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
===============================================================
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.
While the death of just about anyone is never cause for celebration, this man ranks among those that miss the bar for dignified grieving. The death of OBL rates among the deaths of Hitler or Ted Bundy. I hope news of Bin Laden’s death will help my friends in America move a little closer to a greater sense of justice for the despicable attacks of September 11, 2001.
Enjoy this day America.
Sensationally welcome news! Bravo to all those involved. It’s the stuff of blockbuster movies. I’ll bet Keifer Sutherland is now thinking of ways to incorporate such astonishing daring-do in a true-to-life, feature film version of 24.
I’m guessing Akismet snagged my comment. There will likely be many such catches today! lol I’m thinking many words used in this thread are likely automatically tagged a spam.
Many thanks to the intelligence community for searching for and finding Osama bin Laden, to President Obama for issuing the order to kill or capture him, and to the armed forces personnel who carried out that order.
And a special thanks to those (past, present, and future) around the Globe whose roles allow the rest of us to hope the World will some day be a safer place in which to live.
And from a 9mm cranial aneurysm, who could ask for more?
Ouch!! You have a vicious nature, sir. Which, in this case, I entirely approve of. Had the same thought myself.
In the words of Doc Holliday (as played by Val Kilmer) “It is not revenge he is after but a reckoning.”
Quite the little nest of ” Trufers” here at WUWT. I never would have seen the connection between the ACGWCWD (AnthropogenicCathostrophicGlobalWarmColdWetDry) conspiracy and the fake Osama assassination. It is all One. All together now…”Down and to the left. Down and to the left.”
I am disturbed by the victory dance in front of the White House. The only difference between that and the “Arab Street” after 9-11 is the absence of Kalishnikov’s which, although needed in D.C. are never appropriate in front of the White House.
I am, as a Catholic, obliged to go with “…Lead all souls to heaven especially those most in need of Thy mercy.” On the other hand I am roasting up a batch of my outstanding Moka Java for my favorite retired Navy SEAL…whose son, also a SEAL, has been in Afghanistan for the past month or so.
Well, this seems to have given plenty of posters an opportunity to air their political views this morning which only goes to show that climate skeptics are not a monolithic bunch of right-wing nutjobs! We have all kinds of people posting here and it makes for a fun read if nothing else.
I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but as a skeptic I need to be consistent and subject all evidence to a realistic analysis.
Firstly, is he dead. Well, I am quite sure President Obama wanted to know that as well and a President as cautious as Mr Obama will have wanted a lot of assurances before going public. The body was removed from the scene to a US warship where I am sure plenty of tests were done, but DNA testing is unlikely to have been available in the time-frame even if such equipment is available on a US warship (a rush job would be about 12 hours these days considering the time for sample prep, PCR amplification and fragment analysis – anyone able to shed light on faster options would be appreciated).
Secondly – burial at sea. Well, I think this was actually quite smart. The US can say they respected his religion (making this a war on terror not religion) and it prevents any particular site being used a shrine. This is the biggest worry now – that extremist groups will use his “martyrdom” to incite more violence. This is a very legitimate concern, but I don’t think it would have been any better to have captured him alive (personal opinion) as there would be just as many extremists willing to commit terrorist acts to try and get him released and an execution would still have created a martyr.
Thirdly – involvement of Pakistan. Living next to a military college looks damming, however consider how he lived – completely secluded in a house with two cover families. Yes, of course there would have been questions over who lived in such a compound, but given his need to remain completely off the radar, it is unlikely that his real identity would have been given to anyone. I would hazard a guess that there are lots of compounds like this in Pakistan (never been there, but I have spent time in India and Bangladesh and this doesn’t sound unusual). I am sure (personal opinion) people in the Pakistan security services knew he was in Pakistan, but exactly where would not have been known because there was too much chance of a leak.
Pretty much all of the other statements (still alive, been dead for years etc.) are short of any kind of supporting evidence and can be attributed to people with a particular axe to grind and little downside to being proved wrong. Not trusting the government has become a default position these days (sadly, it is often the correct one), but in cases like this I doubt there being any way a cover up can work. Wikileaks or no, cover-ups get found out sooner or later and I think western governments have realized this.
Let’s all take a powder, take great pleasure (in the words of Mark Twain) that at least one person who inspired acts of indiscriminate killing is no more and move on.
For those people that believe that murderous maggot should have been captured and tried by an outside entity (someone other than the U.S.), we’ve seen how other nations handle “justice”. Just ask Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
OK so they’ve got the man who never admitted to doing – but was blamed for the false flag attack attack 9/11. The man who was reported to have already died in 2001-2 and strangely kept re-appeared looking different in so many historic video’s. The man invisible for almost a decade, is found in Pakistan and killed by an unaurthorised raid by the US and the body “not confirmed” is now thrown into the sea, because it isn’t him and a simple blood test would proove the fact this is wrong. Shame on us to being fooled again……Not!
…….recalled an elite U.S. marine unit that handles chemical and biological weapons attacks in preparation for the possibility of terrorist reprisals……..Already the 145 members of the Marines’ elite Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are departing Japan, where they’ve been supporting radiation remediation efforts in the wake of the March earthquake. The unit has been recalled to the United States, ready to respond to any potential emergency as a result of an attack…….
http://abcnews.go.com/US/death-osama-bin-laden-trigger-terror-supporters-al/story?id=13505844
Justice, revenge, how about he got his just desserts. Wonder how much Western medical equipment and medicine was in his compound from the civilization that he despised so much.
……..al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” if Osama bin Laden is captured….. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed……..
