Nada Bakos was reluctant to contribute to “Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden,” a documentary airing tonight on HBO. A CIA analyst who spearheaded the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from 2004 until his 2006 assassination, she had to be convinced by director Greg Barker that it would be, among other things, “politically agnostic.”

Not that viewers can’t come away with their own complicated feelings from the film’s revelations, made by her and many other seasoned analysts. “It leaves the audience free to judge the material however they see fit,” she says, “instead of telling that what they should and should not believe.”

Barker’s film goes deep into the nitty-gritty of both the decade-long search and the job. We learn quite a bit about the role of a targeting officer, where a team follows one single person at all times, becoming intimate with someone they will likely never meet.

“Manhunt” is also a portrait of how intel work functions, as opposed to how movies have classically shown it. “I think it’s hard to portray what intelligence work looks like,” Bakos admits. “It’s akin to how everybody thinks law enforcement works. It always looks more like Sherlock Holmes.”

It’s inevitable that “Zero Dark Thirty” comparisons come up. In January Bakos wrote a critique of the film for Pacific Standard, where she lumped it in with the rest of Hollywood fare, dwelling on how it follows one character (Jessica Chastain’s Maya) rather than groups.

But it wasn’t all wrong. “The level of intensity of sitting on the edge of your seat and constantly having to be on — I think it portrayed that quite well,” she confesses. “They get some of it right. Not all of it is that sexy. I think they did a good job showing the arc of one character. But I don’t think that’s accurate in terms of how intel [gathering] works.”

Bakos is seeking to correct the public view of her former job. She’s working on a book about her experiences, as well as a TV show. She says that even when she first got the job she was not prepared for how difficult it would be. “I had never been in a crisis mode, being in a constant 24/7 state of memorizing phone numbers associated with names,” she says. “You used a computer but also stored a lot in your head. Your personal life definitely takes a back seat.”

She says the demanding job doesn’t necessarily have a short shelf life. Many of her colleagues, some of them in the film, have been there since the ‘90s, despite the unusually rough last decade. For her it was different. “I think war changes you, in fundamental ways you don’t realize until you sit back and take a breath,” she says. “The stress of the job is one thing, but being in a war theater is another.”

The post Former CIA analyst Nada Bakos talks the HBO doc ‘Manhunt’ appeared first on Metro.us.

“No Easy Day,” released today, was written by former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette under his pen name Mark Owen. After weeks of hype over its inclusion of highly classified military information, it is already outselling the wildly popular erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

The book, which details the hunt and killing of Osama bin Laden has prompted the Pentagon to threaten legal action against Bissonnette for what it claims is a violation of non-disclosure agreements. Bissonnette allegedly failed to submit a copy of the book for security review before it was published.

But Bissonnette and his lawyer have fired back that the book does not contain any information that he agreed to keep confidential through non-disclosure agreements.

In the book, Bissonnette shares his account as a former member of SEAL Team Six. According to him, he participated in missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which included the rescue of Captain Richard Phillip and ultimately, the final moments of Osama bin Laden’s life when his team raided the terrorist leader’s secret compound.

In response to “No Easy Day,” an anonymous former Special Operations member published “No Easy Op” — said to analyze Bissonnette’s book and the politics behind his narrative. “No Easy Op” also promises never-before-revealed “inside information.”

The post Navy SEAL book ‘No Easy Day’ about bin Laden outselling ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ appeared first on Metro.us.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has published 17 declassified documents online that were seized during the 2011 raid on bin Laden’s compound, during which the terrorist leader was killed by U.S. troops.

The documents, which date from 2006 to 2011, offer a glimpse into a crumbling organization of which bin Laden knew he was losing control. He was determined to reform the al-Qaida name and focus efforts on attacking the United States.

“I plan to release a statement that we are starting a new phase to correct (the mistakes) we made,” bin Laden wrote in 2010. “In doing so, we shall reclaim, God willing, the trust of a large segment of those who lost their trust in the jihadis.”

Bin Laden hoped for an opportunity to target airplanes carrying General David Petraeus and President Obama.

“The groups will remain on the lookout for Obama or Petraeus. The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there,” bin Laden wrote. “Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.”

Bin Laden and his second-in-command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, scolded other terrorist offshoots that associated themselves as al-Qaida for their attacks on Muslim civilians. The documents included information about spin-off organizations like AQI in Iraq, al-Shabab in Somalia, and AQAP in the Arabian Peninsula.

In a letter to the terrorist group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Libi “threatened to take public measures unless we see from you serious and immediate practical and clear steps towards reforming (your ways) and dissociating yourself from these vile mistakes that violate Islamic Law.”

Another letter, with an unknown author, discusses possible name changes for al-Qaida, saying that name has allowed the U.S. to launch a war against al-Qaida without offending Muslims. The author suggests new names like Monotheism and Jihad Group, Muslim Unity Group, Islamic Nation Unification Party, or Al-Aqsa Liberation Group.

