Osama Bin Laden Dead Thread

I haven't read the entire article yet, and maybe I'm missing something, but why on earth would this guy (or anyone involved in stuff like this) speak to Esquire or any reporter? I would have thought the "quiet professionalism" the article mentions meant you didn't talk to anyone about it, not that you spill your guts but just don't use your name in the article. Unless the reporter is making up his description of the amount of time he's spent with the guy (and others) and the level of detail he knows, it seems he's bound to know the guy's real name and all sorts of details about him--how hard would it be for an AQ cell to grab the reporter and a couple of members of his family and torture the guy's identity and/or location out of him? Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting story and I'm going to finish reading it, but it seems like a very bad idea to me, for a number of reasons.

I haven't read the entire article yet, and maybe I'm missing something, but why on earth would this guy (or anyone involved in stuff like this) speak to Esquire or any reporter? I would have thought the "quiet professionalism" the article mentions meant you didn't talk to anyone about it, not that you spill your guts but just don't use your name in the article. Unless the reporter is making up his description of the amount of time he's spent with the guy (and others) and the level of detail he knows, it seems he's bound to know the guy's real name and all sorts of details about him--how hard would it be for an AQ cell to grab the reporter and a couple of members of his family and torture the guy's identity and/or location out of him? Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting story and I'm going to finish reading it, but it seems like a very bad idea to me, for a number of reasons.

 

Read the article. Very long but worth it. My take is that he is trying to balance his quiet professionalism with the fact that he has no safety net for his family. No pension, income, or health benefits. He is also finding the job market a very challenging place to be right now.

The US gives cash out like candy bars. A child get's accidentally killed, 2-4k to the family for each family member killed, it is insane how much US cash get's diluted in the sandbox!

Great read, sad if its all true. Considering the details in the article, if someone put in the time it should be easy to figure out his identity. I'm not sure why either he or his country has put him in this position.

I too was thinking the same thing about how unwise it was to talk to this reporter, and how someone could find him by finding the reporter and squeezing him. Fascinating article though.

 

Hopefully, now that his situation (financial/career situation, that is) is public, SOMEONE, governmental or private, will step up and take care of these guys. We can't afford to do it for all ex-military, perhaps (which is still a damn shame), but for the TOP, top tier special ops guys (Devgru, Delta, Rangers, 160 SOAR, etc), for fcuk's sake, they should be getting guaranteed pensions, excellent health care for life, life insurance, and they should be getting paid more than 60K while they're in unit. This would all be not even a whiff of a drop in the bucket in the US budget.

 

Jeezus H., that is revolting.

 

 

Read the article. Very long but worth it. My take is that he is trying to balance his quiet professionalism with the fact that he has no safety net for his family. No pension, income, or health benefits. He is also finding the job market a very challenging place to be right now.

You nailed it, met him in Fl recently with a good friend of his that is helping him raise money for the team.

Just finished the article. Great read, sad situation.

 

My biggest question was why not find a way to transfer to some lower intensity position to ride out his tenure to the pension? Maybe that's just not possible but it seems like he left a lot on the table by leaving when he did vs. waiting a relatively short time longer.

 

There are private companies that pay well for his skill sets. The special forces community seems to care for their own. I feel like someone will give him an opportunity if he meets the right individuals.

My gut says there is more to this story.

 

Here's the deal.... You get the pension at 20. Everybody knows that... He knew that. I have no doubt he had other options. He could have easily gone to the training cadre for another 4 years, and he'd have the pension. If yelling at kids on a beach is too stressful, he could have gone into the reserves (they aren't going to call his ass up). He could have sucked up all the education Uncle Sam would pay for (and they will pay for a LOT). He doesn't want to be a shooter any more... Fine... There are plenty of jobs in the Navy that afford you that opportunity... (I know a guy who is doing that now- He did his combat, did some time at Coronado, got some .edu etc., and is now reserve. Meanwhile he sits at a private sector desk where his contacts and expertise are very useful.)