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8241119/capturing-bin-laden-would-unleash-hell
Don’t miss the compound’s reviews on Google Places.
“Located in cozy, quiet neighborhood. Interrupted only occasionally by machine gun fire.”
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=11196890339658103699&q=osama&hl=en&dtab=2&sll=34.187661,73.242615&sspn=0.00256,0.003696&ie=UTF8&ll=34.190568,73.236934&spn=0,0&t=h&z=17
It’s disturbing to see how many people believe the Osama legend. Folks around here are fully aware that the “mainstream” media lie every day about global warming / climate change / climate crisis / rising oceans / dying polar bears / and all that garbage, yet you think these same liars magically turn into truthful cub scouts when they report about the “terrorists” and all their evil plots? What gives?
The truth about Osama bin Laden is:
• he was backed by the CIA since the 1980’s war against Afghanistan
• CIA backing continued uninterrupted right up to the morning of September 11th
• CIA kept a database of all the trainees @ur momisugly Osama’s Afghanistan terrorist base – the database was called “The Base” or “Al Qaeda” for use as future provacateurs and patsies
• Osama was in America under the name Tim Osman well before 9/11 aided by US intelligence assets
• As US forces closed in on Osama’s cave network at the outset of the Afghanistan war special forces were held back by superiors while Osama escaped into Pakistan – those special forces soldiers were systematically “suicided” after returning home to the US
• it’s very likely that Osama bin Laden died early 2002
• every single video and audio message supposedly showing Osama or his voice have been proven forgeries
• Osama did release an authentic message – in which he denied involvement in the attacks of Sept. 11th
More details @ur momisugly infowars w/ links to sources:
{ “In February, 2004, Iranian state radio claimed Osama bin Laden had been captured in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan “a long time ago.” Pentagon and Pakistani officials denied the report. “Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,” the radio report said.
Osama bin Laden died of kidney failure soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us anymore.”
A Taliban leader told the Pakistan Observer on December 21, 2002, that Bin Laden was suffering from a serious lung complication and died in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief, according to Fox News.
Alex Jones was told live on the radio in 2002 by high-level Council on Foreign Relations members that Osama Bin Laden had died of kidney failure in early 2002.
“I have it from high level [sources] from inside the Bush administration…that bin Laden died of natural causes and that his family has given the body to the CIA, that they’re gonna roll him out right before the election, that he’s on ice right now. They will claim they killed him right before the election,” Alex said at the time.
“Jones gave a caution that the intelligence could be disinformation but claimed that his base in Austin was extremely close to the Bush administration and similar information received in the past had been credible,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote in August of 2002.
During the 2004 election, CNN reported that Democratic insiders had been told that George W. Bush was going to use the Bin Laden body as an ace-in-the-hole if he thought he was in danger of losing the 2004 election. This confirmed the evidence that Jones had been given by the CFR and others.
In 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.” }
http://www.infowars.com/red-alert-government-had-osama-bin-laden-frozen-for-years/
It’s time to wake up and realize that it’s all lies, all fake.
Fake fiat money, faked terror attacks by fake terrorists, fake justifications for fake wars, faked climate change science, faked vaccination science, faked fluoridation science, fake news every day, fake budget with faked numbers, fake opinion polls, fake electronic elections, fake food with fake additives, fake president with a faked birth certificate { http://www.naturalnews.com/032217_Obama_birth_certificate.html }
Here’s someone who can bring back some reality to this mess:
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/
Support this guy by making a contribution on May 5th. Let’s show the world we’re not buying anymore fakes.
long live the queen…..
So some guy that has been paying people to martyr themselves, and saying how great heaven will be….
….hides behind women with it hits the fan
“It probably would have happened years ago if Bush hadn’t got sidetracked in Iraq.”
Nonsense. There was no “sidetrack”, as the nation is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
And I see the Luap Nor lunatics are chiming in, too. Hey, “epileptic” or whatever your nom do spume is — I heard Tim Osman was a Ron Paul volunteer a couple of campaigns ago. Seriously, you should look into it.
Here is some background and timeline for the operation going back to 2009 apparently.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/05/obamas-bin-laden-operation-began-on-june-2-2009/1
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/05/report-osama-bin-laden-is-dead/1
Global cooling! Osama goes from 37 degrees C to about 20.
Why with the USAMA all of a sudden in the media?
Was OSAMA all along, hadn’t seen USAMA since the initial days.
Think it’s because most journalists confuse the two names, still (Osama vs Obama)?
Anyway OBL is dead and it’s a good day whenever that happened.
RE: Fake photo
The photo referenced by crosspatch appears to me to be a skewed picture. The format shown looks to be 16:9 and if made into a 4:3, then the face is thinner and looks more like that of bin Laden.
As to whether this is a fake or not, I have no clue. However, I will reiterate that this photo has been stretched in the horizontal which happens on new flat screen TVs. Many places and people will not correct the horizontally stretched format as they think the screen must be completely filled in 16:9 and not shown in 4:3.
We learned the names of the men who owned that compound (two brothers trusted by bin Laden) four years ago, when Bush was president, from information given by Gitmo detainees. We learned their area of operations two years ago only a few weeks after Obama took office. That compound was pinpointed as the home of those two only last August.
This operation was literally years in the making. It spanned Presidential administrations. This was tough work and tight-lipped security by US operators. It had nothing to do with “distractions”.
ecliptic says:
May 2, 2011 at 7:37 am
You are delusional.
Buried at sea, really. For three years we have a prime minister much better at mass manipulation that this.
RealClimate is pretty miffed about brother Osama’s death. They have lost their staunchest ally in the fight against Climate Change aka Global warming.