OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

[MKSheppard]

GulfNews

Dubai: The compound in Abbottabad where Osama Bin Laden was killed was once used as a safe house by Pakistan's premier intelligence agency ISI, Gulf News has learnt.

"This area had been used as ISI's safe house, but it was not under their use any more because they keep on changing their locations," a senior intelligence official confided to Gulf News. However, he did not reveal when and for how long it was used by the ISI operatives. Another official cautiously said "it may not be the same house but the same compound or area used by the ISI".

The official also confirmed that the house was rented out by Afghan nationals and is not owned by the government. The house is located just 800 metres away from the Pakistan Military Academy and some former senior military officials live nearby.

Abbottabad is a garrison town located just 50 kilometres north of Islamabad and it is a popular summer resort, originally built by the British during colonial rule. The city houses a number of upscale educational institutions and religious schools as well.

Secluded affluence

According to the briefing by senior US officials on the killing of Bin Laden, the area is relatively affluent, with lots of retired military staff. It is also insulated from the natural disasters and terrorist attacks that have afflicted other parts of Pakistan — an extraordinarily unique compound. The compound sits on a large plot of land in an area that was relatively secluded when it was built. It is roughly eight times larger than nearby homes.

The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary.

It has 12-to-18-foot outer walls, topped with barbed wires. Internal walls sectioned off different portions of the compound to provide extra privacy.

Access to the compound is restricted by two security gates and the residents of the compound burnt their trash, unlike their neighbours, who put the trash out for collection.

The property is valued at approximately $1 million (Dh3.67 million), but has no telephone or Internet connection.

--------------------------------------

Link

American diplomats were told that one of the key reasons why they had failed to find bin Laden was that Pakistan’s security services tipped him off whenever US troops approached.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) also allegedly smuggled al-Qaeda terrorists through airport security to help them avoid capture and sent a unit into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.

The claims, made in leaked US government files obtained by Wikileaks, will add to questions over Pakistan’s capacity to fight al-Qaeda.

Last year, David Cameron caused a diplomatic furore when he told Pakistan that it could not “look both ways” on terrorism. The Pakistani government issued a strongly-worded rebuttal.

But bin Laden was eventually tracked down and killed in compound located just a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s prestigious military academy in Abbotabad.

The raid by elite US troops was kept secret from the government of Pakistan. Only a tight circle within the Obama Administration knew of the operation.

In December 2009, the government of Tajikistan warned the United States that efforts to catch bin Laden were being thwarted by corrupt Pakistani spies.

According to a US diplomatic dispatch, General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, a senior Tajik counterterrorism official, told the Americans that “many” inside Pakistan knew where bin Laden was.

The document stated: “In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces.”

Intelligence gathered from detainees at Guantanamo Bay may also have made the Americans wary of sharing their operational plans with the Pakistani government.

One detainee, Saber Lal Melma, an Afghan whom the US described as a probable facilitator for al-Qaeda, allegedly worked with the ISID to help members flee Afghanistan after the American bombing began in October 2001.

His US military Guantanamo Bay detainee file, obtained by Wikileaks and seen by The Daily Telegraph, claims he allegedly passed the al-Qaeda Arabs to Pakistani security forces who then smuggled them across the border into Pakistan.

He was also overheard “bragging about a time when the ISID sent a military unit into Afghanistan, posing as civilians to fight along side the Taliban against US forces”.

He also allegedly detailed “ISID's protection of Al-Qaida members at Pakistan airports. The ISID members diverted Al-Qaida members through unofficial channels to avoid detection from officials in search of terrorists,” the file claims.

-------------------

Quick thoughts:
This throws RAYMOND DAVIS (aka BOURNE) into a new light -- why was Obama so hardcore about him being released?

Where he was arrested after the shootout was only 4 hours away from Abbotbad by ground teavel.

[Covenant]

Simon, the very reasonable explanation could be that the woman was there in a normal capacity (wife or whatever) and that in the chaotic firefight, some cowardly terrorist douchewad decided to hide behind her and she got killed. Lemme quote from a rather... unpleasent source, the Talking Points Memo article on this:

Bin Laden engaged in the firefight, but it was unclear if he picked up a firearm or shot any rounds. Brennan also identified bin Laden as the combatant who had used a woman as a human shield. She was the only woman who died in the operation, which also killed a courier for bin Laden, the courier's brother, and one of bin Laden's sons, Brennan said. Brennan later said it was his understanding that the woman was one of bin Laden's wives.