These documents are among the thousands recovered in the raid of his compound. It is unclear whether any others will be made public in the future.

The post Documents: Osama bin Laden hoped Joe Biden would become president appeared first on Metro.us.

Sept. 11, 2001:
Terrorist attacks against the United States: Two planes crash into the twin towers and one hits the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Oct. 7, 2001:
The U.S. and the U.K. begin war in Afghanistan with Operation Enduring Freedom, launching ground forces in Kabul to oust the Taliban from power.

Jan. 29, 2002:
In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush says that Iraq is part of the “axis of evil,” and the nation is allied with terrorists and poses a serious threat to the U.S. Bush would later say Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

March 19, 2003:
Bush leads U.S. invasion of Iraq. Some countries decry the invasion as unilateral and       argue that the threat of weapons of mass destruction is unfounded and misrepresented.

April 9, 2003:
Baghdad falls under America’s control, overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s rule inside the capital. In a symbolic moment, U.S. troops topple a statue of Hussein.

Dec. 13, 2003:
Saddam Hussein is found by U.S. military personnel and is sentenced to death by hanging.

March 31, 2004:
Four mercenary soldiers, working with a company called Blackwater as private security guards, are brutally killed in  Fallujah. Their bodies are beaten, dragged through the streets, and hung — the images of their deaths puts a spotlight on the  controversial U.S.  decision to use privately paid military contractors in Iraq.

Sept. 7, 2004:
By this point, 1,000 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq.

April 2005:
The CIA’s top weapons
inspector announced that after an exhaustive search, they found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dec. 15, 2005:
The first parliamentary elections in Iraq are being held since the capture of Hussein.

Nov. 8, 2006:
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld resigns from his      position after reports break that Iraqi detainees were being abused at Abu Ghraib prison. Public outrage followed after photos were leaked that showed prisoners subject to torture and forced into
humiliating positions.

June 7, 2007:
The al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is killed in an airstrike.

Feb. 27, 2009:
President Barack Obama vows that all the U.S. combat soldiers in Iraq, except for a transitional force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops, will be withdrawn by Aug. 31, 2010.

May 2, 2011:
9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden is killed by Navy SEALs in a compound where he had been hiding in Abbott­abad, Pakistan. U.S. citizens triumphant with glee.

June 22, 2011:
Obama announces that 10,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2011 in Afghanistan and an additional 23,000 troops would leave the country by the summer of 2012.

Aug. 6, 2011:
Taliban fighters in Afghanistan shoot down a CH-47 Chinook, killing 30 Navy SEALs — some belonging to the same raid that killed bin Laden. The      incident marks the deadliest single loss for American forces in the war.

The post Highs and lows of the US War on Terror appeared first on Metro.us.

The revelation, if confirmed, is likely to further shake the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, which has been improving slightly after hitting its lowest point in decades following the May 2 bin Laden raid.

During the raid, one of two modified Blackhawk helicopters — believed to employ unknown stealth capability — malfunctioned and crashed, forcing the commandos to abandon it.

“The U.S. now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad,” the paper quoted a person “in intelligence circles” as saying.
Pakistan, which enjoys a close relationship with China, allowed Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed chopper as well as take samples of its special “skin” that allowed the American raid to evade Pakistani radar, the newspaper reported.

Pakistan’s top spy agency denied the report.

The post Pakistan lets China in on chopper appeared first on Metro.us.

How much credit should President Obama get for finding Osama bin Laden?

Every administration builds on the one before. We invested an enormous amount of time in correcting the weaknesses that existed since the end of the Cold War. People had gotten relaxed and drew down our intelligence and military capabilities. In the eight years of George W. Bush, we made a big focus on special forces. We increased their budget by 300 percent. The Obama administration benefits from the effort post-9/11 that went into those capabilities.

Pakistani leaders say they didn’t know where bin Laden was hiding. Do you believe them?

OBL [bin Laden] had money and an al Qaeda support system. He didn’t need a Pakistani support system. It’s very plausible that the Paki­stani government didn’t know his location. Are there people in the Pakistani government who would have liked to help OBL? Sure! We know about their rela­tionship with the Taliban. On one hand, they’ve helped us capture a lot of people. On the other hand, they’ve worked with the Taliban.

Does it still make sense for the United States to cooperate with Pakistan?

Absolutely. If we said that we’re not going to deal with any country that’s not exactly like us, how many countries in the world could we deal with? Winston Chur­chill made an alliance with Joseph Stalin, not because he admired the butcher, but because he wanted help in defeating Adolf Hitler.

What’s the most important thing you didn’t know that you didn’t know when you became Bush’s Secretary of Defense?

If you know that you don’t know something, you’re way better off than if you don’t know that you don’t know it. The things that get you are the unknown unknowns.

