Former extremist: 'I was living dual lives' An extremist’s path to academia — and fighting terrorism 29AUG16

FASCINATING. Just listen to this man's experience and take special note of what he found out from his Muslim students while he was teaching in Morocco. One of the most important things he said is about the attitude of his Muslim students in Morocco. "JESSE CURTIS MORTON: And in my conversations with my students, I realized that the vision, the utopian vision of the Islamic State that I held, the general, particularly from amongst the millennial population, didn’t have any desire for such a society." I have had many discussions and arguments with family and friends on this very point over the years, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not support, approve of or want the restrictive, controlling and violent extremist "islamic" society and government the taliban, al-qaida, daesh/isis, boko haram and all other radical islamic groups as well as saudi arabia and iran want to impose on Muslims. Thank you Mr. Morton!"  Take special note of the fact that he became a trusted adviser to U.S. and foreign security agencies not because he was tortured into submission but because he wasn't. His honesty is admirable, and I hope and pray he really is kept safe from extremist of all faiths and politics. From the +PBS NewsHour .....

Former extremist: 'I was living dual lives'

An extremist’s path to academia — and fighting terrorism

Jesse Curtis Morton begins work as a counterterrorism researcher at George Washington University this fall. But his path to the position was highly unconventional: until 2012, Morton was Younus Abdullah Muhammad, a Muslim extremist who founded a radical Islamist website. His decision to go undercover and assist in counterterrorism efforts while in prison changed his trajectory profoundly.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Across the country, students are heading back to school. As on many campuses, today is also the first day of class at George Washington University.

This summer, a think tank at the school made one of the most unique hires in academia.

The “NewsHour” has a broadcast exclusive interview with a man who was once convicted of terrorism-related charges, and is now a researcher on campus.

I caught up with Jesse Curtis Morton recently.

This is Jesse Curtis Morton. In 2010, he went by another name, Younus Abdullah Muhammad.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON, George Washington University: We will fight you and destroy you if we have to, but we prefer that you come home and pack it up. Stop killing our innocent men, women and children overseas.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Born in the U.S., he grew up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but Morton became a Muslim extremist. This was him on the streets of New York.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: There will be no peace with Israel until Israel is in pieces.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Morton also helped found Revolution Muslim, a Web site that the FBI says encouraged Muslims to support Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and other violent jihadi groups.

The Web site threatened violence against the creators of the Comedy Central show “South Park” for a 2010 cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed. In 2012, Morton was sentenced to more than 11-and-a-half years in jail for using the Internet to threaten bodily harm.

But here we are four years later. He’s a free man with a decent-paying job at a George Washington University think tank in the nation’s capital. Morton is out of jail early because he cooperated with authorities in the U.S. and overseas. He worked undercover to gather intelligence on those who still trusted the man they saw in those videos.

He helped train law enforcement to recognize people on the path he was on, and helped analyze the behavior of suspected terrorists with insights only someone like him could have.

You’re on camera now. Your face is going to be out there. And you’re going to be walking around a college campus, as someone who has been convicted of supporting al-Qaida.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: Yes.

HARI SREENIVASAN: There’s 10,000 sets of parents who might be a little concerned that someone with a target on their back might be walking around on the same campus as their students.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: Well, there has been an extensive security plan put in place by a very competent security team at G.W. And we have assessed the risk with the law enforcement community, federal, local, and some state agencies. And there is very, very, very little risk at this point.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Getting to this point, Morton says, has been a long road through radicalization and then de-radicalization.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: I came from a very tumultuous childhood, where there was very severe abuse. And when I reached out to my society and tried to get assistance to stop that abuse, the school, my family, and the society around me didn’t prevent it. And so, at a very young age, I rejected American culture and the American way of life, so to say, and sought a new identity.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Not to discount the abuse that you went through, but lots of kids live through child abuse. They don’t go out and build Web sites supporting Osama bin Laden.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: Well, it’s a common denominator with regard to radicalization processes. When we study pre-radicalization, we oftentimes see trauma, we see criminality, we see that the radical or the violent extremist interpretation of Islam attracts people with some degree of baggage.

It doesn’t mean that I justify it. It doesn’t mean that I blame what I became on what I went through.

HARI SREENIVASAN: A runaway at 16, he was a hippie following the Grateful Dead. Drug dealing landed him in jail, and there, he says, began his slow introduction to Islam.

There are people who convert to Islam all over the world every day, don’t end up where you are. How’s that?

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: I was a radical and extremely political before I adopted Islam. So, I think I naturally gravitated toward the politicized interpretation of Islam.

And from there, I identified with the sort of anti-imperialist message that was being promoted by al-Qaida.

HARI SREENIVASAN: His thoughts were becoming progressively more radical. In 2006, at a Muslim Day Parade in New York, he happened upon the extremist Muslim Thinkers Society.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: I glanced to my left and saw the black flag, what we call the black flag of ISIS now, but has a much longer history, and saw the movement or the group promoting the images of dead children on the streets and selling T-shirts that said “I love jihad” in Arabic.

I immediately walked up to them and told them I wanted to join them. And very soon, I was climbing their ranks and becoming one of their primary speakers on the streets of Manhattan, Jackson Heights, Queens, protests outside of Israeli embassies, et cetera, et cetera.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Around this time, Morton enrolled at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, earning a master’s degree in international affairs.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: Sort of sort of like I was living dual lives. I was Jesse Morton in school, and I was Younus Abdullah Muhammad, leader of Revolution Muslim, outside of school. And I never combined the two, so people didn’t really know what I was doing while I was at Columbia.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But the Ivy League education did nothing to moderate Morton’s world view. In 2007, he and a few other radicals started the Revolution Muslim Web site.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: At the time, online radicalization was becoming easier because of the Web 2.0, the relatively nascent platforms like YouTube and chat rooms.

Online forums, that was the platform back then. And you could see that the number of hits that were on the Web site were growing and mounting, so we knew that we were having an enhanced impact.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The now-defunct Web site posted calls for jihad and excerpts from “Inspire,” the al-Qaida magazine.

Lorenzo Vidino is the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. It was his idea to hire Morton.

LORENZO VIDINO, George Washington University: His Web site was one of the first — I would say the first Web site in the United States that spread the message of al-Qaida, of other groups.

