Did Osama bin Laden Commit Suicide?

[Warph]

         

'No Easy Day,' Bin Laden Raid Book: Osama Was Unarmed

http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiedrummond/2012/08/29/no-easy-day-seal-book/
Posted: 08/28/2012 8:06 pm Updated: 08/29/2012 8:43 am


The book, "No Easy Day," gives a Navy SEAL's firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

NEW YORK -- The much-anticipated firsthand account of the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveals the terrorist leader was unarmed and was already dead with a bullet to the brain when the SEALs entered his bedroom in the compound at Abbottabad, Pakistan.

As the SEALS ascended a narrow staircase, the team's point man saw a man poke his head from a doorway, wrote a SEAL using the pseudonym Mark Owen (whose real identity has since been revealed by Fox News) in "No Easy Day," a copy of which was obtained at a bookstore by The Huffington Post.

"We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP," writes Owen. "I couldn't tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room."

Team members took their time entering the room, where they saw the women wailing over Bin Laden, who wore a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants and a tan tunic, according to the book.

Despite numerous reports that bin Laden had a weapon and resisted when Navy SEALs entered the room, he was unarmed, writes Owen. He had been fatally wounded before they had entered the room.

"Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull" and he was still twitching and convulsing, Owen writes. While bin Laden was in his death throes, Owen writes that he and another SEAL "trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless."

Then the SEALS repeatedly examined his face to make sure he was truly bin Laden. They interrogated a young girl and one of the women who had been wailing over Bin Laden's body, who verified that it was the terror leader.

The shots fired inside the room appear to contradict the mission they were given. During a meeting with top commanders, a lawyer from either the Pentagon or the White House "made it clear that this wasn't an assassination," writes Owen, who recounted the instructions: "I am not going to tell you how to do your job. What we're saying is if he does not pose a threat, you will detain him."

Searching bin Laden's neatly organized room, Owen found two guns -– an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol -– with empty chambers. "He hadn't even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn't even pick up his weapon. In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was."

The book calls out inaccurate accounts of the assault. "The raid was being reported like a bad action movie," Owen writes. "At first, it was funny because it was so wrong."

Contrary to earlier accounts, Owen says SEALs weren't fired upon while they were outside the gate of the compound. There was no 40-minute firefight. And it wasn't true that bin Laden had "time to look into our eyes."

Owen, a 36-year-old SEAL who also took part in a previous 2007 attempt to get Bin Laden and was involved in the heroic 2009 operation to free Captain Richard Phillips from pirates off the coast of Somalia, also had harsh words for President Barack Obama.

Though he praises the president for green-lighting the risky assault, Owen says the SEALS joked that Obama would take credit for their success. On his second night in Afghanistan waiting for final orders, sitting around a fire pit and joking about which Hollywood actors would play them in the bin Laden movie, one SEAL joked, "And we'll get Obama reelected for sure. I can see him now, talking about how he killed bin Laden," according to Owen.

Owen writes: "We had seen it before when he took credit for the Captain Phillips rescue. Although we applauded the decision-making in this case, there was no doubt in anybody's mind that he would take all the political credit for this too."

Later, while watching Obama's speech announcing the raid, Owen writes: "None of us were huge fans of Obama. We respected him as the commander in chief of the military and for giving us the green light on the mission." When one SEAL jokes again that they got Obama reelected, Owen asks, "Well, would you rather not have done this?"

He writes: "We all knew the deal. We were tools in the toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted."

Later, when they meet Obama at the White House, Owen says he was reluctant to sign the American flag presented to the president because it would disclose his identity. So, at least one SEAL scribbled a random name on the flag. While going through the metal detector to meet the president, Owen's pocketknife set off the alarm.

After listening to Obama's speech and enduring Biden's "lame jokes that no one got (He seemed like a nice guy, but he reminded me of someone's drunken uncle at Christmas dinner)" the president invited the team to return to his residence later for a beer.

But Owen writes a few weeks later: "We never got the call to have a beer at the White House." Joking with a fellow SEAL, "Hey, did you ever hear anything about that beer?" Walt cracks: " You believed that shit. I bet you voted for change too, sucker."

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in an email: "As President Obama said on the night that justice was brought to Osama bin Laden, 'We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.'"