What do you worry most about?

Our intelligence problems, the proliferations of weapons of mass destruction, and cyber attacks.

On Iraq

You report in your book that the U.S. found a factory for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Since WMDs motivated the war, why didn’t the Bush administration let people know it had found some?

We didn’t know if the factory was directly connected to Saddam Hussein. Of course, he was running a police state, so there wasn’t a lot going on that he didn’t know about. Our troops found all the precursors and people who knew how to make chemical and biological weapons.
They found WMD manuals in Arabic, chemical and biological protection suits and facilities where such weapons could be produced. We know that the people involved in this could have ramped up production of chemical and biological weapons in a matter of three or four weeks. I don’t know why the [Bush] admini­stration did such a poor job of defending itself.

Would the Iraq war be viewed differently if the administration had presented this evidence?

I don’t sit around worrying about that. History will tell the truth.

On Gitmo and waterboarding

You call Guantanamo Bay a professionally run prison. Do you mean its poor reputation is simply a PR problem?

What else could it be? We had hun­dreds and hundreds of people from the press going there, looking for bad things, but they couldn’t find anything. They didn’t come back and write stories that Guantanamo was well-run, that the inmates had soccer and athletics and that the
average weight gain was 20 pounds. They didn’t write that the inmates got religiously appropriate meals. They didn’t write about this because this isn’t news.

What about waterboardings?

So many people think there was “torture” at Guantanamo because the CIA waterboarded three people somewhere else, and those people were later brought to Guantan­amo. People talk about “prisoners who were waterboarded at Guantan­amo,” which suggests that they were waterboarded by the Department of Defense.

Is that why President Obama changed his opinion about closing Guantanamo?

I recently spoke with a naval officer who was in charge at Guantanamo when the Obama administration took office. He told me that Obama’s attorney general [Minister of Justice] came to Guantanamo. The officer showed him around, and after the tour the attorney general said, “now, show me the rest of it.” He was convinced there was a secret place where bad things were happening. There wasn’t.

On his first day in office, Obama issued an executive order to close Guantanamo; but after his visit, the attorney general said that the Obama administration would have to reconsider their closure plans. Of course, it remains open. The problem is, where should these people go? If you’re going to have indefinite detentions, what do you do? You change your position, and that’s what the Obama administration has done.

One lead on the trail to Osama bin Laden came from information Khalid Sheikh Muhammed gave while being waterboarded. Has this changed your position on waterboarding?

The CIA had a special unit that did it on very few people. The Department of Defense shouldn’t do it. These are very young soldiers and they’re not trained to do that. I don’t think it’s appropriate for the Department of Defense.

So it should be done, but not by young soldiers?

Three successive directors of the CIA – George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden – have testified that a major portion of our information on al Qaeda came from the three people who were waterboarded. And current CIA Director Leon Panetta has said that enhanced interrogation techniques contributed to the evidence that led to the location of OBL. 

Given this information, do you think waterboarding should be used more often?

If you have a new high-value captive, like the three who have been waterboarded, and you think you can save lives, then you’d have to make a conscious decision to risk lives that could have been saved, if you view waterboarding as improper.

We have some units of our armed forces that are specially trained for resistance, evasion, survival and escape. Soldiers volunteer to go into this program, and they’re waterboarded. They’re not injured, but it’s a frightening thing. However, it’s not as bad as a drone killing you or being shot, like bin Laden.

The post Donald Rumsfeld: On bin Laden, Iraq, torture, Pakistan appeared first on Metro.us.

Now, according to a new report from The Associated Press, a portrait of the reclusive extremist’s secretive life — long thought to be spent hiding in a network of caves on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — is beginning to emerge, and it involves a surprising amount of e-mail.

Thousands of messages and a corresponding amount of e-mail addresses, to be exact.

According to the intelligence, bin Laden was a “prolific” corresponder, though he never actually sent or received any of his own messages. Here’s how he did it:

Stuck behind his walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, bin Laden composed his messages on a computer with no Internet connection, saving them onto a flash drive. Once complete, he’d hand the drive off to a courier, who would then take the information to an Internet cafe, send and receive messages, and then return the info to bin Laden.

The time-consuming process — intelligence officials had actually believed bin Laden must have taken a more passive role in al Qaeda — may now backfire on the extremists as the U.S. government digs through the treasure trove of intel for help dismantling what remains of the terror network.

The post Bin Laden e-mails: He tricked us! appeared first on Metro.us.

U.S. investigators, who have been sifting through a huge stash of material seized on May 2 after U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout, want to question his wives as they seek to trace his movements and his network.

A Pakistani decision to allow U.S. investigators to question the women could begin to stabilize relations between the allies that have been severely strained by the killing of the al Qaeda leader.

A U.S. official said Monday Pakistan appeared ready to grant access to the wives who were detained by Pakistani authorities at bin Laden’s compound after the raid.

But Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said it had received no U.S. request while other officials said no decision had been taken.

“It’s too early to even think about it,” said a senior government official, adding that Pakistani investigators had yet to finish their own questioning.

Bin Laden was shot dead in a top-secret raid in the town of Abbottabad to the embarrassment of Pakistan which has for years denied the world’s most-wanted man was on its soil.

The post US wants to talk to bin Laden wives appeared first on Metro.us.

Opposition politicians have stepped up their criticism of Pakistan’s leaders over the killing of bin Laden in a raid by U.S. special forces in a northern Pakistani town on May 2.

Pakistan welcomed the death of bin Laden as a step in the fight against militancy, but also complained that the raid was a violation of its sovereignty.

The fact that bin Laden was found hiding in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 30 miles from the capital, has led to accusations that Pakistani security agencies were either incompetent or sheltering the world’s most wanted man.

“Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd,” Gilani said in a televised address. 

The post Pakistan: We’re not that stupid, America appeared first on Metro.us.

“We think there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan,” Obama said in an excerpt of an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program which aired in full last night.

“But we don’t know who or what that support network was. We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government — and that’s something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” Obama said.

The interview comes a week after the al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. commandos in a garrison town a short drive from Pakistan’s capital.

Pakistan’s government has “indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had,” Obama said. “But these are questions that we’re not going to be able to answer three or four days after the event. It’s going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on-site.”

In other television appearances by administration officials yesterday, the White House took some heat off Pakistan’s government, saying it had no evidence that Islamabad knew bin Laden was living in the country.

“I can tell you directly that I’ve not seen evidence that would tell us that the political, the military, or the intelligence leadership had foreknowledge of bin Laden,” U.S. national security adviser Tom Donilon told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is scheduled to “take the nation into confidence” in parliament on Monday, his first statement to the people more than a week after the attack on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles north of Islamabad, embarrassed the country and raised fears of a new rift between Islamabad and Washington.

After probe, ‘heads will roll’

Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. said “heads will roll” after his country finishes its investigation into how Osama bin Laden managed to hide out near the capital city of Islamabad in the compound where he was killed by U.S. forces.

Once the investigation is complete, “if those heads are rolled on account of incompetence, we will share that information,” Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if, God forbid, somebody’s complicity is discovered, there will be zero tolerance for that.”

The post Obama: Bin Laden got help from inside appeared first on Metro.us.

On Facebook, one lighthearted user suggested bin Laden be punished by having him go back and forth through airport security for the rest of his life, if he turns out not to be dead after all.

“So bin Laden is dead. Amazing what the U.S. can do when the Sony Playstation network is down for a week,” tweeted Sickipediabot, self-professed as the world’s “best collection of sick jokes.”

In truth, the Internet was inundated with bin Laden jokes even before his death had been confirmed. The GhostOsama Twitter account had 10,000 followers while rumors of bin Laden’s death were still circulating the Web; now it’s 45,000 followers can keep up with the latest afterlife escapades of the al Qaeda chief, like smoking with Bob Marley.

Not everyone is seeing the humor in bin Laden’s death. “Osama jokes are so 3 days ago,” commented Twitter user ItsRiina.

The post ‘Bin there, done that’: Osama jokes blow up appeared first on Metro.us.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=41f0cc23fb" >President Obama visits Ground Zero</a>

The post LIVE: Obama visits Ground Zero appeared first on Metro.us.

Sunday night: In his speech announcing bin Laden’s death , President Obama is brief and vague: "A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

Monday: The first extended narratives of the killing go out of their way to amp up the drama. As Counterterrorism Chief John Brennan told reporters: "He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in.  And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know." Rumors abound that bin Laden used his wife as a human shield, though those are later shot down.

Tuesday: The White House walks back the earlier assertion, saying bin Laden was not armed, but still a threat. From spokesman Jay Carney: "We expected a great deal of resistance and were met with a great deal of resistance. There were many other people who were armed in the compound."

Wednesday morning: The New York Times publishes a new account of the mission that makes it seem much more one-sided:

"Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.

"After the SEAL members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again."

Wednesday afternoon: New details emerge, attempting to justify the killing of the unarmed bin Laden. From the Telegraph:

"Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, defended the decision to kill bin Laden, saying the Seals had to assume the entire building might have been booby-trapped with explosives.

"’They didn’t know if he had his finger on a button,’ he said. ‘Think of all the things that are possible with someone who has killed 3,000 people.’

"[...] Meanwhile a daughter of bin Laden who was taken into custody following the raid has reportedly claimed that her father was executed after being taken into custody."

What details will emerge today? When will will learn that bin Laden was actually in the bathroom when the SEALs attacked?