And it was sort of the go-to place for wannabe jihadists in the United States. It is no coincidence that a variety of individuals who have gone down the trajectory of radicalization and eventually become terrorists were at some point in one way or the other involved in the Web site.

HARI SREENIVASAN: In 2009, Morton moved to Morocco. While running the Web site, he taught English and standardized test prep. Ironically, moving to Morocco didn’t harden his views toward jihad. Quite the opposite. Meeting a new generation of students, Morton says, made him begin rethinking things.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: And in my conversations with my students, I realized that the vision, the utopian vision of the Islamic State that I held, the general, particularly from amongst the millennial population, didn’t have any desire for such a society.

HARI SREENIVASAN: In May of 2011, Morton was arrested in Morocco on a U.S. criminal complaint, charged with communicating threats online. After five months in a Moroccan prison, he was flown back to the U.S. to face trial.

His de-radicalization began on the plane ride home.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: And the agent that initiated communication on that plane asked me what I wanted to be called, Jesse Morton or Younus Abdullah Muhammad. And, interestingly enough, I responded Jesse Morton. And it shocked me too.

And over time, I learned that my identity as Younus Abdullah Muhammad was an effort to kill a person that I hated.

HARI SREENIVASAN: He eventually received a sentence of 11-and-a-half years. In jail, he was interviewed by counterterror officials. Those interactions, he says, further changed his world view.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: I had interaction with a very intelligent and a very sincere female FBI agent. And over the course of a very long debriefing process, the world view that I once held that held them to be enemies of Islam and engaged in a conspiracy to prevent Islam from establishing itself politically was, in fact, false.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Soon, Morton says he began helping counterterrorism officials in their investigations.

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: We generated significant rewards from my cooperation, some of which involved international activity. At the time, the Syrian civil war was heating up, and more jihadist groups were appearing. And several people from the West were joining them.

I can’t talk about specifics of particular cases, but we also yielded domestic investigatory gains.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Lorenzo Vidino thinks Morton will make a valuable contribution to research on terrorism and radicalization.

LORENZO VIDINO: Most of the analysis of radicalization comes from outsiders, from people who are just studying it. This analysis will come from the inside, firsthand from somebody who has lived it and has played a prominent role in that scene.

HARI SREENIVASAN: There’s also going to be several people watching this that say, how do we know he’s telling the truth? How can we trust him?

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: The prosecuting attorney on my case advocated for my hiring at G.W. And some of the biggest high-profile individuals of the counterterrorism community have also vouched for me.

And so I will prove that to the public as time goes on.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What if somebody doesn’t want to believe that and puts your life at risk?

JESSE CURTIS MORTON: If I am willing to sacrifice in the past so much to promote such a disgusting ideology, then I think that, if I’m sincere in my reform, I should be as equally dedicated and equally passionate about trying to repair some of the damage that I have done.

HARI SREENIVASAN: For the PBS “NewsHour,” I’m Hari Sreenivasan in Washington.

Kerry Campaign Veterans Dismiss Complaints Over Obama's Bin Laden Ad 1MAI12

PRESIDENT OBAMA is Commander in Chief, and it was on his watch we finally got osama bin laden. If Pres Obama hadn't made the decision he did then the repiglicans and tea-baggers would be attacking him over that. So I agree with the vets and say tough shit to anyone who has a problem with Obama using this in his campaign!

WASHINGTON -- For veterans of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, the past week of debate over the fairness of making political attacks out of national security issues has brought about a bit of nostalgia and, in many cases, the chance to sit back and smirk.
The Massachusetts senator was famously submarined by attacks over his own personal service and his capacity to handle modern terrorist threats. At the time, aides to Kerry cried foul, arguing that former President George W. Bush's re-election campaign and allied groups were playing on people's fears for electoral gains. With the shoe now firmly on the other foot -- and Republicans griping over an Obama campaign web ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have approved the raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- the collective response from the Kerry crowd is something akin to: "tough shit."
"That was then, this is now," said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry's 2004 deputy campaign manager. "This is what people do with challengers. One of the advantages of incumbency is you get to do the job and make the tough decisions and you get to make suggestions about whether the challenger is up to the job."
There is a lengthy history of presidential campaigns using the threat of terrorism, war or even nuclear annihilation to raise questions about their opponent. The most infamous remains the Daisy Ad, run just once by President Lyndon Johnson against Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, but forever memorialized as the dawn of airwave campaigns.

Bush's re-election team brought the practice to a heightened level. The president's advisers produced the infamous Wolves ad, warning voters about the nebulous threats on the horizon. His campaign attacked Kerry as un-appreciative of the troops and unwilling to make tough wartime decisions. Allied groups openly wondered if Kerry could have shown the leadership needed to respond to 9/11. The genre turned into outright character assassination when the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began raising doubts about the senator's record from Vietnam.
It is that latter attack that serves as a line of demarcation for the Obama campaign, which has argued that it's not engaging in the same tactics that Democrats once decried.
"The difference here is that we won't be swift boating Mitt Romney," Stephanie Cutter, Obama's campaign manager said in an email. "We are sticking to actual facts, not dishonest attacks and distortions. Romney said he wouldn't go into Pakistan to get Bin Laden, and then hit one of his opponents Mike Huckabee when he said that he would. That's important information to voters, because it shows a lack of judgment and a lack of strength, particularly if Romney is now saying that he would have given the same order the President did to get Bin Laden. He had a chance to get it right, without the enormous pressure of being the Commander in Chief, and he got it wrong."
Romney, on Tuesday, stressed that his opposition had never been to going after bin Laden in Pakistan but with announcing that policy publicly. "We always reserve the right to go anywhere to get bin Laden," he said, echoing the clarification he had offered back in 2007 when he first said he wouldn't move "heaven and earth" to find the al Qaeda chief.
As communications director for Kerry's '04 campaign, Cutter was a direct witness to the damage done when questions about a candidate's commander-in-chief bonafides go unanswered. The episode was scarring. And for her and other veterans of that election, as well as the Democratic Party at large, the result was an implicit pledge to never get out-macho-ed again. In 2008, that meant pledging renewed attention and resources to tracking al Qaeda as well as campaigning on a beefed-up military presence in Afghanistan. Four years later, it means contrasting successes against the opponent's blank foreign policy slate.
"This year's discussion," said David Wade, a member of the Kerry campaign press shop and now the senator's chief of staff, "is firmly rooted in Romney's record and his own words on an issue that's fundamental to being Commander in Chief. This is a debate about judgment not a false attack on the most personal and fundamental elements of a nominee's character ... No one should mistake 2004's low road for the substantive questions being asked of Mitt Romney eight years later."
Kerry himself was out of the country and unable to comment for this article.
The complaints with Obama's web ad, however, are not strictly that he's over-bragging about the political braveness in ordering the raid but, as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) noted at an event with Romney, that he's using it "as a source of negative campaigning."
Those concerns, of course, didn't surface eight years ago when the roles were reversed. Wade, for one, noted that Vice President Dick Cheney suggested a Kerry win would result in a terrorist attack, while former Georgia governor and Sen. Zell Miller (D) said the troops would have only spitballs to use as defense with Kerry as Commander in Chief.
"Romney didn't say a peep," Wade added.
But Democrats certainly did, calling Cheney and Miller's comment beneath acceptable political rhetoric. For some Kerry veterans, it's impossible to deny the irony in the fault lines developing around the current web ad uproar. They just don't care. It's nice, after all, to be the aggressor.
"The hypocrisy goes both ways," acknowledged Matthew Butler, a deputy campaign manager for Kerry and now a top official at Media Matters. "They will politicize the hell out of foreign policy and then complain when we do it. And we will complain about them doing it and then do it ourselves. But I don't think foreign policy should be out of bounds when it comes to electing a president. How can you not question the fitness of a candidate to lead the country in foreign policy crisis?
"Obama would have been killed if something had gone wrong with that mission," he said. "The fact is it is perfectly fair game to tout its success."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/kerry-obama-osama-bin-laden-vets_n_1468551.html

