This guy was in abbotabad reporting what he was hearing on Twitter.....some of them are hilarious........ https://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual
In the Situ room as it happened: Stress. Well anyway. I hope every one of those guys that had boots on ground gets an invite to the White House. No press, just a sincere thank you and a chance to tell their story in their own words to the top, to be recorded for the library of congress. That was a serious accomplishment.
What everyone seems to be forgetting is when it comes to the CIA and Navy Seals NO ONE but them will ever know the TRUE STORY of how it went down....even the POTUS...had the mission gone wrong the POTUS needs some plausible deniability....
Some people are just crazy. The fact remains that when they had enough intelligence to determine where Bin Laden likely was, there were a multitude of options open to the president, including going in right away, bombing the site from a predator, waiting while suring up the intel but risking him moving, allowing time for the SEAL team to train up on the compound, involving Pakistani officials - but risking a leak and him getting away, etc. He chose to let them train up just enough, go in completely under Pakinstan's nose (with helicopters that had to be launched from a secret location, not enough range to a US base - also gutsy), and take him out in person. That was a decision that Obama made. For that he does deserve some credit. It was ballsy. It had all of the makings of the Iran hostage fiasco and a more cautious move would have been to do many things differently here. Can you imagine if the mission failed? The stakes were enormous, not only with who we were going after, but the comparisons to the Iran crisis would have been replayed in the news right through the election. It was the downfall of another president, if you've forgotten your history.
From Science magazine: "Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, were none too shabby. According to a probabilistic model they created, there was an 88.9% chance that bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed last night. And they correctly predicted that he would be in a large town, not a cave."
If anyone is interested, here are the coordinates of Bin Laden's compund - 34.169212 lon., 73.242378 lat.
First and foremost: Gene, that's focking hillarious. I love it! lol. Second: The word from the CIA is that Techo-Viking took the kill-shot. Third: I'll let you finish, I'll let you finish but the Doctor has the best and most real quote of all time! Spread the word and someone tell Penn. "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nice, google maps ftw! I'm sure the label was just added in the last few days. Pakistani intelligence is a zero here. Does anyone actually believe they didn't know osama was in pakistan?