UPDATE: The new news today, unconfirmed, is that only one of the men in bin Laden’s compound was armed at all. From the AP:

Only one of the five people killed in the raid that got Osama bin Laden was armed and fired any shots, a senior defense official said Thursday, acknowledging the new account differs greatly from original administration portrayals of a chaotic, intense and prolonged firefight.

The post The ‘official story’ of bin Laden’s death: A timeline appeared first on Metro.us.

Britain’s Archibishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is the latest voice in the chorus questioning the decision to kill bin Laden:

I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done. In those circumstances I think it’s also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help. I don’t know the full details any more than anyone else does. But I do believe that in such circumstances when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted it is important that justice is seen to be served.

Williams, last seen marrying Prince William and Kate Middleton in Westminster Abbey, is the first European religious leader to speak out against the assassination of bin Laden.

Do you agree with Williams’ argument, or do you think justice was served by shooting bin Laden in the head?

The post More Euro criticism: Rowan Williams says bin Laden killings make him “very uncomfortable” appeared first on Metro.us.

The Obama administration had been wrestling with whether to release photos of a dead bin Laden.

Obama added: “That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”

However, Gawker.com yesterday quoted Daniel Metcalfe, a former freedom of information expert for the government, as saying Obama could be forced to release the image if sued under FOI laws.

The post Could FOI suit force release of corpse pic? appeared first on Metro.us.

Perceived European interference caused much irritation in the U.S. yesterday. But in Germany and Spain, legislators questioned Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero over their enthusiastic praise of U.S. President Barack Obama.

“It’s likely that bin Laden sought his own destiny,” Zapatero told parliament yesterday after a leftist deputy questioned his congratulating Obama.

Zapatero said “any democrat” would have preferred bin Laden stood trial.

In Germany a member of parliament Siegfried Kauder said praise for the killing was medieval.  “I wouldn’t have used those words. That is a vengeful way of thinking that one shouldn’t have. That’s medieval,” he said.

The post European unrest grows appeared first on Metro.us.

Pakistan is under pressure from the West to explain how bin Laden lived for several years in a military garrison town near the Pakistani capital without its intelligence finding out.

“There is an intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone,” Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Paris yesterday.

“Certainly we have intelligence sharing with the rest of the world, including the United States, so if somebody points out that there are … lapses from the Pakistan side, that means there are lapses from the whole world,” he said.

Gilani said Pakistan had paid a heavy price for its involvement in the U.S.-led “war on terrorism,” with more than 30,000 Pakistanis killed since fighting in Afghanistan began.

The post Pakistan PM blames the world appeared first on Metro.us.

As the mother of a young woman killed on 9/11, I have to say that neither I, nor would anyone in my family celebrate or revel at the death of another human being, even if that human being is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is dead and so, still, is my beautiful daughter. 

On Sunday night as word of the death of bin Laden spread throughout the world, the media documented these celebrations at both Ground Zero and the White House.  Many American citizens denounced the revelry, marking a line in the sand between, once again, us and them, referring to the reports of people throughout the Middle East dancing in the streets after the towers came down. As we sort through what this all does and should mean, I offer the following:

For nearly 10 years Osama bin Laden was portrayed not so much as a criminal mass murderer, but as an almost mythic supervillain, one who could only be brought down by superheroes. He was stripped of all humanity as he became the iconic correlative of evil and terror. 

If we are uncomfortable now with the portrait of American people dancing at his death, we should not judge those caught up in the moment. Instead, we should be willing to take some responsibility for the crafting of this night. We should recognize the energy that came from the elimination of this criminal at the hands of the U.S. government and we should try to craft, instead, the end of the terror years. 

As a family member of a young woman killed in the attacks, I want the response to the death of bin Laden to be one of somber reflection, one that marks how far we have come from the days of that attack and accounts for all we have lost—our civil rights, our trust in our government to act ethically. I want our civil liberties back, our reliance on the Constitution and the rule of law. I want, again, for my children to feel free.

Let’s take that energy and reclaim our land as the land of the free, the civilized and the just. There are dire costs to shirking this duty. We’ve just seen it in our streets.

The post Mother of 9/11 victim reacts to death of bin Laden appeared first on Metro.us.

A day after U.S. officials provided conflicting, and in some cases false, information about the raid, White House spokesman Jay Carney gave a more detailed account of the operation. He cited the “fog of war” as a reason for the misinformation.

“On orders of the president, a small U.S. team assaulted a secure compound in an affluent suburb of Islamabad to capture or kill Osama bin Laden,” Carney said.

The team found three families, including bin Laden’s, at two different buildings in the compound.

Commandos cleared the building where one family lived, while another team entered the first floor of bin Laden’s house, where another family lived.

On that floor, U.S. forces killed two al Qaeda couriers along with a woman who was “killed in cross-fire,” Carney said, backing away from an earlier assertion that the woman had been used as a human shield.

Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the woman may have been the wife of one of the couriers. The commandos then found bin Laden and his family on the second and third floor.

