Revising the Death of a Terrorist

U.S. authorities, relying on Pakistani intelligence, say the raid on the compound where Osama bin Laden was living wasn’t the first time the property was targeted in a search for a top al-Qaida figure. A senior Pakistani intelligence official says the Pakistanis staged a 2003 raid there in search of a man regarded as al-Qaida’s third-ranking leader.

The house was just being built at the time. The target of the search wasn’t found, but U.S. officials have said he once lived there.

Bin Laden is believed to have lived there for up to six years, raising questions as to how he could have moved in without the knowledge of Pakistan’s government. Residents said they sensed something was odd about the walled three-story house.

Most neighbors didn’t even know foreigners were living there. But they say two men would routinely emerge to run errands or occasionally attend a neighborhood gathering and they speculated the residents of the home were smugglers or drug dealers.

In a 180-degree turn, the White House says bin Laden was not armed when a Navy SEAL raiding party confronted him during an assault on his compound in Pakistan. White House press secretary Jay Carney acknowledged that bin Laden did not have a weapon even though administration officials have said that bin Laden resisted during the raid.

“In the room with bin Laden, a woman bin Laden’s wife rushed the U.S. assaulter (sic) and was shot in the leg but not killed, bin Laden was then shot and killed, he was not armed,” Carney said.

Carney said resistance does not require a firearm as he added the woman was never used as a human shield. These details differ widely from the initial accounts of the raid released by administration officials, including counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan during an on-camera White House briefing Monday.

As for the “kill or capture” question, Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, told NBC anchor Brian Williams that “the authorities we have on bin Laden are to kill him. And that was made clear.”

“But it was also, as part of their rules of engagement,” Panetta continued, “if he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him. But that opportunity never developed.”

Beyond that, there are reports that say President Obama was less than decisive, despite all his aides presenting Obama as a commander in chief with a studied calm and steely resolve.

Tom Leonard of the Mail Online reports, “Details have emerged it actually took 16 hours for him to decide that the world’s most wanted terrorist should be taken out.”

“Far from making his mind up quickly,” Leonard writes, “Obama kept his top military officials waiting overnight before finally telling them: ‘It’s a go.’”

Leonard’s report adds, “Presented with the latest intelligence last Friday, Obama could only muster silence before telling his top military staff: ‘I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now – I’m going to go back and think about it some more. I’m going to make a decision soon.’”

While Carney avoided these details, he did continue, saying a photograph of a dead Osama bin Laden is “gruesome” and that “it could be inflammatory” if released. Carney added the White House is mulling over whether to make the photo public, but he said officials are concerned about the “sensitivity” of doing so.

Carney also said there is a discussion internally about the most appropriate way to handle it, but adds, “there is not some roiling debate here about this.” Asked if President Barack Obama is involved in the photo discussion, Carney said the president is involved in every aspect of this issue.

As U.S. officials consider whether to release graphic photos and other evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead, the Afghan Taliban are voicing some doubts. A spokesman for the Taliban says the talk of bin Laden’s death is “premature,” and that the U.S. hasn’t presented any “convincing evidence” of it.

Meanwhile, the Senate approved a resolution commending U.S. military and intelligence teams on the death of bin Laden. The terror leader had been the most wanted man in the world for nearly ten years following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, that left nearly three-thousand people dead in the U.S.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada praised operatives who planned and carried out the successful mission saying, “As they set out to kill or capture our most valuable target, they captivated us with their skill and expertise, their patriotism and their professionalism.”

Also resurfacing since the death of bin Laden is the subject of waterboarding, a practice that the current administration halted. White House officials at first stated that some of the intelligence they gained came after a terror suspect was treated to the “harsh interrogation practice.”

“Osama bin Laden would not have been captured and killed if it were not for the initial information we got from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he was waterboarded,” Long Island Rep. Peter King told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

As that was happening, the staff director for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee was objecting to the U.S. military’s use of the code name “Geronimo” for bin Laden. Geronimo was an Apache leader in the 19th century who spent many years fighting the Mexican and U.S. armies until he surrendered in 1886.

The staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Loretta Tuell, says it is inappropriate to link whom she calls “one of the greatest Native American heroes” with one of the most hated enemies of the United States. Tuell is a member of the Nez Perce tribe and grew on the tribe’s reservation in Idaho.

And now, the U.N.’s top human rights official says the global body wants details on the death of Osama bin Laden. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says the raid on the al-Qaida leader’s hideaway “was a complex operation, and it would be helpful if we knew the precise facts surrounding his killing.”

Pillay has frequently stressed the importance of respecting international law during counter-terror operations. But in a statement Tuesday she acknowledged that “taking him alive was always likely to be difficult,” adding had bin Laden been captured alive he would likely have been charged with the most serious offenses including crimes against humanity.

Finally, there are new questions coming to light since the raid and it involves the helicopters used by the Navy SEAL’s. And it goes beyond the question of whether there were two, four or more aircraft in support of the SEAL team according to David Cenciotti, a former Lieutenant in the Italian Air Force and current journalist.

He writes of a series of photographs published of the down U.S. helicopter, “the depicted horizontal stabilizer and tail rotor of the wreckage don’t seem to be any form of H-60. Both the shape and position are not common to either Black Hawks or Apaches helicopters.”

So there are more questions than answers at this time — as well as more revisions to the administration’s depiction of events in what is otherwise a historic and significant American victory in this nation’s continuing Global War on Terror.