That quote from president Obama tonight. The story here
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet” – Afghan proverb
UPDATE #3: Zeroing in on the compound. Threes a charm. Like anything in the fog of war, early reports can be erroneous. The first two seemed plausible, especially the second one with the high walls. Now the official Google Earth Blog weighs in:
[UPDATE: The location has essentially been confirmed by the BBC
(via Ogle Earth).] You can fly there with this KML file
or view the image below:
Lat/lon 34.169314° 73.242304° see it on Google Maps
The Pentagon has released this photo, which matches:
A powerpoint from the Pentagon is here (PDF) which shows the details.
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UPDATE: I have the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan mapped on Google Earth below:
Lat/Lon 34.146371° 73.216925° Google Maps It sure looks like a fortress. I’m betting they special forces landed the copters in the field to the east, near the blue roofed building, which is the Government Post Graduate College No.1 Another view here
Source: The Atlantic
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UPDATE2: The Atlantic’s story was wrong, here is the (likely) correct location:
Lat/lon 34.187663° 73.242617° See it on Google Maps
Here it is with the PMA Kakul Military academy mentioned in news reports h/t to Ryan Maue:
Wikipedia has already made an update about the PMA Kakul Military academy:
In May 2011, the US military conducted a raid and killed Osama bin Laden in a compound less than 1 km from Burn Hall Army Academy in Abbottabad. Burn Hall is a junior academy that feeds the Pakistan Military Academy. Bin Laden’s extended refuge near the academy is cited as evidence of the Pakistani government’s collusion with al Qaeda.
That places the compound back near the city center where we originally placed it from reports by The Atlantic. The compound originally identified din’t quite match the news reports.(see image below).
The imagery of the compound above described as “very high walled” matches the image of the white building and the tall white walls around it. I also just saw some helmet cam video of the scene in flames, and the white walls were visible.
The Google added red pointer location for OBL’s compound Abottabad in their database in the images above was originally near the city center, See below for the original placment Google had. But the pointer lat/lon has been updated within the last hour to the new location near PMA Kakul shown above. I think the locations above are correct, as they match news accounts much better.
My previous post just disappeared. I am testing whether the problem comes from this link I made.
The link says the picture in crosspatch’s link was circulating on the net for some months.
[Reply: Comment recued from the spam bin & posted. ~dbs, mod.]
The LAST place you want to go for facts for a breaking story like this is Wikipedia.
I thought he’d been declared dead years ago, entombed in some cave in Tora Bora?
Since there’s quite a few of his relatives around (His father sired 52 children, before he died! – of exhaustion?), then getting a DNA sample shouldn’t be too hard.
Seems his location in Pakistan was known about since last Augyst, hopefully a goodly chunk of intelligence has been obtained and has/is/will be put to good use!
kuhnkat…the funny thing is, the picture IS a fake…but you are laughably wrong since that picture is VERIFIEDto be him. The fakery was that someone took a picture of him from video he made, and photoshopped the wounds on him. But it makes your “bone structure” comment pretty damn funny.
The image showing dead Osama Bin Laden is clearly fake, what’s up with that?
Bin Laden always said the difference between him and us was that he loved death, while we loved life. He should enjoy death now. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. /sarc
I would have preferred to take his body under guard to Death Valley, California, to rot out in the open sun for Al Jazeera and all the Arab nations to see, just the way the terrorists in Iraq took some of the bodies of our military and our security contractors there and displayed them hanging. It would be a fitting thing to do, in all justice.
For Keith in Perth: Bin Laden would not have surrendered peacefully; he always announced his intention to die fighting, and it appears from the Daily Mail news piece that he did exactly that instead of surrender (although I will await further confirmation, because first media reports can be wrong). So I am not surprised, and it IS justice, because that is how war works with someone who declared war on us.
One more thing: Wow! Great that you found the compound on Google Earth. I only wish it had been as easy for us to find Bin Laden as it was for you, Anthony, to locate his compound on Google Earth after media reports confirmed everything. But a good end, nonetheless.
Osama was a dangerous man, albeit one who worked for the American backed Mujhadeen against the Russian’s in Afganistan but he clearly played some part in 9/11 and the smart money is he bankrolled it rather than planned it.
However the extent of the 9/11 attacks were so great that there had to be some internal help and a huge political and media cover up.
If there is a catastrophic breakdown of the US Air Defense system then people should have been held responsible…. they were not.
What is more the official version of how the towers collapsed and the damage at the Pentgon not corresponding with a hit from a 757 is as mystifying as the climate nonsense we ridicule on a daily basis.
I wonder what happens now?….do we all come home….PLEASE…..or is it a question of stirring up the hornets nest for an escallation of even more violence.