“There was concern that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and, indeed, he resisted,” Carney said.

“A woman … bin Laden’s wife, rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”

An official who has seen pictures of the body said bin Laden was shot at least once in the face.

The raid

The helicopter destroyed during the mission in Pakistan was a newer version of the two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks that were shot down during a raid in Somalia in October 1993 that killed 18 soldiers.

» In Pakistan, the helicopter packed with soldiers made a “controlled but hard landing” after encountering higher-than-expected temperatures at bin Laden’s compound near Islamabad.

» The helicopter was not damaged by enemy fire, said one defense official.

» Troops seized at least five computer hard drives and up to 100 memory sticks — a “treasure trove of data” — according to U.S. officials. 

The post Bin Laden ‘was not armed’ appeared first on Metro.us.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended the action as lawful yesterday, but some in Europe said bin Laden should have been captured and put on trial.

“It was quite clearly a violation of international law,” former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said. “The operation could also have incalculable consequences in the Arab world.”
Ehrhart Koerting, Interior Minister in Berlin, said: “As a lawyer, I would have preferred to have seen him put on trial at the International Criminal Court.”

Gert-Jan Knoops, a Dutch-based international law specialist, said bin Laden should have been arrested and extradited to the United States. He drew parallels with the arrest of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who was put on trial in The Hague after his arrest in 2001.

“The Americans say they are at war with terrorism and can take out their opponents on the battlefield,” Knoops said. “But in a strictly formal sense, this argument does not stand up.”

The U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC and the court only has a mandate to investigate crimes that took place after 2002, meaning the attack on 9/11 is out of jurisdiction.

European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom wrote: “It would have been preferred to see Osama bin Laden before a court.”

In Italy, former center-left prime minister Massimo D’Alema said: “You don’t rejoice at the death of a man. Maybe if bin Laden had been captured and put on trial it would have been an even more significant victory.” That view was echoed in several newspaper editorials.

“We Europeans would have preferred bin Laden to be captured and tried because executions are contrary to our culture,” said the left-leaning La Repubblica daily.

The post European left: Bin Laden killing was state execution appeared first on Metro.us.

“I’m surprised he was in plain sight,” said Staten Island attorney Asim Rehman, 36. “It raises a lot of questions.”

“The president of Pakistan is corrupt. He’s a criminal,” said Irshad Chaudry, 57, who was born in Pakistan but now lives in Brighton Beach. “There is no electricity, no gas, no water — the poor people have nothing.”

Some U.S. senators are calling for the end of $1.3 billion in American aid to Pakistan — and Chaudry couldn’t agree more.

“We shouldn’t give one cent to Pakistan,” said Chaudry. “Aid only goes to the rich and the politicians who have millions of dollars.”

Community activist Aliya Qurasishi, 34, of Manhattan, also had questions for the Pakistani government.

“I feel the government falls short on what it delivers to its people,” said Qurasishi. “I don’t think I should be ashamed of my culture. … It would be great if we could share our culture and not just defend it.”

Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter at @EmilyatMetro.

The post Osama bin Laden: NYC’s Pakistanis shocked, pained appeared first on Metro.us.

That friendship still won’t get him any details of the nighttime raid on the Pakistan compound of the terrorist who eluded capture for a decade.

“We’re not even going to try to pick his brain about it — he’s not going to say a thing,” DeBerry, 33, said in an office lined with baseball caps from Navy servicemen who bought cars. “You get drunk with them and they won’t tell you a thing about what happened on their missions. They don’t even tell their wives.”

The SEAL team emerged as local heroes, if discreet ones, in Tidewater Va., where a complex of military bases sprawls from the shipyards in Norfolk to the Dam Neck compound where part of the unit is based.

The SEALs trace their roots to World War II, when they surveyed beaches and cleared obstacles for Allied amphibious landings. Today, SEALs — the name stands for Sea, Air and Land — perform commando assaults, unconventional warfare, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering.

Such special operations forces have played a key role since the beginning of the conflict against al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001, when they worked with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.

“You’ve got a process of evolution since Vietnam that has not only created a more professional military but a far more professional group of intelligence operatives and special forces,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. 

The post Silent heroes of SEAL Team Six appeared first on Metro.us.

While even some in Western countries said they would not believe America’s version of events until shown photographic proof, the levels of disbelief were especially marked in the Arab world.

The White House said yesterday that it had used DNA testing and face mapping to establish bin Laden’s identity, and that it was debating releasing images of his corpse, although it had concerns the graphic nature of the image could be inflammatory.

One of the first groups to react was the Afghan Taliban, which said it was not convinced.

“As the Americans did not provide any acceptable evidence to back up their claim, and as the other aides close to Osama bin Laden have not confirmed or denied the death … the Islamic Emirate consider any assertion premature,” said spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Islamic Internet forums contained postings doubting America and repeating conspiracy theories about the U.S., the West, 9/11, bin Laden and the Holocaust.