Officials See No Need For Public To Change Plans Due To Terror Threat 8SEP11

More on the terrorist threat during the 10th anniversary of 9/11....

by Mark Memmott

Following news reports of a possible "credible but unconfirmed" terror threat, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler has released this statement to the news media:

"As we know from the intelligence gathered from the [Osama bin Laden] raid, [al-Qaida] has shown an interest in important dates and anniversaries, such as 9/11. In this instance, it's accurate that there is specific, credible but unconfirmed threat information.
"As we always do before important dates like the anniversary of 9/11, we will undoubtedly get more reporting in the coming days. Sometimes this reporting is credible and warrants intense focus, other times it lacks credibility and is highly unlikely to be reflective of real plots underway.
"Regardless, we take all threat reporting seriously, and we have taken, and will continue to take all steps necessary to mitigate any threats that arise. We continue to ask the American people to remain vigilant as we head into the weekend."

The Associated Press says it has been told by a "counterterrorism official" that the threat may involve New York or Washington.
Update at 9:55 p.m. ET. 'If You See Something, Say Something':
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his top aides continue to talk with reporters, and they continue to stress that while security — as planned — will be increased in the city over the weekend and into next week, they do not see a need for anyone in the public to change any plans.
As always, Bloomberg said, the best thing the public can do is remember that "if you see something, say something." That is: report unattended packages and suspicious activities.
Update at 9:45 p.m. ET. 'Refuse To Be Intimidated,' Bloomberg Says:
The threat is credible, but has "not been corroborated," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just told reporters. He didn't go into detail. While it is being taken seriously, he urged New Yorkers to go about their business and continue to "refuse to be intimidated."
Bloomberg added that "I plan to be on the subway tomorrow morning."
Update at 9:42 p.m. ET. Gov. Cuomo Says There's 'No Reason To Panic':
"There are reports of a terrorist threat against New York or Washington, D.C.," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) says in a statement posted on his official website. "Our state law enforcement agencies are in contact with federal and local agencies. All New Yorkers should be cautious and aware as we prepare to commemorate the 9/11 anniversary. However, there is no reason to panic or allow our spirit of freedom to be dampened as we get ready to celebrate the opening of the Ground Zero site this weekend."
Update at 9:09 p.m. ET. Mayor Bloomberg To Speak:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg "will hold a briefing at 9:30 p.m. w/ NYPD Commissioner Kelly & the FBI," according to a statement posted on the mayor's official Twitter page. The briefing is due to be streamed here.
Update at 9:05 p.m. ET. 'No Need To Panic':
CNN reports that:

"Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said very specific details were made known to lawmakers about the threat. 'Many agencies are looking at this from every possible angle,' he said.
"But it is not known yet if the threat is real, he said, adding, 'I would tell people now to go about their lives. There's no need to panic.' "

Update at 8:45 p.m. ET. Threat Is Considered 'Medium:'
Intelligence and counter-terrorism sources tell NPR's Dina Temple-Raston and Rachel Martin this threat is considered "medium." Also, they say they were expecting to pick up information like this and that their response is "out of an abundance of caution."
Update at 8:30 p.m. ET: NPR's Rachel Martin and Dina Temple-Raston report they have also now been told by counterterrorism officials that the credible but unconfirmed threat involves a possible plot to strike in New York or Washington.
The White House has confirmed to NPR's Scott Horsley that the president has been briefed about this.

AP source: Specific but unconfirmed threat received targeting New York or Washington 8SEP11

THERE is a lot of evil in this world, this is a reminder of it's presence but not justification for sacrificing our civil rights and liberties, our freedom and democracy because of it, for to do so would present evil the reward it seeks....
WASHINGTON — Counterterrorism officials said Thursday they are investigating a credible but unconfirmed terror threat involving New York or Washington.
The threat was so specific, and coming at a time of already heightened security just days before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, that it could not be ignored, a counterterrorism official told The Associated Press. The official requested anonymity to discuss sensitive security information.
Officials would not tell the AP what specifically is being targeted in New York or Washington or the timing of a potential attack. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the terror alert has not been raised because of the threat.
A law enforcement official in New York, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security information, described the threat as credible but declined to give details.
Information gleaned from Osama bin Laden’s compound in May indicated that al-Qaida had considered attacking the U.S. on the 10th anniversary and other important dates. Security has been enhanced around the country, including in New York and Washington, in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s anniversary.
President Barack Obama was briefed on the threat information Thursday morning and directed the counterterrorism community to redouble its efforts in response to the credible but unconfirmed information, a White House official said.
“It’s accurate that there is specific, credible but unconfirmed threat information,” Homeland Security Department spokesman Matt Chandler said in a statement. “As we always do before important dates like the anniversary of 9/11, we will undoubtedly get more reporting in the coming days.”
The threat was received late Wednesday night, the counterterrorism official told the AP, and law enforcement has been investigating its validity since. The threat came in a single piece of information and intelligence officials could not determine if it was related to previous intelligence, the official said.
Thursday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters that there was “a lot of chatter” around the anniversary of the attacks but that there was no information about a specific threat.
___
Associated Press writer Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ap-source-specific-but-unconfirmed-threat-received-targeting-new-york-or-washington/2011/09/08/gIQApGkCDK_print.html