 

 

And there is also the GI bill... He can still take advantage of that, and make himself more marketable. If you have something WAITING FOR YOU, something BETTER, than sure, take that jump. But the article seems to be bitching that he doesn't get to retire at 35. ("Even if he had the pension, it only pays half his $60,000/ yr. salary"- yeah... No shit... The idea is you go do something else for the next 30 years.)

 

Maybe he's disabled (physically or mentally) and has to get out... Fine... He can collect disability and apply for Disabled Veterans assistance including loans and grants from the .gov. And there are dozens of private foundations designed to help just with this situation... Many exclusive to the NSW and socom communities.

 

Its a TIGHT community... A lot of these guys go on to BIG things, where they can help a guy in his position out... If they aren't beating down his door to give him a break, something else is up.

 

If I have a job and I get fired or laid off, thats one thing... If I quit, and I've got nothing else lined up, I don't get to complain that I don't have any money coming in. It doesn't matter if I'm a CEO, a grocery clerk or a ninja... That's big boy rules.

 

This entire article is politically motivated... Its timed to coincide with the sequester and the SOTU... "We can't CUT government spending!!! How will the guy who shot UBL find a job if the .gov isn't hiring?" I am going full tin foil right now... I don't know how much of the poor mouth stuff is the SEAL (Im guessing not much) and how much is the author? Because lets face it, the SEAL cant very well come forward and scream "That's all bullshit!" now can he? He's almost the perfect candidate for this type of "government largess disguised as patriotism" piece. Somebody who can never accuse you of taking a piece that's supposed to be about the greatest mission of his life, and turning it into a government welfare tome.

 

 

I am flying the colors from the yardarm.

 

 

 

 

 

FWIW, that all sounds a lot more like common sense than tin foil hat stuff. That's pretty much what I was thinking, but I was basing my thoughts on assumptions as I have no personal knowledge of the issues. But some of that stuff just screamed "does not compute." I mean who stays in the service for 17 years and gets out voluntarily when they know 3 more years will get them a lifetime pension of 50% of their pay? The way the story is written it makes it sound like he just couldn't take doing what he was doing any more and that his only option was to get out entirely, and I couldn't imagine that would be the case.

Another SEAL from the mission says story told by "The Shooter" is "complete BS":

 

(CNN) -- In February, Esquire magazine published a lengthy profile of "The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden." The story did not identify the killer by his real name, referring to him only as "the Shooter."

 

The Shooter told Esquire that the night bin Laden was killed he had encountered al Qaeda's leader face-to-face in the top-floor bedroom of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years.

 

The Shooter explained that when he found bin Laden in his bedroom the al Qaeda leader was standing up and had a gun "within reach" and it was only then that the Shooter fired the two shots into bin Laden's forehead that killed him. That account was in conflict with the account from another raid participant in a wildly successful book "No Easy Day."

 

Now, another member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed the bin Laden raid, tells CNN the story of the Shooter as presented in Esquire is false. According to this serving SEAL Team 6 operator, the story is "complete B-S."

 

SEAL Team 6 operators are now in "serious lockdown" when it comes to "talking to anybody" about the bin Laden raid and say they have been frustrated to see what they consider to be the inaccurate story in Esquire receive considerable play without a response. Phil Bronstein, who wrote the 15,000-word piece about the Shooter for Esquire, was booked on CNN, Fox and many other TV networks after his story came out.

 

Twenty-three SEALs and their interpreter assaulted the bin Laden compound just after midnight on the morning of May 2, 2011. They shot and killed bin Laden's two bodyguards, one of bin Laden's sons and the wife of one of the bodyguards and they also wounded two other women.

 

The first three SEALs to make it to the top floor of bin Laden's compound where he was believed to be living were "the point man," "the Shooter" profiled by Esquire, and Matt Bissonette, the SEAL who wrote "No Easy Day" under the pseudonym Mark Owen.

 

What actually happened the night of the raid, according to the SEAL Team 6 operator who I interviewed, is that the "point man" ran up the stairs to the top floor and shot bin Laden in the head when he saw what looked like bin Laden poking his head out his bedroom door. The shot gravely wounded al Qaeda's leader.