Saudi Arabian teens used Facebook to voice doubts: “I had a vague feeling in the morning that something is not alright,” posted Saudi teen Yasin Malaika. “When they announced that he had been buried at sea it only confirmed doubts that there is something amiss.”

“Yes, why would the Americans do that?” replied Malaika’s Facebook friend. “They are hiding something. Where is the proof that he died? Show me the picture. If he were killed which the Americans say he was then it would make immense sense for them to make the body public.”         

In Lebanon Mahmoud Tabboush, a shop owner in Hamra, told the Lebanese Daily Star: “Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have only been hearing lies. They say he is dead while other reports were saying he had been dead for 15 years. I have doubts about the whole thing. They have to show the whole world his body and his DNA results [for us to believe].”

The post Global skepticism of bin Laden death mounts appeared first on Metro.us.

The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in the military garrison town of Abbottabad prompted U.S. lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to Pakistan.

“Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing,” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari wrote. “Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact.”

It was the first substantive public comment by any Pakistani leader on the airborne raid by U.S. special forces on bin Laden’s compound on Monday that brought to an end a long manhunt for bin Laden.

Pakistan has faced enormous international scrutiny since bin Laden was killed, with questions over whether its military and intelligence agencies were too incompetent to catch him, or knew all along where he was hiding and even whether they had been complicit.

Reflecting strained U.S.-Pakistani relations Islamabad was kept in the dark about the raid until after all U.S. aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.

CIA chief: We didn’t trust the Pakistanis

WASHINGTON – U.S. officials were concerned that Pakistan could jeopardize the bin Laden operation and “might alert the targets,’” CIA Director Leon Panetta said.

Panetta said his aides had 60 to 80 percent confidence that bin Laden was in the compound.
The CIA ruled out working with Pakistan on the raid because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission: They might alert the targets,” Panetta said.

Panetta said he told President Barack Obama: “If I thought delaying this could in fact produce better intelligence that would be one thing. But because of the nature of the security at the compound, we’re probably at a point where we’ve got the best intelligence we can get.”

The post Pakistan denies helping Osama bin Laden appeared first on Metro.us.

Let us use the Twitter of Rashard Mendenhall, Pittsburgh Steelers running back, as a test case. First, let us establish his Truther bonafides:

That tweet has since been deleted, but now let’s go to the tape:

.bbpBox65166153525379072 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/a/1304436748/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) #C0DEED;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

“One side”? Oh dear. What would the other one be? Quick, say something about God to make up for it.

.bbpBox65180241353646080 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/a/1304436748/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) #C0DEED;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

OK. I kind of see where you’re coming from.

.bbpBox65180868850884608 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/a/1304436748/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) #C0DEED;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

Aww, that was sort of eloquent. Now you’ve almost converted us.

We don’t think, as Mike Florio does, that Mendenhall should be fined or fired for his remarks. The notion that people shouldn’t celebrate the death of any other human being may not be a mainstream opinion this week, but it’s hardly one that deserves punishment.

But when it comes to 9/11 Trutherism, Mendenhall needs to educate himself. Read some Popular Mechanics, man, and grow up!

The post Rashard Mendenhall: What do 9/11 Truthers think about bin Laden’s death? Let’s ask a Steeler running back! appeared first on Metro.us.

From Reuters:

In Brussels, European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom wrote in a blog: "It would have been preferred to see Osama bin Laden before a court."

In Italy, former prime minister Massimo D’Alema, from the centre-left opposition, said: "You don’t rejoice at the death of a man. Maybe if bin Laden had been captured and put on trial it would have been an even more significant victory."

That view was echoed in several newspaper editorials.

"We Europeans would have preferred bin Laden to be captured and tried because executions are contrary to our culture. Yet America — where the death penalty is in force — needed to strike the man who struck it so heavily," said the left-leaning La Republica daily.

And that, friends, is why Europeans no longer rule the world. Metro is as uncomfortable with the drunken rah-rah "U-S-A!" chants as anyone, but even we are fairly sure that it would not have been a victory to put Osama bin Laden on trial. It just wouldn’t have felt right — and America, well, we are a country that does what feel right.

The post Europeans fulfill stereotypes, suggest U.S. shouldn’t have killed bin Laden appeared first on Metro.us.

10 years later, how did both men react to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death? Let’s compare:

Letterman on 9/17/01 spoke with typical Midwestern acidity: “We’re told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?”

Last night, though, Dave was far more exuberant: “That didn’t take long!”

Unlike Letterman, Stewart in 2001 was an up-and-comer just earning his stripes: “I am sorry to do this to you. It’s another entertainment show beginning with an overwrought speech of a shaken host, and television is nothing if not redundant.”

