A woman shielded Osama bin Laden from gunfire during the assault by U.S. forces, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Monday.
"There was a female who was in fact in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield bin Laden from the incoming fire," said John Brennan, Obama's adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism.
Brennan said it was his understanding that bin Laden picked up a weapon and was killed in the firefight with the U.S. forces carrying out the assault.
"He was engaged in a firefight," Brennan said of bin Laden. "Whether or not he got off any rounds, I don't know."
certainly was worth the loss of life, human rights and trillions of dollars to have some smug, extremely hypocritical facebook status' ... God I hate facebook.
Completely agree that capturing Bin Laden would've caused huge problems for the United States, but I still can't condone executions.
Care to share?
I think the only problem it would have caused America is in exposing anything not to their liking, or presenting a minefield in actually prosecuting Bin Laden. We can see the immense difficulty the US has with Gitmo detainees and especially Sheikh Khalid getting prosecuted. And what would the sentence be? Lethal injection and martydom or life imprisonment and a feeling of incomplete justice?
To me, the fact they couldn't think of anything better to do with the body than throw it into the sea, would almost certainly mean they really wouldn't know what to do with OBL if they caught him. I think this was a planned assasination because taking him alive would have brought up so many other questions and skeletons, so they decided to just get it over with.
I also cant understand why you'd allow him to be killed if he could have potentially been a treasure-chest into intelligence on Al Qaeda. Just doesnt add up with me.
Uh-huh, uh-huh. And you have any idea about real military missions, as opposed to just, you know, films and TV and stuff?
I have had a stun grenade used on me, so I know first hand how effective they are. Maybe tranquillizer darts are pushing it a bit, but they could at least have tried to stun Bin Laden and handcuff him.
Osama will go down in history. History does not share our prejudices towards bad individuals, and neither does the media it seems. Just look how the media news-world are almost now handing him stardom.
There's no way he would have surrounded to his sworn enemies; he was always going to go down fighting and die a martyr. So, it's not really a question of did the US do the right thing killing him, as it's the only thing they could've done.
I have had a stun grenade used on me, so I know first hand how effective they are. Maybe tranquillizer darts are pushing it a bit, but they could at least have tried to stun Bin Laden and handcuff him.
Oh wow, you really don't know what you;re talking about.
For one, tranqualizer darts are the realm of fantasy, special forces have never used them on operations. And although 'stun' grenades can be effective, they are only really effective in a small area. And as I said before, they were in a firefight. Why don't you try having people firing guns at you, and see just how much you want to run toward them when they're firing blind to try and handcuff one of them?
I have had a stun grenade used on me, so I know first hand how effective they are. Maybe tranquillizer darts are pushing it a bit, but they could at least have tried to stun Bin Laden and handcuff him.
Stun grenades only temporarily disorientate a target - they don't literally stun them. It still would have been extremely difficult to get close