 

Having taken down bin Laden, the point man proceeded to rush two women he found in bin Laden's bedroom, gathering them in his arms to absorb the explosion in case they were wearing suicide vests, something that was a real concern of those who planned the raid.

 

Two more SEALs then entered bin Laden's bedroom and, seeing that al Qaeda's leader was lying mortally wounded on the floor, finished him off with shots to the chest.

 

This account of bin Laden's demise is considerably less heroic than how the Shooter is presented in Esquire, in which he says he shot bin Laden while he was standing up and only after he saw that al Qaeda's leader had a gun within reach.

 

The SEAL Team 6 operator who spoke to me says there is no way the Shooter could have seen a gun in bin Laden's reach because the two guns that were found in bin Laden's bedroom after al Qaeda's leader was killed were only found after a thorough search of the room and were sitting on a high shelf above the frame of the door that opened to bin Laden's bedroom.

 

The SEAL operator also points out there was a discussion before the raid in which the assault team was told "don't shoot the guy [bin Laden] in the face unless you have to" because the CIA would need to analyze good pictures of bin Laden's face for its facial recognition experts to work effectively. Yet the Shooter in the Esquire story says he shot bin Laden on purpose twice in the forehead.

 

A U.S. official familiar with the details of the raid said what the SEAL Team 6 operator told me about how Bin Laden was killed is in line with what happened, and that account "has it right in my view."

 

The SEAL Team 6 operator also tells CNN that the Shooter was "thrown off" of Red Squadron, the core of the SEAL Team 6 group that carried out the bin Laden raid, because he was bragging about his role in the raid in bars around Virginia Beach, Virginia, where SEAL Team 6 is based. In the Esquire article, the Shooter complains he is receiving no pension, since he left the military four years before the minimum 20 required to be eligible.

 

CNN spoke with Bronstein, the Esquire writer, who says he passed on CNN's written questions about the Shooter's role in the bin Laden raid to his story's main character. The Shooter has not responded to those questions and Bronstein declined to be interviewed on-the-record for this story.

 

Stephanie Tuck, a spokeswoman for Esquire, said via e-mail, "The Esquire article, 'The Shooter: The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden,' in the March 2013 issue, is based on information from numerous sources, including members of SEAL Team 6 and the Shooter himself, as well as detailed descriptions of mission debriefs. We stand by our story."

 

According to present and former members of SEAL Team 6, the "point man" who fired the shot that likely mortally wounded bin Laden will never "in a million years" speak publicly about his role in the raid. All laud the point man for his courageous decision to throw himself on the two women in bin Laden's room.

 

The new account of the night of the bin Laden raid provided by the serving SEAL Team 6 operator is essentially the same as in Bissonnette's "No Easy Day." Bissonnette says he was one of the first to run into bin Laden's bedroom and he saw that the point man's shots had mortally wounded bin Laden, and Bissonette then shot the dying al Qaeda leader as he lay on the floor.

 

Present and former members of SEAL Team 6 say they regard Bissonnette as more credible than the Shooter.

 

In a previous CNN.com story about the Esquire profile, I noted that I was the only outside observer allowed to tour bin Laden's Abbottabad compound before it was demolished in late February 2012.

 

During that tour I looked around the bedroom where bin Laden was killed. The Pakistani military officers who were guiding me pointed out a patch of dark, dried blood on the low ceiling of bin Laden's bedroom. This patch of congealed blood seems to be consistent with the Shooter's story that he fired two shots at the forehead of a "surprisingly tall terrorist" while he was standing up. At the time, the precise location of bin Laden when he was shot was not a matter of dispute.

 

But the blood patch could also be consistent with the account that it was the "point man" who first shot bin Laden. The point man is 5 feet 6 inches tall and was shooting upward at a tall man as he poked his head out of his bedroom.

 

The compound is, of course, now gone, so it is no longer possible to reconstruct what happened the night of the raid based on forensic evidence, although it is possible the Abbottabad Commission, a panel that was appointed by the Pakistani government to look into the raid, could shed some light on this question should its findings ever be publicly released.

