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US holds photos of slain bin Laden, weighs release

Still-secret photos of the dead Osama bin Laden show a precision kill shot above his left eye, a US official said, as fresh details emerged of an audacious American raid that netted potentially crucial al Qaeda records as well as the body of the global terrorist leader. President Barack Obama is going to ground zero in New York to mark the milestone and remember the dead of 9/11.
Patience and persistence — characteristics normally attributed to al Qaeda — proved decisive in America’s decade-long hunt for bin Laden, whose fate was sealed in 40
minutes of thunderous violence, years in the making.
According to the US account, the assault team came away with hard drives, DVDs, documents and more that might tip US intelligence to al Qaeda’s operational details and perhaps lead the manhunt to the presumed next-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri. The CIA is already going over the material.
Obama, who approved the extraordinarily risky operation by Navy SEALs against bin Laden’s Pakistan redoubt and witnessed its progression from the White House Situation Room, his face heavy with tension, reaped accolades from world leaders he’d kept in the dark as well as from political opponents at home.
Republican and Democratic leaders alike gave him a standing ovation at an evening White House meeting that was planned before the assault but became a celebration of it, and an occasion to step away from the fractious political climate. Obama plans to visit New York on Thursday.
“Last night’s news unified our country,” much as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said earlier in the day. Obama later appealed for that unity to take root as the US presses the fight against a terrorist network that is still lethal — and now vowing vengeance.
The episode was an embarrassment, at best, for Pakistani authorities as bin Laden’s presence was revealed in their midst. The stealth US operation played out in a city with a strong Pakistani military presence and without notice from Washington. Questions persisted in the administration and grew in Congress about whether some elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus might have been in collusion with al Qaeda in letting bin Laden hide in Abbottabad.
In an essay published Monday by The Washington Post, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari denied suggestions his country’s security forces may have sheltered Osama bin Laden, and said their cooperation with the United States helped pinpoint bin Laden.
As Americans rejoiced, they worried, too, that terrorists would be newly motivated to lash out. In their wounded rage, al Qaeda ideologues fed that concern. “By God, we will avenge the killing of the Sheikh of Islam,” one prominent al Qaeda commentator vowed. “Those who wish that jihad has ended or weakened, I tell them: Let us wait a little bit.”

14:43 | |

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