Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore
Now remembers this is from Reuters. What is amazing is that they call this “In cold blood” when these are the people who string bodies up on bridges and display their captives in town squares. Yet Reuters has the nerve to report that these people were treated unfairly. And you will notice that Osama is spelled with an O, not a U. The US media changed it to a U because it was spelled too close to Obama, just one letter different. The media is trying to distance Obama from his Muslim roots. Obama=Osama, sure close isn't it.
No resistance in "cold-blooded" U.S. raid: Pakistan officials
(Reuters) - Osama bin Laden and his comrades offered no resistance when killed by U.S. special forces in a Pakistani town, Pakistani security officials said on Thursday.
U.S. accounts of what happened have changed throughout the week, and initial characterizations of a 40-minute gun battle have given way to officials being quoted as saying only one of the five people who were killed had been armed.
The White House has cited the "fog of war" as a reason for initial misinformation on whether bin Laden -- who was shot in the head -- was armed when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad early on Monday.
Two senior Pakistani security officials, citing their investigation, said there was no firefight because the inhabitants never fired back.
"The people inside the house were unarmed. There was no resistance," one of the officials said.
"It was cold-blooded," said the second official when asked if there was any exchange of fire during the operation which, U.S. officials said lasted nearly 40 minutes.
The officials declined to say how they got their information, but officials had earlier said wounded had been detained.
Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the assault show three dead men -- not including bin Laden -- lying in pools of blood. No weapons could be seen in the closely cropped images.
The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who was in the compound after the raid, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a T-shirt, blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.
reuters
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You got it Jean, but I think you've mixed up two issues. First there is the issue of how the mission went off and what the mission was. Was the mission to capture OBL? If not, why not? Maybe the mission had capture as an option, but not a high priority option. The first priority was probably elimination. In other words, if they thought they could capture him alive without any difficulty, then they should do so. If there was the slightest possibility of problems, then they should focus on elimination. My guess is there was problems and they moved quickly on to the task of elimination. Considering the difficulty of the mission, its secrecy and the potential of interference from Pakistani military, this was really the only way they could get it done. Capturing OBL alive would have been a far greater victory than just executing him.
The other issue is not showing the images of the dead OBL. Worrying about Muslim reaction is just pathetic considering, as you mention, their flagrant appetite for displaying their own victims in public. As recently as during the Egyption riots, we see the open display and mutilation of the corpses of the opposition. Recall the display of own dead soldiers and the mistreatment of their bodies during the military advance in Iraq. There simply is no good reason for showing that kind of respect for the body of OBL. The public needed to see that he was dead and the case was really closed.