 

Finally, by all accounts, it was a confusing situation the night of the bin Laden raid in Abbottabad. One of the SEAL team's helicopters had crashed and there was then a firefight with one of bin Laden bodyguards. All the electricity in the bin Laden compound and indeed the surrounding neighborhood was off on a moonless night and the SEALs were all wearing night vision goggles that allowed them only quite limited vision.

 

What seems incontrovertible is that the point man, the Shooter and Bissonnette were the first three SEALs to assault bin Laden's bedroom. But to determine exactly which of them killed bin Laden may never be possible.

 

What is certain is that it was a team effort.

 

Five days after the bin Laden raid, members of the SEAL team who killed al Qaeda's leader briefed President Obama. According to those in the room, the SEAL team commander explained to the president, "If you took one person out of the puzzle, we wouldn't have the competence to do the job we did; everybody's vital. It's not about the guy who pulled the trigger to kill bin Laden, it's about what we all did together."

 

Who really killed bin Laden?

Another article on the subject.

 

http://sofrep.com/18453/esquire-is-screwed...al-ubl-shooter/

You nailed it, met him in Fl recently with a good friend of his that is helping him raise money for the team.

 

 

Damn thats awesome! Pretty cool you actually got to meet him!!!

You nailed it, met him in Fl recently with a good friend of his that is helping him raise money for the team.

 

Latest articles on CNN make it sound like he got kicked out for running his mouth about the Operation in the bars around Virginia Beach. I don't have the "American Hero" feeling I had when I first read the Esquire article.

BTW: Watched Zero Dark Thirty the other night. A+

So... That article was ripped apart (the author apparently lied about some things like leaving out his VA benefits etc)... But I think I was first to smell the bullshit.

BTW: Watched Zero Dark Thirty the other night. A+

BTW: Watched Zero Dark Thirty the other night. A+

 

Watched it last night. Fantastic movie!!

 

Seal Team 6 are some bad motherfuckers!! :-)

I watched it last night too. Great movie. I was talking to a girl, friend of mine. She said the torture parts were kind of disturbing. I agreed, until you thought about who they were.

I watched it last night too. Great movie. I was talking to a girl, friend of mine. She said the torture parts were kind of disturbing. I agreed, until you thought about who they were.

 

Really? I thought they were really nice to them. Gave them food and drink in some instances. I can promise you it is worse when the shoe is on the other foot. AQ has a love for public be headings.

Bumping this thanks to the "torture report" being released:

 

The report points out that the courier was in touch with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, and that it was SIGINT (signals intelligence) from phones and email traffic that made this link first in 2002, well before any CIA detainees made such a connection.

Indeed, in a fascinating footnote, the report makes the case that it was "voice cuts" of the courier that were first collected in 2002 that were matched eight years later to the Kuwaiti and were "geolocated" to an area of Pakistan in 2010 where he was traveling around. This was a crucial lead that helped prompt the CIA to examine the mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was hiding.

In 2002, reports from four different detainees held by foreign governments provided important information about the courier's age, physical appearance and family, information that was also acquired prior to any information about the courier being obtained from CIA detainees. Detainees held by foreign governments also said that the courier was close to bin Laden.

It was Hassan Ghul, an al Qaeda operative captured in Iraqi Kurdistan, who provided the most detailed account of bin Laden's courier and his relationship to bin Laden in January 2004, before he entered CIA custody.

According to a CIA official cited in the report, Ghul, who was in Kurdish custody, "sang like a tweetie bird. He opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset."

Ghul described the courier as bin Laden's "closest assistant" and "one of three individuals likely to be with" al Qaeda's leader. And he correctly surmised that bin Laden would have minimal security and "likely lived in a house with a family somewhere in Pakistan."

 

If there was good intelligence coming from sources that were not in CIA custody, the Senate report demonstrates that the detainees who were in CIA custody and were subjected to coercive interrogations made every effort to hide the significance of bin Laden's courier.

Five of the most senior al-Qaeda detainees in CIA custody, all of whom were subjected to some of the most intensive coercive interrogation techniques, variously said that the courier worked only with low level members of al Qaeda; that he was not a courier for bin Laden; that he wasn't close to al Qaeda's leader, and that he was focused only on his family following his marriage in 2002. None of this, of course, was true.