This Week in National Insecurity: Big Gay Edition 8JUL11

$120, 000, 000.00 FOR MILITARY MARCHING BANDS??? This was put BACK in the budget????? This and more on our National Insecurity from MOJO......

A. Blight/Flickr

Need a recharge, America? Take a break from Nancy Grace and Casey Anthony to consider the week that was in military madness. In this installment: Obama makes a big pro-gay military appointment, a soldier makes bad decisions with an inflatable girl, Al Qaeda is in stitches—literally—and Republicans want more money for Sousaphones.
The sitrep:

• The government's national threat level is Elevated, or Yellow "at a heightened level of vigilance."

• Don't Ask Don't Tell is dead. In court. For real. Again! (Politico)

• President Obama has appointed an openly gay West Point alumna to the military academy's board of visitors. Brenda Sue Fulton graduated with the first class to admit women and served honorably as an Army signal officer. She also cofounded Knights Out, an LGBT alumni group, and she's lent her support to gay and lesbian cadets. "West Point could implement repeal just fine without me," she told the New York Times. "But if my appointment helps West Point send the message to young men and women that—whether you are male or female, straight or gay—if you are qualified to serve, you are welcome; if it does that, then I'll be happy." (Army Times/NYT)

• An Army officer named Justin Dale Little Jim is facing burglary and destruction of property charges after he was found in the closet of a Manassas, Virginia, adult video store at 2:45 a.m., "attempting to have sexual relations with" a blowup doll. Authorities say they sent a police dog into the store, who led his handlers to Little Jim. Good…dog? (Army Times)

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• The Pentagon is asking Congress if it would mind shifting $5 billion in the defense budget so the military can buy more bombs. To replace all the bombs it's used. In Libya. (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments)

• Unhappy about airport frisks? Maybe it'll get worse: Al Qaeda reportedly wants to sew bombs inside suicide attackers and stick them on planes. Interestingly, they've already tried this with animals, sometimes live ones, in Iraq and Afghanistan. On a related note, an analyst for the intelligence blog GroupIntel wrote this white paper a few montsh back titled "The Projected Al Qaeda Use of Body Cavity Suicide Bombs Against High Value Targets." (PDF)

• If true, the terrorists' plans for human bombs probably trump a new $48.2 million Pentagon contract with the maker of the "SET CounterBomber® system," which "integrates radar and video to yield the first-ever system capable of automatically detecting suicide bombers at safe distances." It does not, however, X-ray the target. (Battleland)

• Remember when House Republicans said it was time to really cut government waste, and a Democrat actually cut waste by reducing the military's half-billion-dollar budget for marching bands? Now, in an about-face, the House has restored funding. Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) says that military bands are a key factor in the patriotism "that keeps our soldiers' hearts beating fast." Geez, can't they get the same effect with blowup dolls? (Military Times)

House votes to restore cash for military bands

http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2011/07/ap-military-bands-house-votes-to-restore-funds-070611/

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jul 6, 2011 18:00:27 EDT

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House is singing a different tune about spending cuts for military bands.
By voice vote Wednesday, the House restored $120 million for the armed services’ 100-plus military bands — money that budget-conscious members of the Appropriations Committee had cut last month amid the nation’s financial woes.
Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, argued that the cut wouldn’t save taxpayers any money and the bands are a critical part of the patriotism “that keeps our soldiers’ hearts beating fast.”
Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., countered that while the nation takes pride in the bands, spending on them had gotten out of control.
The vote came on the $649 billion defense spending bill. The House is expected to pass the legislation by week’s end.
Front page image: M.V. Jantzen/Flickr

Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' national security reporter. For more of his stories, click here or follow him on Twitter. Get Adam Weinstein's RSS feed.

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Remarks by the President on the Way Forward in Afghanistan 22JUN11

THIS is not enough, the President is not bringing enough of our troops home from Afghanistan. NOW is the time to end the war in Afghanistan and to bring ALL our troops home. There is no justification to continue to support the corrupt government in Kabul, to continue to fund the corrupt American led military-industrial complex profit making with American, NATO and Afghan blood and American tax dollars. This from the White House.....

 

