumed he was going for a weapon, and one by one they rushed after him through the door as two women were in front of bin Laden — yelling and trying to protect him. The first SEAL grabbed the two women and shoved them away, even though he feared that they might be wearing suicide bomb vests. The SEAL behind him opened fire at bin Laden, putting one bullet in his chest, and one in his left eye, thereby blowing the back of his head off. He died instantly. Bin Laden’s wife lunged at a commando and was shot in the leg but not killed. The fire fight in bin Laden’s bedroom was over in a matter of seconds.

An official later said about the killing of bin Laden, "He didn't hold up his hands and surrender and his retreating into the room was considered a hostile act.” Further, an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol were seen by the SEAL who shot him as being in arm’s reach of Bin Laden.

As the SEALs began photographing the body for identification, the raiders found an AK-47 rifle and a Russian-made Makarov pistol on a shelf by the door they’d just run through. Bin Laden hadn’t been able to reach them.

The SEAL team was on the ground for an estimated 38 minutes. Bin Laden was killed 20 minutes into the raid. The next 18 minutes were spent blowing up the broken chopper, after rounding up nine women and 18 children, to get them out of range of the blast. Later, three women and nine children were taken away from the compound by the Pakistani military, who arrive after the raid.

The SEAL team removed about 100 thumb drives, DVDs, computer disks, 10 computer hard drives, five computers and piles of paper documents from the building. It was an incredible treasure trove of material that the Americans had only dreamed of being in possession of them.

Meanwhile another helicopter was sent towards the compound to pick up the men who had previously been in the helicopter that had crashed.

All of the members of the SEAL team, along with the body of bin Laden were placed into the helicopters and flown over the border of Pakistan and Afganistan and landed at an American airbase in Afghanistan.

Back at the White House Situation Room, word was relayed that bin Laden had been found, signaled by the code word “Geronimo.” That was not bin Laden’s code name, but rather a representation of the letter “G.” Each step of the mission was labeled alphabetically, and “Geronimo” meant that the raiders had reached step “G,” the killing or capture of bin Laden

One of the waiting Chinooks flew in to pick up bin Laden’s body, the raiders from the broken aircraft and the weapons, documents and other materials seized at the site.

The helicopters flew back to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The SEAL team took a photograph of bin Laden’s face and transmitted it to American officials. Also a blood sample was taken from his body for later DNA identification. Bin Laden’s remains were then flown to the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.

Senior administration officials announced that the body of bin Laden would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice and tradition calls for burial within 24 hours. As per Islamic custom, his body was cleansed then wrapped in a white shroud and then he was dumped into the sea 12 hours after his death ensuring that no shrine would spring up around his grave.

When the SEAL team met President Barack Obama, he did not ask who shot bin Laden. He simply thanked each member of the team.

After a few weeks of leave, the team that killed bin Laden would go back to training, and in a couple of months, they will go back to work overseas.

The decision to launch on that particular moonless night in May came largely because too many American officials had been briefed on the plan. U.S. officials feared if it leaked to the press and if that happened, bin Laden would disappear for another decade.

The original plan of operation was as follows.

One of the Black Hawks was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard. The second helicopter was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside, plus an interpreter and the dog, which would track anyone who tried to escape and alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces. If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out. The two SEAL teams inside would work toward each other in the main building, in a simultaneous attack from above and below, their weapons outfitted with silencers, guaranteeing surprise. They would then storm the building in a matter of minutes, as they’d done time and again in two training models of the compound.

U.S. special operations forces have made approximately four forays into Pakistani territory since the September 11th, 2001, attacks, though this one, some 145 kilometres inside Pakistan, was unlike any other.

U.S. officials believe that Pakistani intelligence continued to support militants who attacked U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and actively undermined U.S. intelligence operations to go after Al Qaeda inside Pakistan. The level of distrust was such that keeping Pakistan in the dark was a major factor in planning the raid which led the Americans to use the high-tech but sometimes unpredictable helicopter technology that nearly unhinged the mission. Pakistan’s government has since condemned the action and threatened to open fire U.S. forces if they enter again. If that should ever happen, it will be a very big mistake on the part of Pakistani authorities.

The difficulty that the Americans have had with Pakistani authorities is that for the most part, they have turned out to be quite unreliable. I believe that had they been more cooperative with the Americans, bin Laden would have been seized much earlier. It’s ironic when you think about it. His compound was not too far from a Pakistan military base.

What shall really be interesting is when we learn whether or not the Pakistani authorities will be more cooperative in the future with their dealings with the Americans in their mutual fight with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

A question that must be on everyone’s mind is this. Would it have been better if bin Laden had been captured alive?

The answer is that it would not. Think about it. If he had been captured alive, there would have been a public trial. During that trial, he would have spouted off all his views and his fellow terrorists would be quoting him forever. The last thing democratic countries want to have happen is the ravings of a terrorist like bin Laden being spewed everywhere.