[Warph]

Bin Laden raid tell-all author revealed, questions raised whether ex-Navy SEALs have freedom of speech
By Justin Fishel

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/23/author-bin-laden-raid-insider-account-idd-could-face-legal-trouble/#ixzz24zlWjimk

[Diane Amberg]

They have no more and no less freedom of speech than they are told they have.That's why there are WWII documents that are just now being unsealed.
   Secret Service, CIA, FBI and many others know they have to keep quite and why. Nothing like causing someone's death because they couldn't keep their mouth shut. There is no way that book should have been released at this time. After all Valerie Plame could have been killed when she was outed!
There are many other seeming ordinary people, who are doing very sensitive work to help in the internal security of our country,no matter who the President is at the time. It has always been so.  Sometimes silence has nothing to do with the constitutional freedom of speech which was intended to allow civilians to criticize their Gov't ,like we do today, without fear of suddenly disappearing.
Now" they" gripe because the President supposedly took credit for the death because it happened during his Presidency? This author is going to take the credit way from the seals?  Why, and at what benefit to himself?
  Was the President just covering for them because they screwed up? I don't think so...Who does one believe?

[Warph]

They have no more and no less freedom of speech than they are told they have.That's why there are WWII documents that are just now being unsealed.
   Secret Service, CIA, FBI and many others know they have to keep quite and why. Nothing like causing someone's death because they couldn't keep their mouth shut. There is no way that book should have been released at this time. After all Valerie Plame could have been killed when she was outed!
There are many other seeming ordinary people, who are doing very sensitive work to help in the internal security of our country,no matter who the President is at the time. It has always been so.  Sometimes silence has nothing to do with the constitutional freedom of speech which was intended to allow civilians to criticize their Gov't ,like we do today, without fear of suddenly disappearing.
Now" they" gripe because the President supposedly took credit for the death because it happened during his Presidency? This author is going to take the credit way from the seals?  Why, and at what benefit to himself?
  Was the President just covering for them because they screwed up? I don't think so...Who does one believe?

We'll just have to wait and find out, won't we.  As an intelligence officer in the A.F. and with Dept. of State, I pray this book is on the level and within confidentiality agreements from the gov.  There has been a nunber of books wriiten that the gov. has pulled before publishment.  That's all I'll say on this.

[Warph]

CIA Asked to Confirm Facts in a Maureen Dowd Column. "Not Enough Manpower" Came Reply.



Then I read this, I laughed and laughed and laughed, and then started to choke on my Mentos, which was not nearly as funny.

So Maureen Dowd, NY Times columnist known for boring more Catholic prelates than a visit from a parochial vicar, was preparing a column on the Osama bin Laden raid and the potential Hollywood hook—namely meetings between government insiders and Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow—and asked fellow Times server Matt Mazzetti to fact-check the piece.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-4-to-5-inch-stack-of-overlooked-cia-records-detailing-meetings-with-bin-laden-filmmakers/

Mazzetti, stunned that Dowd was suddenly concerned with facts, did what any red-blooded American reporter would do—he sent the article to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now, it's unclear whether he did so because he thought (a) Dowd had been kidnapped and a more conscientious journalist had taken her place, or (b) only an organization with the resources of the CIA could possibly hunt down facts in anything she had written.

The CIA was more than happy to help, however, given that that "are trying to have visibility into the UBL projects and this is likely the most high profile one. Would like to have whatever group is going around in here at the WH [White House] to get a sense of what they're doing / what cooperation they're seeking."

CIA spokesperson Marie E. Harf openly discussed providing preferential treatment to the Boal/Bigelow project over others related to the bin Laden killing: "I know we don't pick favorites but it makes sense to get behind a winning horse...Mark and Kathryn's movie is going to be the first and the biggest. It's got the most money behind it, and two Oscar winners on board..."

Now that's what I want to hear from central intelligence! Concern with money, visibility, and glory!

Needless to say, the Times managing editor [does it really matter what his name is?] is less than pleased, in fact, he declared Mr. Mazzetti's move a "mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards."

We immediately requested a copy of those standards. Here is what we received:

[Warph]

WASHINGTON –  The Pentagon's top lawyer on Thursday informed the former Navy SEAL who wrote a forthcoming book describing details of the raid that killed Usama bin Laden that he violated agreements to not divulge military secrets and that as a result the Pentagon is considering taking legal action against him.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/pentagon-to-consider-legal-action-against-ex-seal-author-bin-laden-raid-book/#ixzz256mL8nkH



Letter from Pentagon's top lawyer to former Navy SEAL

This letter from the General Counsel of the Department of Defense advises that
the Pentagon will consider legal action against the former SEAL who wrote a
tell-all book about the raid that killed Usama bin Laden.

       

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2012/08/30/letter-from-pentagon-top-lawyer-to-former-navy-seal/

[jarhead]

I think if I was this SEAL I would let the Pentagon charge me. Then for my defense ,my lawyer would have access to all the top level stuff concerning terrorism. Bet we would find out who in this administration has been leaking top secret stuff-----and their "leaks" have put more Americans and our allies, lives at risk than anything this SEAL has to say----and Obama's camp did it for nothing else than for political reasons---trying to make the big eared clown look like a tough CiC---but it aint working.