Remarks by the President on the Way Forward in Afghanistan

East Room

8:01 P.M. EDT
     THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.  Nearly 10 years ago, America suffered the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor.  This mass murder was planned by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and signaled a new threat to our security –- one in which the targets were no longer soldiers on a battlefield, but innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives.
In the days that followed, our nation was united as we struck at al Qaeda and routed the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Then, our focus shifted.  A second war was launched in Iraq, and we spent enormous blood and treasure to support a new government there.  By the time I took office, the war in Afghanistan had entered its seventh year.  But al Qaeda’s leaders had escaped into Pakistan and were plotting new attacks, while the Taliban had regrouped and gone on the offensive.  Without a new strategy and decisive action, our military commanders warned that we could face a resurgent al Qaeda and a Taliban taking over large parts of Afghanistan.
For this reason, in one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve made as President, I ordered an additional 30,000 American troops into Afghanistan.  When I announced this surge at West Point, we set clear objectives:  to refocus on al Qaeda, to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, and train Afghan security forces to defend their own country.  I also made it clear that our commitment would not be open-ended, and that we would begin to draw down our forces this July.
Tonight, I can tell you that we are fulfilling that commitment.  Thanks to our extraordinary men and women in uniform, our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners, we are meeting our goals.  As a result, starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point.  After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead.  Our mission will change from combat to support.  By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.
We’re starting this drawdown from a position of strength.  Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11.  Together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al Qaeda’s leadership.  And thanks to our intelligence professionals and Special Forces, we killed Osama bin Laden, the only leader that al Qaeda had ever known.  This was a victory for all who have served since 9/11.  One soldier summed it up well.  “The message,” he said, “is we don’t forget.  You will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes.”
The information that we recovered from bin Laden’s compound shows al Qaeda under enormous strain.  Bin Laden expressed concern that al Qaeda had been unable to effectively replace senior terrorists that had been killed, and that al Qaeda has failed in its effort to portray America as a nation at war with Islam -– thereby draining more widespread support.  Al Qaeda remains dangerous, and we must be vigilant against attacks.  But we have put al Qaeda on a path to defeat, and we will not relent until the job is done.
In Afghanistan, we’ve inflicted serious losses on the Taliban and taken a number of its strongholds.  Along with our surge, our allies also increased their commitments, which helped stabilize more of the country.  Afghan security forces have grown by over 100,000 troops, and in some provinces and municipalities we’ve already begun to transition responsibility for security to the Afghan people.  In the face of violence and intimidation, Afghans are fighting and dying for their country, establishing local police forces, opening markets and schools, creating new opportunities for women and girls, and trying to turn the page on decades of war.
Of course, huge challenges remain.  This is the beginning -- but not the end –- of our effort to wind down this war.  We’ll have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we’ve made, while we draw down our forces and transition responsibility for security to the Afghan government.  And next May, in Chicago, we will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition.
We do know that peace cannot come to a land that has known so much war without a political settlement.  So as we strengthen the Afghan government and security forces, America will join initiatives that reconcile the Afghan people, including the Taliban.  Our position on these talks is clear:  They must be led by the Afghan government, and those who want to be a part of a peaceful Afghanistan must break from al Qaeda, abandon violence, and abide by the Afghan constitution.  But, in part because of our military effort, we have reason to believe that progress can be made.
The goal that we seek is achievable, and can be expressed simply:  No safe haven from which al Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland or our allies.  We won't try to make Afghanistan a perfect place.  We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely.  That is the responsibility of the Afghan government, which must step up its ability to protect its people, and move from an economy shaped by war to one that can sustain a lasting peace.  What we can do, and will do, is build a partnership with the Afghan people that endures –- one that ensures that we will be able to continue targeting terrorists and supporting a sovereign Afghan government.
Of course, our efforts must also address terrorist safe havens in Pakistan.  No country is more endangered by the presence of violent extremists, which is why we will continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future for this war-torn region.  We'll work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keeps its commitments.  For there should be no doubt that so long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us.  They cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they deserve.
My fellow Americans, this has been a difficult decade for our country.  We've learned anew the profound cost of war -- a cost that's been paid by the nearly 4,500 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq, and the over 1,500 who have done so in Afghanistan -– men and women who will not live to enjoy the freedom that they defended.  Thousands more have been wounded. Some have lost limbs on the battlefield, and others still battle the demons that have followed them home.
Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.  Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way.  We’ve ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country.  And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.  These long wars will come to a responsible end.
As they do, we must learn their lessons.  Already this decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the world.  Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face.  Others would have America over-extended, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.
We must chart a more centered course.  Like generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events.  But we must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute.  When threatened, we must respond with force –- but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.  When innocents are being slaughtered and global security endangered, we don’t have to choose between standing idly by or acting on our own.  Instead, we must rally international action, which we’re doing in Libya, where we do not have a single soldier on the ground, but are supporting allies in protecting the Libyan people and giving them the chance to determine their own destiny.
In all that we do, we must remember that what sets America apart is not solely our power -– it is the principles upon which our union was founded.  We’re a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of law, and respecting the rights of all our citizens.  We protect our own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others.  We stand not for empire, but for self-determination.  That is why we have a stake in the democratic aspirations that are now washing across the Arab world.  We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.
Above all, we are a nation whose strength abroad has been anchored in opportunity for our citizens here at home.  Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times.  Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource –- our people.  We must unleash innovation that creates new jobs and industries, while living within our means.  We must rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy.  And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war.  For our nation draws strength from our differences, and when our union is strong no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach.
America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.
In this effort, we draw inspiration from our fellow Americans who have sacrificed so much on our behalf.  To our troops, our veterans and their families, I speak for all Americans when I say that we will keep our sacred trust with you, and provide you with the care and benefits and opportunity that you deserve.
I met some of these patriotic Americans at Fort Campbell.  A while back, I spoke to the 101st Airborne that has fought to turn the tide in Afghanistan, and to the team that took out Osama bin Laden.  Standing in front of a model of bin Laden’s compound, the Navy SEAL who led that effort paid tribute to those who had been lost –- brothers and sisters in arms whose names are now written on bases where our troops stand guard overseas, and on headstones in quiet corners of our country where their memory will never be forgotten.  This officer -- like so many others I’ve met on bases, in Baghdad and Bagram, and at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital -– spoke with humility about how his unit worked together as one, depending on each other, and trusting one another, as a family might do in a time of peril.
That’s a lesson worth remembering -– that we are all a part of one American family.  Though we have known disagreement and division, we are bound together by the creed that is written into our founding documents, and a conviction that the United States of America is a country that can achieve whatever it sets out to accomplish.  Now, let us finish the work at hand.  Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story.  With confidence in our cause, with faith in our fellow citizens, and with hope in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America -– for this generation, and the next.
May God bless our troops.  And may God bless the United States of America.
                             END           8:16 P.M. EDT

White House Taking 'Seriously' Al Qaeda's Eying Of America's Gun Show Loophole

CONGRESS continues to be too cowardly to do something about this because they don't fear for our safety and the threat of terrorist buying their weapons to attack us right here in the U.S..... no, they fear the nra and it's campaign propaganda machine. 
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration says it's taking "seriously" a statement from an al Qaeda spokesman that instructs sympathizers of the terrorist group to exploit soft spots in U.S. gun laws.
Last week, Adam Gadahn, an American-born spokesman for al Qaeda, released a video informing followers that, "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms" and urging them to exploit what is commonly known as the gun show loophole.
"You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and, most likely, without having to show an identification card," Gadahn added. "So what are you waiting for?”

