ABC News has this must-view exclusive report on the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. This includes photos from inside the compound, including bin Laden’s blood stained room:
Some highlights from their news story:
The U.S. team was on the ground for only 40 minutes, most of the time spent scrubbing the compound for information about al Qaeda and its future plans.
So this was literally a pre-emptive strike as well as an operation to end his career as the world’s most famous currrent mass murderer.
After the raid, blood covered the floor of one room inside the sprawling house on the right. In another room to the left that held a small kitchenette, broken computers could be seen, minus their hard drives
Remarkably, Bin Laden was hiding almost under the nose of the Pakistani military, which has a major garrison in Abbottabad and the Pakistani version of West Point.
The question will continue to linger about the degree to which Pakistani military and intellgence officials were protecting him and his underlings.
So was Pakistan told of the operation? According to ABC: No:
U.S. officials say Pakistan was not informed in advance of the military operation inside their borders.
This fits in with Obama’s comments some months ago that if the US knew bin Laden was in Pakistan it’d go in and get him.
As CIA director Leon Panetta listened in, Navy SEALs under the command of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) stormed the compound and engaged Bin Laden and his men in a firefight, killing Bin Laden and all those with him.
Two Bin Laden couriers were killed, as was one of Osama Bin Laden’s sons and a woman reportedly used as a shield by one of the men. Other women and children were present in the compound, according to Pakistani officials, but were not harmed. U.S. officials said that Bin Laden himself fired his weapon during the fight, and that he was asked to surrender but did not. He was shot in the head and then shot again to make sure he was dead.
One of the U.S. helicopters, a CH47 Chinook, was damaged but not destroyed during the operation, and U.S. forces elected to destroy it themselves with explosives.
The Americans took Bin Laden’s body into custody after the firefight, taking it back to Afghanistan by helicopter, and confirmed his identity. His DNA matched DNA taken from a sister who had died of brain cancer in Boston. Her brain had been preserved in case it was needed to confirm Bin Laden’s DNA. A U.S. official said Bin Laden was later buried at sea in accordance with Islamic practice.
According to Pakistani officials, the operation was a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation, but U.S. officials said only U.S. personnel were involved in the raid.
There is a lot more. Go to the link and read ABC’s report in full.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.