I've heard it reported elsewhere. Honestly, unless you're going to question the actual accounts, it seems unlikely that she was just chilling in Osama's rec-room playing Call of Duty.

[MKSheppard]

Obama took a really big risk here. I hate daily kos myself with a passion; but a writer there made a good point:

Link

I have another diary on the Rec List right now on the apprehension of Osama bin Laden, but something just occurred to me in reading over the comments that does not quite fit there, so I'm making it a separate diary. I think that it's a point that has been lost, because -- not for the first time -- Obama has made his job look too easy, so easy that he doesn't get credit for what he's done.

I just did a Google search on a phrase that one would expect to see at a time like this, but that has not appeared within the past 24 hours: "staked his Presidency."

Why does Obama deserve credit for this when, from descriptions of it, he attended a few meetings and gave a go-ahead? He didn't even have to sweat about it, right?

Consider: this operation could have failed.

Consider: we almost lost the Obama Presidency yesterday. If the second helicopter had also failed, perhaps we have a crash, perhaps we have Navy SEALs as hostages. A thousand things could have gone wrong. They didn't. That's partially due to careful planning; it's partially because Obama "went all in."

...

We all assume that Obama is our 2012 nominee. (He does too.) And yet: had there been a disaster yesterday, as with Jimmy Carter's equally brave decision to try to rescue the Iranian hostages in 1980, then we could truly have seen an injury to his Presidency that the Republicans would have tried their damnedest to make sure ruined his Presidency -- possibly, in the worst case, enough to keep him from even running.

That's what he gambled on yesterday. He staked his Presidency on this. And he won.

Seems a little less passive when you think of it as a profile in political courage, doesn't it? Would G.W. Bush have ever done something this politically brave?

So yeah, share the credit. Bush said we're going to get him, then he said he didn't much care -- and he got re-elected anyway. If the Presidency were a bowling alley, Bush's would have been the one for kids with those cushions in the gutters to keep the ball in the alley.

Obama knew that his political future was on the line in Abbottabad. And he went ahead and did what was right -- even with Republicans ready to pounce on any failure, as with Clinton's order in Somalia leading to "Black Hawk Down."

Obviously, I haven't watched all of the news since then, but in what I've heard and read I have not even seen this realization.

Mr. President, please -- don't make it look this easy! Someone, some Senator, remind people how large of a bet he had calmly placed, that he had staked his Presidency on an outcome he could not control. That, even more than the happy result, is why this is a moment of greatness.

[FSTargetDrone]

Simon, the very reasonable explanation could be that the woman was there in a normal capacity (wife or whatever) and that in the chaotic firefight, some cowardly terrorist douchewad decided to hide behind her and she got killed.

Yeah, for all we know, bin Laden himself grabbed the woman and put her between himself and the US forces. That seems plausible enough. The whole house could have been slaughtered, but apparently wasn't, so they weren't exactly in there spraying and praying.

[Covenant]

Simon, the very reasonable explanation could be that the woman was there in a normal capacity (wife or whatever) and that in the chaotic firefight, some cowardly terrorist douchewad decided to hide behind her and she got killed.

Yeah, for all we know, bin Laden himself grabbed the woman and put her between himself and the US forces. That seems plausible enough. The whole house could have been slaughtered, but apparently wasn't, so they weren't exactly in there spraying and praying.

Brennen identified bin Ladin as the guy who used the human shield, though it's early and who knows, a lot of this info is coming from conservative blogs, and "bin Ladin cowardly hides behind woman" makes a great story header so it may or may not be exactly accurate. It sounds like she may have been armed from the snippit I quoted. It also sounds like his guards were the ones that shot down the chopper too, so that may have bolloxed up any attempt to drag him out alive.

[MKSheppard]

Apparently we used MH-60s from Ghazi AFB in Pakistan.



We also double tapped him to the left side of his face. Which may explain why no photos have surfaced or been released -- it wouldn't have been pretty.

[MKSheppard]

Apparently the last place on earth that held OBL's remains before we dumped him at sea was USS Carl Vinson, CVAN-70.

[MKSheppard]

I think we are getting distracted here from the most crucial question of today (and this morning):

Which rifle do you think the Navy Seals used to kill Bin Laden?