The remarks alarmed gun control advocates, who have warned for years that lax background checks at gun shows provided the easiest of vehicles for terrorists (foreign or domestic) to get their hands on firearms. That al Qaeda's awareness of the so-called loophole was getting scant attention in the press raised concerns further.
Asked for comment on Monday by The Huffington Post, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledged that he was "not aware of [Gadhan's] statement," before adding that members of the administration were "very mindful of any threats emanating from al Qaeda and take them seriously."
A gun rights advocate who has worked alongside the administration said that the president's team had both seen Gadahn's remarks and was aware of the concerns stemming from them.
Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, told The Huffington Post that the administration "supports closing the gun show loophole so that criminals and other people who are prohibited by law from purchasing guns can't acquire them."
Under current law, private sellers are not required to perform background checks at gun shows, something that federal licensed dealers are required to do. By some estimations, private sales make up 40 percent of total gun show sales.
The Justice Department held discussions several months ago about various ways to apply more comprehensive screens to firearm sales. The final product of those talks is not yet known -- a growing point of frustration for gun-control advocates. But there is hope that, at the very least, some executive actions will be taken to strengthen gun protection laws.
But closing the gun show loophole is not a possible executive action. To change the current gun show system to require background checks from private sellers would take an act from the legislative branch. Obama could instruct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ramp up undercover investigations of sales at gun shows, something that advocates have encouraged him to do.
Gadahn's statement has also raised concerns about the so-called 'terror gap' in current gun policy: Gun sellers do not have power under law to stop the purchase of a firearm even if the purchaser is on the terror watch list. The Government Accountability Office has determined that more than 1,200 sales to individuals on the watch list took place between February 2004 and February 2010.
A high-profile hearing on the matter ended with Republican senators insisting they would be uncomfortable restricting firearm access to individuals wrongly put on the terror watch list. There is bipartisan legislation pending that would give the Attorney General discretion to slow down such sales, but its path for passage remains obscure.
"A terror suspect can't take a regular sized tube of Crest into the airport, much less board a plane, but they can buy an AK-47 with no questions asked," said Mark Glaze, Director of the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "I'm pretty sure if the NRA membership knew its leadership was fighting to protect that special privilege for terrorists, they'd object."
The NRA did not immediately return request for comment Tuesday.
[UPDATE: 2:30 pm:
Multiple readers have noted that Gadahn's statement -- that you can buy a fully automatic weapon at a gun show -- is not true. You can, in fact, get (nearly) everything but a full-automatic. That being said, one gun control advocate notes that purchasers can buy "conversion kits" to turn semi-automatics into full-automatics, and there have been documented cases of individuals doing so.]
* This update was edited for more clarity.

John McCain: Torture Did Not Lead To Osama Bin Laden (VIDEO) & Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture12MAI11

I really do not like Sen John McCain because of his politics, but I give him credit for speaking out on the Senate floor and in the mainstream media on the issue of torture and doing his part to prove false the ideas that torture of detainees at Gitmo led to bin laden. Thank you Sen McCain.

 WASHINGTON – The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committees is insisting that enhanced interrogation techniques were not a factor in the discovery of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and he rejected any form of torture.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, Arizona's John McCain said that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques are not necessary to the U.S. success in the war on terror.
“It was not torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden,” he said.
The Arizona senator said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was wrong when he claimed harsh interrogation had led to bin Laden. McCain said he got the facts from CIA Director Leon Panetta and they contradicted Mukasey's claim.
McCain addressed his opposition to torture and said it did not play a role in the search for bin Laden in a Washington Post op-ed published on Wednesday:

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda. In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

McCain was a prisoner of war for five and a half years in North Vietnam. He said the U.S. should not compromise its deepest values by using torture tactics.

Via ABC News comes video of McCain's remarks on the Senate floor.
WATCH:
 

Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture

By John McCain, Published: May 11 2011 from WASHINGTON POST

Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.
Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.
I know those who approved and employed these practices were dedicated to protecting Americans. I know they were determined to keep faith with the victims of terrorism and to prove to our enemies that the United States would pursue justice relentlessly no matter how long it took.
I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be. I am one of the authors of the Military Commissions Act, and we wrote into the legislation that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted. I don’t think it is helpful or wise to revisit that policy.
But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey recently claimed that “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” That is false.
I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.
In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.
Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.
Though it took a decade to find bin Laden, there is one consolation for his long evasion of justice: He lived long enough to witness what some are calling the Arab Spring, the complete repudiation of his violent ideology.
As we debate how the United States can best influence the course of the Arab Spring, can’t we all agree that the most obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a nation that holds an individual’s human rights as superior to the will of the majority or the wishes of government? Individuals might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that respect to others.
All of these arguments have the force of right, but they are beside the most important point. Ultimately, this is more than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is about who we are.
I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we confuse or encourage those who fight this war for us to forget that best sense of ourselves. Through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss, we are always Americans, and different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us.
The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona.

Death of Osama bin Laden: Phone call pointed U.S. to compound — and to ‘the pacer’ from WASHINGTON POST 6MAI11

THE planning behind the mission that got bin laden.

