1. Obama Says He Won’t Release Bin Laden Photos - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05binladen.html
Account Tells of One-Sided Battle in Bin Laden Raid
Warrick Page for The New York Times
On Wednesday, people passed the entrance to the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces in
Abottabad, Pakistan.
By MARK LANDLER and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: May 4, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Obama decided Wednesday not to RECOMMEND
release graphic photographs of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, as new TWITTER
details emerged about the raid on Bin Laden’s fortified compound LINKEDIN
that differed from the administration’s initial account of the nearly COMMENTS (850)
40-minute operation.
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Mr. Obama, after a brief but intense
debate within his war council, REPRINTS
Multimedia
concluded that making the images of SHARE
Bin Laden public could incite
violence against Americans and
would do little to persuade skeptics
that the founder of Al Qaeda had
been killed, White House officials said.
How Osama bin Laden Was The new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic
Located and Killed and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more
than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the
handful of men protecting Bin Laden.
Administration officials said that the only shots fired by
those in the compound came at the beginning of the
operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed
al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the
TimesCast | No Photos of Bin
Laden guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was
hiding.
After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a
woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired
upon again.
This account differs from an official version of events
The Death of a Terrorist: A Turning issued by the Pentagon on Tuesday, and read by the
Point? White House spokesman, Jay Carney, which said the Seal
members “were engaged in a firefight throughout the
operation.”
INTERACTIVE FEATURE: Milestones:
Osama Bin Laden
In a television interview on PBS on Tuesday, Leon E.
Related
Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “There were some
firefights that were going on as these guys were making
Pakistan Sees Shared Intelligence
Lapse (May 5, 2011) their way up the staircase of that compound.”
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2. Obama Says He Won’t Release Bin Laden Photos - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05binladen.html
Pakistani Military Investigates How
Bin Laden Was Able to Hide in
Administration officials said the official account of events
Plain View (May 5, 2011) has changed over the course of the week because it has
Pakistani Army, Shaken by Raid, taken time to get thorough after-action reports from the
Faces New Scrutiny (May 5, 2011) Seal team. And, they added, because the Special
In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ Operations troops had been fired upon as soon as they
All-Star Team (May 5, 2011) touched down in the compound, they were under the
For Obama, Big Rise in Poll assumption that everyone inside was armed.
Numbers After Bin Laden Raid
(May 5, 2011) “They were in a threatening and hostile environment the
New U.S. Account Says Bin Laden entire time,” one American official said.
Was Unarmed During Raid (May 4,
2011)
When the commandos moved into the main house, they
Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on saw the courier’s brother, who they believed was
Value of Torture (May 4, 2011)
preparing to fire a weapon. They shot and killed him.
Lens Blog: Pictures of the Day: Then, as they made their way up the stairs of the house,
Pakistan and Elsewhere (May 4,
2011) officials said they killed Bin Laden’s son Khalid as he
lunged toward the Seal team.
Related in Opinion
When the commandos reached the top floor, they entered
Opinionator | The Conversation:
The Power in a Photo (May 4, 2011) a room and saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a
Makarov pistol in arm’s reach. They shot and killed him,
The Election as well as wounding a woman with him.
2012 App
A one-stop The firefight over and Bin Laden dead, the team found a
destination for the
latest political news trove of information and had the time to remove much of
— from The Times and other top it: about 100 thumb drives, DVDs and computer disks,
sources. Plus opinion, polls,
campaign data and video. along with 10 computer hard drives and 5 computers.
Download for iPhone There were also piles of paper documents in the house.
Download for Android
Enlarge This Image The White House declined to release any additional
details about the operation, saying that further
information would jeopardize the military’s ability to
conduct clandestine operations in the future. The
administration’s reticence came after it was forced on
Tuesday to correct parts of its initial account of the raid,
including assertions that Bin Laden had used his wife as
Doug Mills/The New York Times
a “human shield.”
Jay Carney, the White House
spokesman, discussed the president's
decision on Wednesday. “We’ve revealed a lot of information; we’ve been as
forthcoming with facts as we can be,” Mr. Carney said.
Readers’ Comments
Mr. Carney said the president expressed doubts early on
"Right decision. Respect the about releasing the photos, but consulted his senior
dead more than the dead
advisers. All of them, Mr. Carney said, voiced concerns
respected the living."
newspaperreader, Eastern US
about the risks. Based on its monitoring of worldwide
Read Full Comment » reaction to the announcement of Bin Laden’s death, Mr.
Carney said, the administration also concluded that most
people viewed the reports of his death as credible and
that publicizing photos would do little to sway those who believed it was a hoax.
Mr. Obama was direct in an interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” to be
broadcast Sunday, according to a transcript released by the network. “It is very
important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the
head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence — as a propaganda
tool.”
“That’s not who we are,” Mr. Obama added. “You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as
trophies.” He said, “We don’t need to spike the football.”
“Certainly there’s no doubt among Al Qaeda members that he is dead,” he said on “60
Minutes.” “And so we don’t think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any
difference. There are going to be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you
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