FN SCAR
M4A1 Carbine
Mk18
HK416

[Pelranius]

I think we are getting distracted here from the most crucial question of today (and this morning):

Which rifle do you think the Navy Seals used to kill Bin Laden?

FN SCAR
M4A1 Carbine
Mk18
HK416

My bet is on the M4A1.

[Sea Skimmer]

My bet is on the M4A1.

Standard SEAL rifle is Mk18 now; which is part M4A1 but with a new custom upper receiver. SOCOM has some new custom heavyweight 5.56mm ball, 77 grain I think, to go with it. I believe the regular Aamy may now have adapted that bullet too, I forget. Odds would favor he died from this weapon, or else from a machine gun.

Interestingly US is claiming one helicopter had a ‘mechanical problem’ that prevented a rope insertion so they did a ‘soft crash landing’ instead. I’m thinking 99.9995% chance that the plan always called for crashing a chopper in the compound exactly as was done in the Sơn Tây raid. Crashing and then having everyone in the chopper, pilot and copilot included make the assault is just the fastest way to do things. But they won't say that to the media because the media is stupid.

[Pelranius]

My bet is on the M4A1.

Standard SEAL rifle is Mk18 now; which is part M4A1 but with a new custom upper receiver. SOCOM has some new custom heavyweight 5.56mm ball, 77 grain I think, to go with it. I believe the regular Aamy may now have adapted that bullet too, I forget. Odds would favor he died from this weapon, or else from a machine gun.

Interestingly US is claiming one helicopter had a ‘mechanical problem’ that prevented a rope insertion so they did a ‘soft crash landing’ instead. I’m thinking 99.9995% chance that the plan always called for crashing a chopper in the compound exactly as was done in the Sơn Tây raid. Crashing and then having everyone in the chopper, pilot and copilot included make the assault is just the fastest way to do things. But they won't say that to the media because the media is stupid.

Not to mention various idiots in the audience and punditocracy braying about the loss of a multi million dollar helicopter as government waste.

Interesting if they actually did base it from Ghazi.

[MKSheppard]

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

------------



Some background on PMA Kakul

Link

The Pakistan Military Academy (also known as PMA or Kakul (Urdu: پاکستان فوجی درسگاہ; Pakestan Fewja Dersegah) is a four-year coeducational federal service military academy.[1] It is located at Kakul near Abbottabad in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The Pakistan Military Academy is similar in function to Sandhurst, Saint-Cyr, and West Point, and provides training to the officers of Pakistan Army. The academy has three training battalions and 12 companies. Another 2,000 guests each year, from over 34 countries, receive some training at PMA.

This would be like Israel finding Hitler living a few blocks down the road from West Point or Sandhurst.

[MKSheppard]

From Wired' Danger Room: LINK

OBL was effectively drone proof due to PMA Kakul being down the road from him and also being the HQ/garrison for the Baluch Regiment of the Pakistani Army.

It's also within the ADIZ for Islamabad. So no way is a drone even going to get overhead. Also, a Reaper can only carry 4 x 500 lb bombs -- not enough to ensure target death with a lot of blast walls in the compound.

It's why back in March, Obama was presented with a plan to use the B-2A to liquidate Osama with 16 x 2,000 lb bombs flattening the compound to rubble.

[FSTargetDrone]

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

That photo and others can be found in high resolution at the White House Flickr page.

[MKSheppard]

Lonestar raised a point to me:

A while back there was a lot of hubbub over the "Beast of Kandahar" and why would we deploy a Stealth UAV to Afghanistan of all places?

It's looking more likely that we used the BoK to penetrate Islamabad's ADIZ to spy on that mansion and other sites of interest to us.

----------

aaand it's semi official:

Link

The killing of Osama bin Laden reportedly included a starring role for the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel -- the stealth unmanned aircraft system (UAS) acknowledged to exist by the US Air Force on 16 months ago.

The National Journal's Marc Ambinder got the scoop about 1am this morning, when he tweeted: "US Joint Special Operations Command SMU -- from DEVGRU (Navy SEALs), did the shooting. RQ-170 drone overhead. JSOC spotters on ground."

In confirmed, this would be the first operation directly linked to the secretive RQ-170. Although the USAF has acknowledged its existence, it has never released an official photo. The UAS has been glimpsed only through a series of photos released by spotters around the US airfield at Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Ambinder's tweet also may shed light on the RQ-170's mission, which has never been clarified. It is clearly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but its role in the Abbottabad raid suggests it can transmit full motion video in real-time. It also may be the source of the hyper-spectral sensor cited in Ambinder's other reporting.