By Bob Woodward

It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.
Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?
Kuwaiti’s response was vague but heavy with portent: “I’m back with the people I was with before.”
There was a pause, as if the friend knew that Kuwaiti’s words meant he had returned to bin Laden’s inner circle, and was perhaps at the side of the al-Qaeda leader himself.
The friend replied, “May God facilitate.”
When U.S. intelligence officials learned of this exchange, they knew they had reached a key moment in their decade-long search for al-Qaeda’s founder. The call led them to the unusual, high-walled compound in Abbottabad, a city 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital.
“This is where you start the movie about the hunt for bin Laden,” said one U.S. official briefed on the intelligence-gathering leading up to the raid on the compound early Monday.
The exchange and several other pieces of information, other officials said, gave President Obama the confidence to launch a politically risky mission to capture or kill bin Laden, a decision he took despite dissension among his key national security advisers and varying estimates of the likelihood that bin Laden was in the compound. The officials would speak about the collection of intelligence and White House decision making only on the condition that they not be named.
U.S. intelligence agencies had been hunting for Kuwaiti for at least four years; the call with the friend gave them the number of the courier’s cellphone. Using a vast number of human and technical sources, they tracked Kuwaiti to the compound.
The main three-story building, which had no telephone lines or Internet service, was impenetrable to eavesdropping technology deployed by the National Security Agency.
U.S. officials were stunned to realize that whenever Kuwaiti or others left the compound to make a call, they drove some 90 minutes away before even placing a battery in a cellphone. Turning on the phone made it susceptible to the kind of electronic surveillance that the residents of the compound clearly wished to avoid.
As intelligence officials scrutinized images of the compound, they saw that a man emerged most days to stroll the grounds of the courtyard for an hour or two. The man walked back and forth, day after day, and soon analysts began calling him “the pacer.” The imagery never provided a clear view of his face.
Intelligence officials were reluctant to bring in other means of technical or human surveillance that might offer a positive identification but would risk detection by those in the compound. The pacer never left the compound. His routine suggested he was not just a shut-in but almost a prisoner.
Was the pacer bin Laden? A decoy? A hoax? A setup?
Bin Laden was at least 6-foot-4, and the pacer seemed to have the gait of a tall man. The White House asked the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides and analyzes satellite imagery, to determine the pacer’s height. The agency said the man’s height was somewhere between 5-foot-8 and 6-foot-8, according to one official.
Another official said the agency provided a narrower range for the pacer’s height, but the estimate was still of limited reliability because of the lack of information about the size of the building’s windows or the thickness of the compound’s walls, which would have served as reference points.
In one White House meeting, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Obama and other top national security officials that the general rule in gathering intelligence was to keep going until a target such as the Abbottabad compound ran dry.
Panetta said that point had been reached, arguing that those tracking the compound were seeing the pacer nearly every day but could not conclude with certainty that it was bin Laden, officials said. Panetta noted that there was no signals intelligence available and contended that it was too risky to send in a human spy or move any closer with electronic devices. The Washington Post reported Friday that the agency established a safe house in Abbottabad for a small team that monitored the compound in the months leading up to the raid.
Obama and his advisers debated the options, officials said. One option was to fire a missile from a Predator or Reaper aerial drone. Such a strike would be low-risk, but if the result was a direct hit, the pacer might be vaporized and officials would never be certain they had killed bin Laden. If the drone attack missed, as had happened in attacks on high-value targets, bin Laden or whoever was living in the compound would flee and the United States would have to start the hunt from scratch.
Panetta designated Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, who had headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly three years, to devise a boots-on-the ground plan for the special forces that became known as “the McRaven option.”
McRaven had increased the intensity of Special Operations raids, especially in Afghanistan. During his first two years as head of JSOC, the “jackpot rate” — when the strikes got their intended target — jumped from 35 percent to more than 80 percent.
His decision to assign the operation to the Navy SEALs, a Special Operations unit with extensive experience in raids on high-value targets, was critical. SEALs have a tradition of moving in and out fast, often killing everyone they encounter at a target site. Most members of the SEAL team in the bin Laden raid had been deployed to war zones a dozen or more times.
A “pattern of life” study of the compound by intelligence agencies showed that about a dozen women and children periodically frequented it.
Specific orders were issued to the SEALs not to shoot the women or children unless they were clearly threatening or had weapons. (During the mission, one woman was killed and a wife of bin Laden was shot in the leg.) Bin Laden was to be captured, one official said, if he “conspicuously surrendered.”
The longer such raids take, the greater the risk to the SEALs. One senior official said the general philosophy of the SEALs is: “If you see it, shoot it. It is a house full of bad guys.”
Several assessments concluded there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that bin Laden was in the compound. Michael Leiter, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was much more conservative. During one White House meeting, he put the probability at about 40 percent.
When a participant suggested that was a low chance of success, Leiter said, “Yes, but what we’ve got is 38 percent better than we have ever had before.”
Officials said Obama’s national security advisers were not unanimous in recommending he go ahead with the McRaven option. The president approved the raid at 8:20 a.m. Friday.
During the assault, one of the Blackhawk helicopters stalled, but the pilot was able to land safely. The hard landing, which disabled the helicopter, forced the SEALs to abandon a plan to have one team rope down from a Blackhawk and come into the main building from the roof. Instead, both teams assaulted the compound from the ground.
The White House initially said bin Laden was shot and killed because he was engaged in a firefight and resisted. Later, White House spokesman Jay Carney said bin Laden was not armed, but Carney insisted he resisted in some form. He and others have declined to specify the exact nature of his alleged resistance, through there reportedly were weapons in the room where bin Laden was killed.
A senior Special Operations official said that SEALs would avoid providing more details about the raid, to prevent the disclosure of methods central to their success. The individuals who took part in the raid, the official said, would not grant interviews and had signed nondisclosure agreements about their classified work. “They are interested in closing ranks and getting on with business,” he said.
SEALs scooped up dozens of thumb drives and several computer hard drives that are now being scrutinized for information about al-Qaeda, especially an address, location or cellphone number for Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command.
But officials said the delicate process of sifting this intelligence bonanza is made more challenging because of worries that using the wrong passwords could trigger a pre-planned erasure of digital information.
In the White House Situation Room on Sunday night, the president and his national security team watched a soundless video feed of the raid.
When bin Laden’s corpse was laid out, one of the Navy SEALs was asked to stretch out next to it to compare heights. The SEAL was 6 feet tall. The body was several inches taller.
After the information was relayed to Obama, he turned to his advisers and said: “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?”

Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this report.

bush LOOSES INTEREST IN BIN LADEN, TRANSCRIPT OF HIS PRESS CONFERENCE 13MAR02

CLICK the link to go the bush WH website and read the transcripts.. I post this because some feel bush was committed to finding bin laden and either capturing or killing him. But this shows bin laden was already on the back burner just 6 months after 9/11 and the bush cabal was focused on the campaign of propaganda, misinformation and deception to justify their illegal and immoral war in Iraq, set to begin on 20MAR03.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html# 
Q    Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden.  Why is that?  Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive?  Final part  --  deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of  --
THE PRESIDENT:  Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all.  Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time.  And the idea of focusing on one person is --  really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
Terror is bigger than one person.  And he's just  --  he's a person who's now been marginalized.  His network, his host government has been destroyed.  He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match.  He is  --  as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide  --  if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
So I don't know where he is.  You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.  I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan.  There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly.  We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy.  We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.
Q    But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT:  Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him.  And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure.  And, again, I don't know where he is.  I  --  I'll repeat what I said.  I truly am not that concerned about him.  I know he is on the run.  I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country.  I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

