Wednesday, May 4, 2011

U.S. reveals that bin Laden was not armed

Osama Bin Laden was not armed when U.S. special forces raided the residential complex of Abbottabad. Jay Carney has made clear, White House spokesman, during his appearance on Tuesday before the media. Why did they kill the leader of Al Qaeda, then, instead of stopping it? "He resisted. The U.S. personnel in the field are handled with the utmost professionalism and was killed in the operation by dogged resistance," said Carney.

"The resistance does not require a firearm," he added. The statement that you have read the spokesperson described how, on the first floor, special forces killed two messengers in the service of Bin Laden, along with a woman who reached the shooting. Since the terrorist in the room, on the third floor, one of his wives intervened and was shot in the leg, but did not die.

Then, the terrorist was killed by agents. Carney also mentioned the U.S. decision not to inform Pakistan of the mission, describing the relationship between the two countries' difficult but important. " "We must be careful not to generalize," he said of the suspicions that Bin Laden lived for so long (six years) in the complex.

About the photographs of Bin Laden dead, the spokesman justified still have not seen the light because their publication could be "inflammatory." The image of the body is "appalling", according to Carney. But according to the CIA director, Leon Panetta, the White House is that it will release the image.

"The government is obviously thinking about the best way to do it, but I do not think there's any doubt that eventually the picture will be presented to the public," Panetta said in an interview with NBC. Enemy killed in action "EKIA Geronimo." With this brief statement, the CIA director, Leon Panetta, announced Monday the death of Bin Laden.

A few seconds after hearing the code name for the principal purpose of U.S. intelligence since the 11-S followed by the acronym of "enemy killed in action" (Enemy Killed in action), Barack Obama, meeting with advisers in crisis room of the White House, spoke at last: "I have." A member of the elite command of the Navy SEAL pulled a photograph of the body of the tall, bearded man, and sent it to analysts who, through facial recognition software, they determined that there was a 95% chance that they were Bin Laden.

One of the wives of al Qaeda also identified the body, according to The New York Times, although the crucial confirmation came later after comparing DNA samples from family members, yielding a 99.9% certainty. The beginning of the operation that ended eight months of work and years of gathering a recipe for disaster.

Two dozen commands the elite unit of the Navy SEALs had to climb down two Black Hawk helicopters at dawn on Monday in a fortified complex in the city of Abbottabad, 60 miles north of Islamabad, where Bin Laden was hiding from five or six years ago, as confirmed on Tuesday John Brennan, chief security adviser at the White House.

But one of the aircraft suffered a mechanical failure and fell, its tail entangled in a wall of 3.5 meters. The details of the American press differ on where the unit fell and if the target was lowered into the military or outside the residential complex, as related in The Washington Post.

According to this newspaper, the accident forced the soldiers aboard the Black Hawk damaged, they should have started the operation from outside, had to struggle to hide from the men of terror inside the fortified courtyard. At the other end of the world, the war council gathered in the room gasped crisis, according to Brennan.

No one wanted another Black Hawk Down as occurred in Somalia in 1993, one of the recurring nightmares in all previous meetings to decide how to conduct the operation. A third helicopter, a Chinook, was sent for emergency support. Finally, the paper's Washington, the seals that are taken down off campus joined those who fell within, and exchanging fire advanced.

From the room crisis, the U.S. president and his team continued to live the advance by the resort's main building, room by room, floor by floor, most of the time in silence. Obama's face looked "stone" as a helper. The vice president, Joe Biden, spent the rosary beads. On one screen, the CIA director told from the agency's headquarters, across the Potomac River, what was happening in Pakistan.

"The minutes passed like days," he told Brennan. "It was probably one of the periods of heightened anxiety, I think, in the lives of all we were together," described the principal security adviser for the White House. Weeks of training command had flown to Pakistan during the night from a base in Jalalabad, in neighboring Afghanistan.

The aim was to enter and leave the country before the Pakistani authorities even detected the incursion of what for them would mean unknown forces, and could react filter details. Team members had trained for weeks and practiced daily in a precise replica of the residential complex known as the walls and exterior features, as well as potential occupants that could be found, reports The Washington Post.

