OBL is Gone: From Gitmo to Navy Seals

Last night at about 10:15pm ET, my wife received a message via her Facebook account that the President was going to make a special announcement at 10:30pm. We switched the TV over to FoxNews after noticing that Drudge and various other media outlets had only begun to flash “breaking news” that the President was going to speak.

At about 10:45pm, Geraldo (who happened to be the one live on FoxNews at the time) merely speculated that perhaps this was going to be about Osama bin Laden. It wouldn’t be until shortly thereafter that a FoxNews producer would begin confirming this hunch.

HotAir.com has an excellent play-by-play posting of things as they transpired last night, which was apparently a culmination of several years’ worth of intelligence (via MSNBC via HotAir):

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, “detainees gave us information on couriers. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, his pseudonym, and also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden.”In 2007, the U.S. learned the man’s name.

In 2009, “we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track.”

In August 2010, “we found their home in Abbottabad,” not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital.

In the end, it was US Navy Seals who got the job done, and they were in and out without the Pakistani government even knowing we were coming. As an old sailor myself, let me just offer up a salute and say, well done, boys. …

Another fascinating aspects was that an IT consultant based out of Abottabad had been live-blogging via Twitter about the covert operation without knowing what was really going on.

Speaking of Twitter, here’s a rough timeline of how things unfolded on the social media platform.

The Daily Mail has a complete run-down of pictures and info about the operation.

Nevertheless, RedState sums up the domestic political ramifications, going forward: “Osama Is Dead. Don’t Believe It Makes Obama Invulernable To Defeat.”

Personally, I would like to thank Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama for both helping to make this day possible, and while they were both the top decision-makers for any military operation in their respective presidencies, it really is all about America’s military and intelligence communities that actually made it happen.

Lots of thanks and prayer goes out to the individuals who will never be named and will never be publicly awarded for their exceptionally brave actions over the weekend.

-Phil

twitter.com/trsol

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