 

 

....................

 

 

 

A large break, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials, came in 2007, when a foreign intelligence service that they won't identify told the CIA that the Kuwaiti's real name was Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed.

It would still take three more years for the CIA to find Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed in Pakistan, a country with a population of 180 million. This involved painstaking work going through reams of phone conversations to try to locate him through his family and circle of associates.

In June 2010, the Kuwaiti and his brother both made changes in the way they communicated on cell phone, which suddenly opened up the possibility of the "geolocation" of both their phones, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

Finally, sometime in the late summer of 2010, the Kuwaiti received a call from an old friend in the Persian Gulf, a man whom U.S. intelligence officials were monitoring. "We've missed you. Where have you been?" asked the friend. The Kuwaiti responded elliptically. "I'm back with the people I was with before." There was a tense pause in the conversation as the friend mulled over that response. Likely realizing that the Kuwaiti was back in bin Laden's inner circle, the caller replied after some hesitation, "May God facilitate."

The CIA took this call as a confirmation that the Kuwaiti was still working with al Qaeda, a matter that officials were still not entirely sure about.

The National Security Agency was listening to this exchange and through geolocation technologies was able to zero in on the Kuwaiti's cell phone in northwestern Pakistan. But the Kuwaiti practiced rigorous operational security and was always careful to insert the battery in his phone and turn it on only when he was at least an hour's drive away from the Abbottabad compound where he and bin Laden were living. To find out where the Kuwaiti lived by monitoring his cell phone would only go so far.

In August 2010, a Pakistani "asset" working for the CIA tracked the Kuwaiti to the crowded city of Peshawar, where bin Laden had founded al Qaeda more than two decades earlier. In the years when bin Laden was residing in the Abbottabad compound, the Kuwaiti would regularly transit though Peshawar, as it is the gateway to the Pakistani tribal regions where al Qaeda had regrouped in the years after 9/11.

Once the CIA asset had identified the Kuwaiti's distinctive white Suzuki SUV with a spare tire on its back in Peshawar, the CIA was able to follow him as he drove home to Abbottabad, more than two hours' drive to the east.

The large compound where the Kuwaiti finally alighted immediately drew interest at the agency because it didn't have phone or Internet service, which implied its owners wanted to stay off the grid.

Soon, some CIA officials would come to believe that bin Laden himself was living there.

They were, of course, right.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/opinion/berg....html?hpt=hp_t1

I for the life of me, can not think of any good reason to release that report. The bullshit that decripit old fcuk from california says about "all the people who work fo the CIA and dont stand for this" is such a load of horse shit. All i can figure is they saw their stock price plummet worse then enron and now they are just flinging shit to try and bring everyone down. Fienstien just needs to die.

I for the life of me, can not think of any good reason to release that report. The bullshit that decripit old fcuk from california says about "all the people who work fo the CIA and dont stand for this" is such a load of horse shit. All i can figure is they saw their stock price plummet worse then enron and now they are just flinging shit to try and bring everyone down. Fienstien just needs to die.

 

The report was released yesterday to distract from the Jonathan Gruber grilling by the House Oversight Committee.

 

You heard nothing about this on the nightly news just as you have heard nothing from them on Benghazi or the IRS targeting conservatives and or members of the TEA party.

 

The Obama administration - The most corrupt law breaking administration ever.

 

All I can hope is that if and when society comes unglued here that the news media get linched first.

Yeah they didn't show any anal feeding in zero dark thirty.

So in other words its a distracting anti-torture report that tries to come to an anti-torture conclusion through poor logical reasoning.

 

This poor logical reasoning being obviously that them thinking Kuwaiti was just KSMs courier in 2002 lead to the killing of OBL is just preposterous. It took interrogations for them to find out he was a courier for OBL, that information then developed into them sharing that info with other foreign intelligence agencies including the Kuwaiti's who likely tortured Ghul to find out that Kuwaiti was extremely close to OBL.

Got that fucker 5 years ago today.