[MKSheppard]

USNA, Annapolis, MD
Link 1
Link 2

USMA, West Point, NY
Link

Washington, DC
Link

New York, NY
Link

[Lonestar]

The guy using the flag as a cape really adds a special kind of class to the festivities.

[NecronLord]

Split complete, starting from the post where Bakustra posted the thing about the objective being to kill not capture. There may be some leftovers but I think it should suffice. Please direct all discussion of the legality of this incident to the new thread, here.

[MKSheppard]

Artistic recreation of our helicopters landing in Afghanistan

(One rumor says we took off in Afghanistan, landed and refuelled at that AFB in Pakistan and then went on to hit OBL's compound)

[MKSheppard]

Link

By MIKE ALLEN | 5/2/11 7:51 PM EDT
The assault force of Navy SEALs snatched a trove of computer drives and disks during their weekend raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, yielding what a U.S. official called “the mother lode of intelligence.”

The special operations forces grabbed personal computers, thumb drives and electronic equipment during the lightning raid that killed bin Laden, officials told POLITICO.

“They cleaned it out,” one official said. “Can you imagine what’s on Osama bin Laden’s hard drive?”

U.S. officials are about to find out. The material is being examined at a secret location in Afghanistan.

“Hundreds of people are going through it now,” an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

“It’s going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable,” the official said.

Savoring the military and intelligence triumph, officials late Monday described new details about how the mission unfolded:

The SEALs took fire on their way to the compound’s third floor, where bin Laden had been sleeping, officials said. The encounter with bin Laden lasted only seconds, and ended with a kill shot to his face.

The team’s photos of bin Laden are gruesome, complicating officials’ deliberations about whether to release them.

Officials also have images of bin Laden in a white shroud before his burial at sea.

The raid was not supposed to last more than 30 minutes. The forces finished in 38 minutes, even though they lost one of their choppers and had to go to a back-up plan.

Four helicopters were used in the raid. Two went in, and two were in reserve.

Hovering above the compound on the way in, one of the choppers developed a mechanical problem that caused it to lose lift, officials said. The pilot made a controlled landing, according to the officials. When he couldn’t get the bird airborne again, the SEALs blew it up and left in one of the reserves.

Officials described the reaction of the special operators when they were told a number of weeks ago that they had been chosen to train for the mission.

“They were told, ‘We think we found Osama bin Laden, and your job is to kill him,’” an official recalled.

The SEALs started to cheer.

Radioing a commander on Sunday, the team reported the capture with a pre-arranged signal: “Geronimo!”

[Guardsman Bass]

I thought this was an interesting essay on why Bin Laden's death mattered:

Bin Laden's death will have profound implications for al Qaeda -- and for U.S. engagement in the Middle East.

After the United States and the world absorb the startling news of Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Special Operations Forces, speculation will quickly turn to what this means for his organization. Equally important, however, is what this means for U.S. counterterrorism policy now that its enemy No. 1 has fallen.

For al Qaeda, they have lost a powerful symbol of resistance to the United States. Bin Laden embodied the jihadi ethos and history. He was a wealthy man who had turned his back on the world to save his community from the godless communists and then the Great Satan. Every time he appeared on television was further proof to his followers of his divine mandate. They may hail him as a martyr now but they will no longer draw comfort from his intermittent statements.

On an operational level, we still do not know enough about bin Laden's role. Based on press reports about the way he ran the organization during the last decade, bin Laden was probably consulted before al Qaeda Central or its affiliates carried out high impact attacks.

As for financing and friends, bin Laden attracted a lot of money from wealthy donors and he had long-standing ties to influential militants along the Af-Pak border, particularly the Haqqani network. Those donations and ties are now in jeopardy. Moreover, if it is true that the Haqqani network was protecting bin Laden, as some in the press have reported, they have lost a major card to play against their opponents and allies. They will likely be more vulnerable now to pressure. If they are also protecting Zawahiri, his protection is now more tenuous.

Bin Laden's death leaves a gaping hole at the top of the organization that will be difficult to fill. Both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Yahya al-Libi are well thought of in the militant community, but they are not of bin Laden's stature. They are also likely going to go even further underground now. Perhaps the center of gravity will shift to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has an ideologue that transfixes Western media -- Anwar al-Awliki -- and an external operational capability that rivals or surpasses that of al Qaeda Central.

