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reported tonight that US forces have killed Osama Bin Laden and that the corpse is in our possesion and identity has been confirmed by DNA

The best news in a long time!

Hi,

Lots more to the story. I've gleaned the below from way too much listening and reading this morning...the curse of being a news junkie, I suppose.

The raid actually seems to have happened last week.

Apparently they pinpointed him last August, in a house 60 miles from Islamabad and only a short distance from the Pak military academy. The house was 8 times larger than any nearby house, had reinforced walls and was three stories tall, but had no telephone or internet lines. The house was occupied by OBL, two of his 'couriers' and their families. The initial ID is being said to have resulted from detainee interrogations.

OBL's presence was confirmed and the SEALs began rehearsing for the mission a week before the raid. The SEALs rappelled into the compound from four helicopters, one of this lost lift because of the high reinforced walls of the compound and suffered a hard landing. No one was hurt in the hard landing.

SEALs approached OBL and tried to get him to surrender. He resisted, with predictable results. Other (surviving) people living in the house were moved to a field near the compound and held until the SEALs departed with OBLs body. Reports are that no other living persons from the household were taken. The damaged Blackhawk was destroyed with explosives as the team departed. The expectation is that Pak intelligence will 'interview' the other family members for possible useful info.

OBLs body was moved to the USS Carl Vinson, and was buried at sea after DNA samples were taken. (I hope they used an imam and videotaped it...after quietly stuffing his mouth with bacon.) The Navy isn't saying where the burial took place.

I'm sure that there will be more info coming out soon, but what we have is certainly different than the early reports of OBL being killed by a bomb. It certainly sounds like a textbook SEAL operation, and very interesting in the way it was done!

[Edit: After I typed all this out, I stumbled on this article: latimesblogs.latimes.c...eals.html]

Chuck

And WHY does this belong in a forum about AFVs?

Come on people.

Oh, let's see, US Armored Fighting Vehicles are deployed in Afghanistan and the proximate cause of that deployment were actions initiated by the late aforementioned Bin Laden so I think that qualifies it as an area of interest

Pleased as I'm sure we all are about this development, this is unlikely to be the only source of information for this particular news item, as VonForhud points out.

Many members come to the AFV DG precisely because of it's focus and escape from topics that are more than adequately covered elsewhere. With that in mind, I'm going to lock the thread only so it doesn't become a distraction. Thanks for understanding.