Osama bin Laden’s elimination though truly welcome is feeding new pressure for conflict between Pakistan and India. That would greatly complicate President Barack Obama’s efforts to drawn down US troops from Afghanistan starting July. A visit to India and reports from Pakistan give reason for concern. It is quite likely that Pakistan will engineer a terrorist attack within India to draw domestic attention...

Is it wrong for the United States to keep the last photograph of Osama bin Laden to itself? Olivier Picard of France’s Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace writes that compared to the state interests of America and its allies, the desire of people around the world to see it, in the words of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, amount to little more than a hill of beans. For Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace,...

Our nation by nation look at the end of Osama bin Laden continues in Mexico. Just like many people in the United States, people in other nations are wondering if the operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden will weaken the right-wing onslaught against President Obama. For Mexico’s Excelsior, political analyst Jose Luis Valdes Ugalde writes that the U.S. right-wing attack machine has been shocked into embracing...

From the NYT: No European government has condemned or criticized the killing of Osama bin Laden by American commandos, but the questions raised about the changing details of his death sharpened considerably after the White House revealed that he did not fire a weapon, was not armed and did not use a woman as a protective shield. Some are questioning whether “justice” in fact was done, as President...

One of the many articles we’ve posted from Pakistan over the last few days is this editorial from the Frontier Post. After the U.S. raid into Pakistani territory to grab and/or kill Osama bin Laden, it seems that people there are simultaneously angry at the U.S. for coming unannounced and uninvited, and at Pakistan’s military and intelligence services for not stopping the U.S. raid – and...

Let me get one thing out of the way first: Obviously, the City University of New York has the legal right to give an award, deny an award, or rescind any award to anyone they please. But that does not make it right that a critically acclaimed playwright cannot criticize Israel’s policies toward Palestinians without forfeiting an honorary degree he was about to receive based solely on that criticism —...

Obama/Osama Trump William, Kate — and Trump by Michael Winship This has been the kind of week that makes news junkies wig out in a frenzy of adrenalin and information overload while driving to distraction people who try to write weekly pieces like this one. Just when you think you’ve got a topic nailed down and sit down at the keyboard to sweat it out — bam! — along comes another headline...

Time’s Mark Halperin lists the five mistakes the Obama administration has made in the aftermath of the killing of Al Qaeda terrorism CEO Osama bin Laden. Halperin praises the operation itself, but not the aftermath. This is actually now a set pattern with the Obama administration. After it’s victory many assumed that the Obama administration would be masterful in public relations, general communications...

Is the war on terrorism a scam in which governments pretend to battle evil only to cover their own sins? In our second offering from the Saudis today, Al-Madina’s Dr. Saeed Atia al-Ghamedee writes that while deluded young men destroy themselves for a perverted version of Islam, governments commit every sort of crime in the name of battling terror. For Al-Madina, Dr. Saeed Atia al-Ghamedee writes in part: A...

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics. The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama’s friends and foes alike to reassess what they make of a chief executive who defies easy categorization and reveals less about himself than politicians are typically drawn to...

The next stop in our global journey to find out what the rest of the world thinks of Osama bin Laden’s apparent death is China. So what do the masters of Beijing think of the demise of America’s most wanted? According to this article by columnist Zhang Guoqing for the state-controlled Beijing Youth Daily, this is no time for the U.S. to rest on its laurels. Zhang writes that bin Laden’s death...

It amazing how much President Obama has been disrespected from all sides of the political spectrum since he took Office. I know many on the right will point to Truthers during the Bush administration – but I don’t remember President Bush or any other President for that matter having to publically prove that he was in fact born in the US and was therefore eligible to be President of the United States. I know...

Osama bin Laden may now be physically dead, but was the movement he spawned already as good as dead when he expired? According to columnist Ghasan Charbel of Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Hayat, Arabs and Muslims have come a long way since September 11 – and they haven’t walked in bin Laden’s direction. For Dar al-Hayat, Ghasan Charbel writes in part: Bin Laden had lost the battle before he...

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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

In the wake of the successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s “mansion” on the outskirts of Islamabad, under the noses of the Pakistani government, military and security forces, many were saying that, years from now, people will remember what they were doing, where they were, when President Obama announced to the nation that: A small team of Americans carried out the operation [to capture or kill bin Laden]...

I do not believe this is a time to celebrate waterboarding, I believe this is a time to celebrate hard work. ~ Senator LINDSEY GRAHAM Osama bin Laden had been dead for a mere few hours when the conservative priests took to the media altar to crow that torture had led to the death of the Al Qaeda leader. From all available evidence, that is not correct, but an opportunity to try to rehabilitate the worst president...

I posted the first responses to bin Laden’s death (originally written in English around the world) here and here A day later, it’s time for the really good stuff – translated content from the folks at WatchingAmerica.com from around the world. Visit them for frequent updates. FROM THE EAST Moheet, Egypt Assassination of bin Laden Violates International Law Kommersant, Russia The Death of bin...

Stepping away briefly from the planetary reaction to the apparent demise of Osama bin Laden [please log-in for continuing international reaction to that story], this article from Germany shows again how interesting it can be to see oneself through the eyes of others. Unfortunately, in the case of Donald Trump, what those others happen to see is nothing short of alarming. For Der Spiegel, columnist Marc...

It was very good news to hear that U.S. Joint Special Operations Command forces killed Osama Bin Laden (OBL) in his exclusive Pakistani retirement compound this past weekend. It came just under 10 years after the 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. Congratulations are due to the many anonymous U.S. servicemen and intelligence personnel who patiently...

Canada changed last night. It was a change which voters made consciously and deliberately. In doing so, they ignored the warning of one of Canada’s best known constitutional scholars. A week before the election, Peter Russell appeared in what will become a seminal video. “This is the most important federal election in my lifetime,” he declared: What is at stake is nothing less than parliamentary...

Many Americans will remember where they were when they heard the news that Osama bin Laden was killed in the special ops strike ordered by President Barack Obama and carried out by Navy Seals the same way many remember where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, JFK’s assassination and 911. It closed one chapter – but not the book… The next chapter’s shape isn’t known yet but bin Laden’s...

As details of Operation Osama emerge, a campaign promise by Barack Obama, widely disparaged by opponents then, comes back to recall his confidence about being Commander-in-Chief. In 2007, he said, “It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf...

Before 9/11 the United States was a beacon of freedom and what was right.  “Your papers please” was a phrase that differentiated the US from the dictatorships of the communist east block.  All that changed on 9/11.  Radley Balko sums it all up: We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . . We’ve sent terrorist...

BIN LADEN’S ROOMS WITH A VIEW One has to go back go back to fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini to find an example of the kind of blatant hypocrisy that characterizes Pakistan. Pakistan gobbles up billions of dollars in U.S. aid each year but has nothing to show for it, has not just been less than helpful in the dragnet for Osama bin Laden but has allowed him to hide in plain view — giving new...