Whatever the case may be, one need only look at the damage done by demise of Abu Musab al Zarqawi to start gaming out some of the implications for al Qaeda Central. Many analysts deemed his death to be of little consequence to al Qaeda in Iraq and indeed they continue to carry out attacks. But without his charisma and vision, the group has lost its way strategically and now fails to influence the trajectory of politics in Iraq.

Bin Laden's death may also have far reaching implications for U.S. counterterrorism policy. There has been declining American public support for the war in Afghanistan, whose primary mission is defeating al Qaeda. The administration will likely argue that that mission is not accomplished but the American public will increasingly feel there is little reason to remain when our primary enemy is dead. The pressure to bring the troops home will become immense.

The convergence of bin Laden's death with the Arab Spring and the end of the U.S. combat presence in Iraq also provides a pivot point for reframing the basis of U.S. engagement in the Middle East away from counterterrorism and toward building democratic states with security forces who are primarily responsible for protecting their citizens, not indefinitely detaining opponents of corrupt regimes as terrorists. The administration is already headed in that direction but bin Laden's death completes the arc of the storyline.

William McCants, the founder and co-editor of Jihadica, is a research analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies at CNA and adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University.

[MKSheppard]

Diane Feinstein

WASHINGTON -- Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Monday that Osama bin Laden had been living on the compound where he was killed for up to six years and expressed concern that the Pakistani government may have known.

“It appears that Osama bin Laden and his family could have lived there for up to six years,” Feinstein told reporters at the Capitol. “This compound has been around [for up to six years] and that’s the belief. I said up to six years.”

The California Democrat voiced concerns that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), may have known bin Laden was there and not done anything about it, particularly given the compound’s massive size and proximity to Islamabad.

“It’s very hard for me to understand how Pakistani [leaders], particularly the ISI, would not have known that something was going on in that compound,” she said. “I’ve had a growing concern that the Pakistani government … is really walking both sides of the street.”

Feinstein stopped short of calling for cutting off $1.1 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan for counter-insurgency efforts. But she floated the idea of restructuring those funds in a different way.

“Our government is in fiscal distress,” she said. “To make contributions to a country that isn’t going to be fully supportive is a problem for many.”

Feinstein noted that members of the Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the compound “for some time” and that fact that nobody leaked information about it is “very special.” She also gave President Barack Obama credit “for having the gumption to make the decision” to attack the compound when it still wasn’t 100 percent certain that bin Laden was there. Intelligence officials had been tracking the compound for a while and there was some “actionable intelligence” that bin Laden was there, but nobody had actually identified him yet, she said.

Feinstein isn’t the only key Democrat raising concerns about the Pakistani government's potential knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts: Sen. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), who chairs the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said it may be time for “a review” of U.S. aid to Pakistan.

“I hate to take a phrase from the past, but someone once said, ‘Trust but verify,’” he said.

Granted, the compound itself is only five years old -- it was an empty field in 2004. But Feinstein's statement, even if it is off by a year is very disturbing.

But the next bit is even more disturbing:

Link 2

Excerpted..........

In one early clue, according to a secret Pentagon cable made public by Wikileaks, senior Al Qaeda commander Abu al Libi told interrogators he became "the official messenger" for bin Laden and for a year in 2003 "moved his family to Abbottabad, Pakistan" -- the city near Islamabad where bin Laden was killed Sunday.

By August of last year, the CIA had a sharp focus on a newly built compound in the Abbottabad, suspicious of its large size and extensive security features, including a seven-foot wall on the terrace so the very tall bin Laden could be outside without being seen.

A family of the same size as bin Laden's was seen here, although bin Laden himself was never actually spotted.

But since August he had sent out, at least two new taped messages. One of them, remarkably, last October, focused on the severe flooding that had just occurred in the Abbottabad region....

One of OBL's couriers moving his family to that specific city in 2003????

It's quite plausible that OBL was in Abbotabad from maybe 2004 onwards. It also explains why we never really saw that many videos -- because it would have become obvious that he wasn't hiding in a caveand given us clues that we could have used to nail down where he was; like a brand of detergent only sold in pakistan, etc.