Sorry, but i don’t believe a word of this story. The dead man has a nearly black beard
http://www.hbvl.be/nieuws/buitenland/aid1042397/gruwelfoto-osama-bin-laden-vrijgegeven.aspx
This younger O B L has a gray beard.
http://www.hbvl.be/nieuws/buitenland/aid1010727/bin-laden-waarschuwt-frankrijk.aspx
Of course he could have painted his hear but still He does not look like a man 54 years old.
Have You Seen this Man? An ‘Aged’ Osama Bin Laden With Gray Hair, No Beard
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-gray-hair-beard/story?id=9563774
Ted says:
May 1, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Great news!
But wait for it?
By being killed, he has become a martyr for the Islamic fanatics cause, I see a huge upsurge in terrorism!
Don’t shoot the messenger, I just hope I’m wrong.
What?! How dare you! Right then – a Fatwa be on your head, infidel!
But first I shall allow myself an evil laugh. Ahem. Here it comes…
Mmmmmmwahahahahahahahaha!
What a bunch of bimbo’s !
This post is proof of the existence of human beings with sheep’s mentality !
Don’t you dimwit’s know that the entire Muslim population of the world knows that Bin Laden died in December of 2001 ?
His death has been reported by many newspapers across the globe, his close associate’s have testified to this.
DNA testing. Does any of the numnuts in here know how long this takes ?
Certainly not a couple of hours !
Buried at sea eh !!!
Hiding the evidence as they did the steel from the twin towers !
Americans have been so easily duped.
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.htm
Do some research with both eyes open !!
crosspatch (May 2, 2011 at 12:37 am )
Why buried away in such a hurry?
When all we have is a fake image of his dead body.
Keith of Perth….
Revenge can be oh, so sweet.
Sometimes we all have to take matters into our own hands. Imagine if the US had asked the Pakistani government to apprehend the bastard. He would never have been caught. But then, that’s unfair, isn’t it?
You sound like the UN.
AGW Moriarty says:
May 1, 2011 at 9:35 pm
I suspect that Bin Laden has been dead for years.
Either that or it’s all a con and he’s really still at large. Maybe under the protection of the CIA.
Or maybe this story is actually true.
I’m only being a little ironic. When you think about it: who knows what to believe these days from our governments? Cynical? Moi?
Can a man who sets up home that close to a cricket pitch be all bad? I know it’s my retirement plan.
Isn’t Abbottabad next to Costellabad, on the slopes of the Stan&Ollie Mountains?
ps conspiracy theories will abound. How boring. Well, if he’s alive, all he has to do is show up. People that don’t believe he’s dead, should first and foremost state what would make them change their mind: otherwise, no evidence will ever be good, and there’s nothing to talk about.
And remember, the semi-official hunt for Hitler wasn’t called off for decades after he shot himself.
Willem Jan Goossen I’m sure the inmates at Guantanamo will appreciate your explanation, can they quote you before the next waterboarding session?
my most recent comment has disappeared too, rather than remain on-screen marked “awaiting moderation”…
Keith in Perth says:
“I think I would call it revenge, not justice.”
This is a case in which revenge is justice. Although I think that many of the actions by the US and its Allies in the “War on Terror” have been misguided I do not understand how anyone can regret the killing of Osama bin Laden, other than members of his family and his close friends.
Admittedly if I think about Osama bin Laden as a boy I feel a degree of sadness. He had many opportunities open to him as he came from a wealthy family. By the time he was an adult he was well educated and subsequent events show that he was talented and had considerable leadership skills. He could have used those qualities to serve his own people and mankind in general. Instead he chose a very evil path.
What is sad about Osama bin Laden is not his death but the fact that although he had the ability to do a lot of good he chose instead to cause misery to tens of thousands of people around the globe.
A Cricket Pitch just over the wall; shades of the Khyber Rifles…
How’s this for weird? Yesterday I was just thinking that Osama will die soon. First time for a while I have thought about it, the thing just popped into my head.
I know it’s a coincidence, but it’s a funny one. Oh and good job on killing that murderous psycho. Now if only Obama or rest of NATO would have the political will to do the same to Gaddafi, perhaps the other tyrants who are busy slaughtering their civilians would think twice.
Scottish Sceptic says:
May 2, 2011 at 12:04 am
Whilst I’m glad bin ladin has finally been removed, one must not forget the 100,000 Iraqis whose lives were taken against international law using the excuse of Bin Ladin to pursue their own political aims.
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Are you really that stupid?
http://newsthump.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-left-hugely-disappointed-by-quality-of-virgins/
I’d rather trust the late Benazir’s declaration ( → 2:12) that he was already dead then (2007).
In light of Obama’s long-withheld and evidently-fake birth-certificate (see eg, ), this could well be a follow-up fraud to rescue his credulity.
crosspatch says: May 2, 2011 at 12:37 am
Confirmed: bin Laden buried at sea approx. 90 minutes prior to this posting.
bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.
Maybe he can recruit Luca Brasi.