Last night, though, it was as if Stewart was a cartoon character celebrating the death of a long-time nemesis — which, in a sense, he was.

Which do you prefer?

The post Letterman and the ‘Daily Show’: Comparing 9/11 and bin Laden reactions appeared first on Metro.us.

“There’s no question that it hurts al Qaeda,” Steven L. Spiegel, the director of UCLA’s Center for Middle East Development told Metro. “But it’s a bunch of franchises and local operations. I don’t think he was planning every attack … and therefore they’ll unfortunately try to show that they are still alive.

“It’s a life and death struggle now to prove they are still viable.”

Experts said the splintered organization based in the Middle East had become mostly irrelevant in the last five years and more recently with the Arab Spring movements challenging power in many countries.

“Al Qaeda, in recent years morphed from an organization into an idea. And the idea has proven increasingly unattractive to most Arabs,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He tweeted his analysis of the death on his Twitter account yesterday.

Hamid said he wasn’t sure bin Laden’s death mattered “except symbolically.”  

“UN Sec-Gen says Bin Laden’s death is ‘watershed moment’ in fight against terror,” Hamid tweeted. “The real ‘watershed moment’ in fight against terror was the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.”

Spiegel thought the death of bin Laden could help those ongoing movements.

“I see this accelerating trends already on the way, but it doesn’t change anything,” he said.

The post Al Qaeda: With bin Laden dead, rise of Arab Spring could end terrorist group appeared first on Metro.us.

And an attack could come at any minute, warned officials.

“Our assumption is that bin Laden’s disciples would like nothing better than to avenge his death by another attack in New York,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, speaking from the bedrock of Ground Zero.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo put the state on high alert yesterday.

On the subways, expect increased bag checks, K-9 units and heavy weapons teams, said MTA Chairman Jay Walder.

Commissioner Kelly warned that the city’s most “iconic” and vulnerable sites would receive special monitoring, like Times Square, bridges, ferries and water taxis.

“A lot of what we’re doing is not visible to the public,” said Kelly. For example, NYPD linguists are monitoring Internet chat rooms.

And New Yorkers, while pleased with bin Laden’s death, know the war against terror is far from over.

“His death doesn’t mean the end of terrorism,” said analyst Joseph Petrino, 24. “Someone’s going to replace him.”

Metro question

Metro asks family members of those who died on 9/11: What is your
reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden?

Rosemary Cain, whose firefighter son George was killed on 9/11
“It woke me up. It took me a while to process it. I was sunned. I
started to cry. It’s sinking in. The first thing I felt was gratitude.
He’s at the bottom of the ocean and so be it. As long as he’s dead.”

Maureen Santora, whose son Christopher, a downtown firefighter, died on 9/11
“I’m delighted that he was caught. (Christopher) is having a great time
up in heaven today. I knew he would be caught. If you have enough
patience and live long enough, these things happen.”

Rosaleen Tallon, whose brother Sean, a firefighter, died in the North Tower
“I was glad that this mission was successfully accomplished. I am
relieved that bin Laden has been taken care of. But getting rid of Osama
bin Laden isn’t getting rid of terror.”

Joyce Mercer, whose son Scott was killed in the South Tower
“I was shocked, but I was so pleased to hear that that monster was dead.
My husband and I are going to go down to Ground Zero and say a prayer
of thanks.”

Talat Hamdani, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant whose son, Salman Mohammed
Hamdani, was an NYPD cadet who died in 9/11
“What I felt, it was not happiness, it was relief, because the hunt was
on for him in the past ten years. This brings closure.”

The post After Osama, New York on high alert appeared first on Metro.us.

Thousands of cheering, flag-waving people gathered at the White House and on the streets of New York City overnight to rejoice in the killing of the al Qaeda leader responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in hijacked plane attacks on both cities nearly a decade ago.

By daybreak, police had increased security in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago in the wake of bin Laden’s killing by U.S. forces at a fortified compound north of Islamabad, Pakistan.

“Insofar as the bigger picture goes, he is yesterday’s man. The global jihad rages on,” said Pamela Geller, a conservative activist who led protests against a mosque planned near the World Trade Center site.

There was no specific threat cited by federal or local authorities, who said extra patrols at  sensitive sites were precautionary measures.

In the Arab world, some mourned bin Laden as a holy warrior and martyr, while others saw him as a “pillar of evil” whose deadly attacks on the United States unleashed a backlash against Muslims across the world.

The U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority welcomed bin Laden’s killing as “good for the cause of peace.” Its rival and prospective power-sharing partner, Islamist Hamas, deplored it.

‘Just a bad memory’

Experts said the killing had little relevance to an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppressive leaders. “[Osama bin Laden] is just a bad memory,” said Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch. “The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers.”

The post Osama bin Laden: Euphoria, then US awaits a backlash appeared first on Metro.us.