[FSTargetDrone]

Yet more information about the burial at sea:

May 2, 2011

Islamic Scholars Split Over Sea Burial for Bin Laden

By JOHN LELAND and ELISABETH BUMILLER

White House officials decided before Sunday’s firefight in northern Pakistan that if American troops killed Osama bin Laden, they would bury him at sea in order to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for his followers, a White House official said Monday. They planned to include all rites associated with Muslim burials, the official added.

American officials stressed Monday that the sea burial followed Islamic custom. “The disposal of — the burial of Bin Laden’s remains was done in strict conformance with Islamic precepts and practices,” said John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, who added that the administration had consulted with Islamic experts.

“It was prepared in accordance with the Islamic requirements,” he said. “We early on made provisions for that type of burial, and we wanted to make sure that it was going to be done, again, in strict conformance. So it was taken care of in the appropriate way.”

But some Islamic scholars and clerics were divided Monday over whether the sea burial was appropriate or an insult to Muslims. Several said Bin Laden should have been buried on land in a simple grave. The sea burial, off an American aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Sea, added an ambiguous coda to a life that had been clouded in secrecy over the past decade.

According to a senior American intelligence official, after members of the Navy Seals killed the man they believed to be Bin Laden at a compound in Pakistan on Sunday, C.I.A. agents compared DNA samples with the profiles of several family members to confirm his identity, finding a “virtually 100 percent” match.

One of Bin Laden’s wives who was living in the compound identified the body, the official added. C.I.A. specialists also compared photographs of the body with known photographs of Bin Laden. Mr. Brennan said the various forms of identification created “a growing sense of confidence and a growing sense of accomplishment.”

“There wasn’t one ‘aha’ when people say, you know, O.K., the DNA results came in,” he said. “No, this is something that was building over time, and we made a decision then last night, because we felt as though we were confident enough to go out to the American people and out to the world, to say we got him.”

Mr. Brennan added that the administration had not yet decided whether to release photographs of the body. The indecision over whether to release the photographs reflected the administration’s desire to end speculation about whether the man killed was really Bin Laden — and its fears that the pictures would inflame and rally jihadis.

Defense officials said that the administration reached out to one other country to take the body for burial, but that the country refused. One official, who like others quoted in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules imposed by the administration, would not name the country, though some news outlets have cited Saudi Arabia, where Bin Laden was once a citizen.

Mr. Brennan said that appealing to other countries would have exceeded the time frame that Islamic custom requires, of burial within 24 hours of death.

After the firefight in Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, military forces transferred the body to the American aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, in the North Arabian Sea, first making an unspecified stop en route, a senior defense official said. The body was washed in accordance with Islamic custom, placed in a white sheet, then put inside a weighted bag.

With only a small group of witnesses, a military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a “native speaker,” the official said. The body was placed on a board, tipped up and then “eased into the sea” from the carrier’s lowest deck, the official said.

It was unclear on Monday to what extent the thousands of sailors and other personnel aboard the Carl Vinson were aware of the burial as it was occurring. The official did not identify the native speaker or say whether he was a Muslim cleric.

Akbar Ahmed, the chairman of the Islamic studies department at American University, said the sea burial prevented Bin Laden’s resting place from becoming a focus for discontent. “Shrines are very powerful,” he said. “Shrines of controversial figures in Muslim history become centers to attract the angry, the disenchanted. The shrine bestows powers of religious charisma. If they allowed Osama bin Laden to be buried in Pakistan, his followers would show up, plant flowers, and women will say the shrine has healing powers, especially among the uneducated. His myth would continue to grow.”

On the other hand, Professor Ahmed said, the secretive burial at sea may also give rise to anger and speculation about whether Bin Laden was really dead. “You really want to see him. When something like this is done under cover of dark, it leaves a lot of people asking questions.”

John Leland reported from New York, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

I saw something else that suggested that a shrine would not be an issue, but I think it's best to have erred on the side of caution.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, it looks like the right wing's descent into utter madness has begun. Starting with FoxGOP tossing rocks at Obama for getting done the job their beloved Decider couldn't even be bothered with.

Media Matters link

Called it. Tiny right wing brains just cannot cope with reality even for a second.

[MKSheppard]

This one-meter resolution image shows a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. According to news reports Abbottabad is the town where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces. The image was collected by the IKONOS satellite on May 2, 2011 at 10:51 a.m. local time while flying 423 miles above the Earth at an average speed of 17,000 mph, or four miles per second.



(Blown up 400% from the image at LINK)