According to The New York Times, trainings were conducted in replicates raised on both U.S. coasts, although initially no seals were informed of what the precise objective. The tests covered a wide range of scenarios, including the possibility that Bin Laden tried to surrender, so the seals also practiced the method to stop it, according to a military source was quoted as saying.

Using commands in Arabic, the team had to give the terrorist the opportunity to surrender and open fire only if he resisted, as eventually happened. Black Hawk's Abbottabad arrived just after midnight Monday. Although they had the element of surprise, soon to lose altitude helicopters, neighbors heard a loud explosion and gunfire.

The scandal was such that a local resident reported the events live on Twitter. Once inside the main building, each room commands methodically combed up to the upper floors, where they hoped to find bin Laden, while the White House attended the talks through secure lines. After killing two men and a woman, and about half an hour after landing, the seals found Bin Laden on the third floor, dressed in tunic and baggy trousers traditional area.

"We have visual contact with Geronimo [code name for bin Laden, referring to the Apache leader]," he said via video Leon Panetta, director of the CIA. Minutes later, the expected words: "Geronimo EKIA." Enemy killed in action. It has not transcended if Bin Laden and the players exchanged some words, or what exactly the resistance was cited by the White House.

Yes, the most wanted terrorist leader received at least one shot in the head and several in the chest. A shot over his left eye blew off part of the skull, according to the pictures described by sources of AP, and died instantly. Before heading to the set point of collection, the seals blew the helicopter crashed.

In the room left 23 children and nine women, according to AP, but according to an official Pakistani custody have only nine children aged between two and 12 years. Apparently, Pakistan says having a woman in custody of bin Laden and one of his daughters, 12 and 13, arrested after the assault on the residence.

According to Efe said a source in the Pakistan secret services (ISI) on condition of anonymity, both were in the house in which U.S. commandos killed the leader of Al Qaeda. The source added that the ten people arrested with the relatives of Bin Laden will be questioned and then handed over "to their country of origin", which could not determine in any case.

To the 1.10 local time, the commands were uploaded to the other Black Hawk and Chinook sent as reinforcements and flew the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, in the northern Arabian Sea. There, the body went through the Islamic ritual, the spokeswoman said the White House. The body was washed and placed in a white sheet and put in a bag.

An officer read religious passages, that a translator repeated in Arabic. Then the body of Bin Laden was thrown into the water. Only after leaving Pakistani airspace, Obama telephoned the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to inform the operation that had taken place, according to The Washington Post.

Three options to reach this military success, Obama had to choose the riskiest option among the three raised by team: an assault by U.S. commandos in helicopters, an attack with B-2 bombers, or a joint venture with the intelligence services Pakistanis, who would be informed just hours before the operation.

The second option was eventually discarded when after a military analysis concluded that it would take about 32 bombs of 900 kg each to blow up the complex. In addition, as described by an intelligence source, "would have created a giant crater, and we have provided no body, so it would be physically impossible to confirm the death of Bin Laden.

Until earlier this year, the Obama team did not have some certainty that bin Laden was hiding in the resort of Abbottabad, despite suspected since last summer, when monitoring the trusted messenger of al Qaeda led to the building. "He was in the complex the past five or six years and had virtually no interaction with others outside.

But it seemed to be very active," said CBS Tuesday to the maximum security adviser to Obama. "We know that record video and audio. We know he was in contact with some senior members of Al Qaeda," added Brennan. "We're trying to understand what has been involved in recent years, exploit any information we are able to obtain the compound and use it to continue our efforts to destroy Al Qaeda," he concluded.

Operation early Monday culminates a decade of work of intelligence agencies, which for years has been flying blind. The White House has pointed out on Tuesday through his spokesman Jay Carney, after years of searching, the U.S. has realized that the terrorist organization prefers "populated areas" to "caves or small towns, as I thought when you started the fight against the organization.

Bin Laden "has slipped from view for a long time successfully. It is not the only high-value target that is hidden in urban areas," he noted Carney.

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