Obama Succeeded Where Bush Failed: Osama Bin Laden Rhetoric And Reality 2MAI11

THE revisionist historians will try to use the death of bin laden to bring some sort of honor to the presidency of george w bush. He had nothing to due with this operation, and his policies delayed this day for years. If bush is to be remembered for anything it is his decision to logistically abandon the American troops in Afghanistan in the war against the taliban and al-qaida, leaving them short of troops, life saving body armor, weapons and all other vital material for the war effort. He will be remembered for his decision to turn his back, and take away the nation's military and intelligence resources from the effort in Afghanistan to crush the taliban and al-qaida and waste them on his illegal and immoral war in Iraq, a war for which he and many of his cabal are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity as well as an assault on the freedoms and civil liberties of all Americans. He too will be judged so day for all the blood on his hands, for the death and destruction, the pain and suffering he brought to so many in the world. This from HuffPost...
WASHINGTON -- As he announced the death of infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden on Sunday night, President Barack Obama struck an extraordinary contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.
That was to some degree unavoidable. Bush’s consistent failure to respond appropriately to bin Laden -- as a potential threat, as a fugitive, or as a public enemy no. 1 -- represents one of the greatest shortcomings of his presidency.
Obama has now succeeded where Bush failed. And it was impossible to hear Obama declare that "justice has been done" without thinking about how long it went undone.
But Obama also went out of his way to draw distinctions between how he approached the problem and how Bush did.
For instance, as the months and years went by after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- and Bush’s initial bluster about capturing the al Qaeda leader “dead or alive” became a source of embarrassment -- Bush began to insist that bin Laden himself wasn’t so very important.
"I truly am not that concerned about him," Bush said at a White House press conference on March 13, 2002. And of course the following March, he shifted America’s focus to Iraq, which proved to be a gigantic diversion.
Obama took a different tack."Shortly after taking office," the president explain Sunday night, "I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network."
Obama's comments on Sunday night were clearly directed not just to the American public but to the world, evoking images of the horror of 9/11 in an effort to dampen any possible al Qaeda propaganda value from bin Laden’s death.
By contrast, the tactics and the rhetoric of Bush’s “war on terror” -- most notably his decision to invade Iraq and the torture of Muslims in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere had served as al Qaeda’s most potent recruiting tools.
And to a nation of people who, nearly ten years after the terrorist attacks in America, are overwhelmingly despondent about both of the wars launched by Bush, Obama was at long last able to deliver something that, at least for a moment, seemed like victory: "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda,” he said.
Ironically, Obama’s announcement came eight years to the day after Bush famously and prematurely declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq after landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
And if all that weren’t clear enough, Obama made an explicit appeal to set the clock back to those days of national and international unity right after Sept. 11 -- before Bush took the nation to war in Iraq, subverted historical prohibitions against torture and domestic surveillance, and used fear of terror to achieve partisan goals.
"[T]onight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” Obama said. "I know that it has, at times, frayed."
As Obama noted, the U.S. was virtually a different country then.
"On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together," the president reminded the nation on Sunday night. "We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.”
The Bush record on bin Laden, of course, starts with him failing to prevent the attacks in the first place. As has been exhaustively documented by now, during the summer of 2001, his White House waved off repeated warnings of an imminent attack from former counterterrorism director Richard A. Clarke and then-CIA director George Tenet.
Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were said to be more focused on their pet issue, missile defense, and the hunt for a reason to attack Iraq. Bush, according to Bob Woodward, said he wasn't interested in "swatting flies."
The unsuccessful attempts to engage Bush culminated in a briefing he got while vacationing on his Texas ranch. As investigative reporter Ron Suskind reported in his book, "The One Percent Doctrine," an unnamed CIA operative flew to Crawford to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
"All right," Suskind reported Bush saying after hearing out the operative. "You've covered your ass, now."
Former President Bill Clinton in 2006 notably complained that he came close to killing bin Laden in a 1998 missile strike, while Bush and the "right wingers ... had eight months to try [before 9/11]. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."
Bush’s post-9/11 swagger may go down as one of history’s worst examples of false bravado. After the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban government quickly fell and al Qaeda retreated into the hills. But in December 2001, when bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush didn’t pull the trigger.
Then for more than three years, Bush treated bin Laden a lot like the wizards in the Harry Potter books treat He Who Must Not Be Named.
In the summer of 2005, Bush started invoking bin Laden again -- but this time, to win support for his Iraq policy, which was very much on the ropes.
"Hear the words of Osama bin Laden," Bush said, "'This Third World War is raging' in Iraq."
By 2006, on the stump for his fellow Republicans, Bush was citing bin Laden extensively. The president cast bin Laden as the oracular leader of a global movement, and warned of the possibility of an Islamic caliphate "stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia" -- an unsubstantiated fantasy with only one thing going for it: It served the political agendas of both men.
Meanwhile, in an Oval Office session that same month, Bush told to a group of conservative columnists that focusing on bin Laden didn’t fit with his military plans. Putting "100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work," he explained.
Yet, in his attempts to persuade the voting public of the dangers it faced, Bush gave bin Laden exactly the attention he seemed to crave.
After the 2008 presidential election, during which politicians from both parties publicly renounced him, Bush finally admitted some regret in an ABC News interview.
"Do I wish we had brought Osama bin Laden to justice? Sure," Bush said. "But he's not leading a lot of parades these days."
Bush stalwarts are now trying to make the case that their president deserves some, if not most, of the credit for dispatching bin Laden.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Sunday night called bin Laden’s death "a victory for the United States and a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission." As for Obama’s role? "I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice," Cantor said in a statement.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney similarly credited "the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission,” citing their "tireless work since 9/11." It was those years of effort, the majority of which were during the Bush administration, that "made this achievement possible, and enabled us to capture or kill thousands of al Qaeda terrorists and many of their leaders,” Cheney said in a press release.
A small group of young fans gathered outside Bush's house in Dallas Sunday night with a sign that read, "President Obama forgot to say... THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH."
Bush himself issued a brief statement congratulating Obama and declaring, "[t]he fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."




************************* Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for The Huffington Post. You can send him an email, bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get email alerts when he writes.