Osama Bin Laden Is DEAD!

[Logan Darklighter]

Updates via HotAir:

Update (AP): Nicholas Jackson of the Atlantic says the location of the compound has already been marked — by someone — on Google Maps.
Follow the link and have a look. Assuming it’s correct, the compound
is less than a thousand feet away from a (rundown) Pakistani police
station.

Update (AP): WSJ reporter Tom Wright
notes an amazing coincidence: Arch-terrorist and longtime Bin Laden
crony Umar Patek was also captured in Abbottabad three months ago.
Here’s a Jakarta Post
story on the arrest published just two weeks ago. (Patek is Indonesian
and was linked to the Bali bombings in 2002.) Pakistani intel is now
claiming, per Wright, that they helped lead the U.S. to Bin Laden via
information gleaned from Patek. That seems unlikely — apparently, we’ve
known Bin Laden was in Abbottabad for six months or so, and if Pakistan
was providing intel on OBL, Obama wouldn’t have waited until after
today’s operation to phone Zardari. Still, it’s too startling a
coincidence to actually be a coincidence. Did Patek lead us right to
Bin Laden’s door by rendezvousing with him? And why didn’t Bin Laden
run once Patek was picked up? He must have known by then that either
Pakistan or the U.S. was interested in arresting local super-terrorists.

Update (AP): Howard Kurtz listened in on a conference call given by U.S. officials about the raid on the compound:

Security at the compound was “extraordinary,” an official
said, with 12- to 18-foot walls topped by barbed wire. Yet the $1
million compound had no phone or Internet service. “Our best assessment
was that bin Laden was living there with several family members,
including his youngest wife,” the official said.

Asked what bin Laden did once the U.S. team landed, an official would say only: “He did resist the assault force.”

Officials said three other men were killed in the raid—one who is believed to be bin Laden’s adult son, and two couriers. One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by one of the combatants, they said. The U.S. team lost a helicopter due to mechanical failure.

I can’t wait for the full details tomorrow and then, in a year or two, the inevitable movie. More from ABC News and Brian Ross. It was, of course, the Navy SEALs who were the tip of the spear:

The U.S. had been monitoring the compound in Abbottabad
for months after receiving a tip in August that Bin Laden might be
seeking shelter there. He had long been said to be in the mountainous
region along the Afghanistan, Pakistan border, hiding in a cave as the
U.S. sought to kill him with drone strikes from above. Instead, he was
in a house eight times larger than its neighbors, with a seven-foot wall
and valued at $1 million. The house had no phone of television and the
residents burned their trash. The house had high windows and few points
of access, and U.S. officials concluded it had been built to hide
someone.

According to U.S. officials, two U.S. helicopters swept into the
compound at 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Twenty to 25 U.S. Navy
Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command in
cooperation with the CIA stormed the compound and engaged Bin Laden and
his men in a firefight, killed Bin Laden and all those with him.

Pakistani officials say it was a joint operation; U.S. officials say
that only Americans were involved in the raid. Hmmmm. Oh — and Bin
Laden did, reportedly, fire his gun. Savor the terror he must have felt
in those last moments as those SEALs came through the windows and
doors.