OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD

last SG · 2011-05-03T12:20:15+00:00

well, if there were pics and they were released, there will be a huge reaction in e Arab world.i dont know what kind of reaction u meant but if ur talking a...

Larry91 SG

but to the person who asked how they identify the body, they have his DNA and fingerprint on record i'm sure.

Osama Bin Laden worked in co-operation with the US training taliban militia between 1979-1989 with US funding.

Shorter ninja SG

Osama Bin Laden A.K.A Tim Osama was the CIA operative who did not die a few days ago

zocoss SG

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda confirmed on Friday that Osama bin Laden was dead, dispelling doubts by some Muslims the group's leader had really been killed by U.S. forces, and vowed to mount more attacks on the West.

The announcement by the Islamist militant organization, which promised to publish a taped message from bin Laden soon, appeared intended to show its adherents around the globe the group had survived as a functioning network.

In a statement online, it said the blood of bin Laden, shot to death by a U.S. commando team in a raid on Monday on his hide-out in a Pakistani town, "is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain."

"It will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that hunts the Americans and their collaborators and chases them inside and outside their country."

Al Qaeda urged Pakistanis to rise up against their government to "cleanse" the country of what it called the shame brought on it by bin Laden's shooting and of the "filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it."

The statement also warned Americans not to harm bin Laden's corpse and to hand it and those of others killed to their families, although U.S. officials say bin Laden's body has been buried at sea and no others were taken from the compound.

Some in the Muslim world have been skeptical of bin Laden's death. One survey conducted in Pakistan this week by the British-based YouGov polling organization found that 66 percent of over 1,000 respondents did not think the person killed by U.S. Navy SEALs was bin Laden.

Before Friday prayers at a mosque in Paris, one man who declined to give his name said: "This whole story is a myth. They invented it to distract Americans from real problems over there, like the economy and gas prices."

But U.S. President Barack Obama continued to bask in public approval for the killing of bin Laden. He flew to a military base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on Friday to thank special forces involved in the raid.

"This has been an extraordinary week for our nation," Obama told a jubilant audience of troops. "The terrorist leader who struck our nation on September 11 will never threaten our nation again." But he warned that "this continues to be a very tough fight."

U.S.-PAKISTAN TENSIONS

Anger and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad over the raid in Abbottabad, 30 miles (50 km) from the Pakistani capital, showed no sign of abating.

A U.S. drone killed 17 suspected militants in northwest Pakistan, despite warnings from the Pakistani military against the mounting of attacks within its borders.

About 1,500 Islamists rallied in the southwestern city of Quetta to vow revenge for bin Laden's death and there were small protests elsewhere. Afghan Taliban and Islamist Indonesian youths made similar threats.

A Taliban spokesman said the group "believes the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden will give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders." Bin Laden lived for years in Afghanistan and is thought to have plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States from there.

One of bin Laden's wives, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told Pakistani interrogators the al Qaeda leader had been living for five years in the compound where he was killed, a Pakistani security official told Reuters.

The disclosure appeared sure to heighten U.S. suspicions that Pakistani authorities had been either grossly incompetent or playing a double game in the hunt for bin Laden and the two countries' supposed partnership against violent Islamists.

Pakistani security forces took 15 or 16 people into custody from the Abbottabad compound after U.S. forces removed bin Laden's body, said the security official. They included bin Laden's three wives and several children.

In Washington, a U.S. official said U.S. intelligence had established on-the-ground surveillance in Abbottabad in advance of the raid.

U.S. officials also said among materials found at bin Laden's hide-out was evidence indicating al Qaeda at one point considered attacking the U.S. rail system on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks later this year.

Officials said evidence analyzed so far indicated bin Laden was still involved in directing al Qaeda's activities, even though he had largely avoided the public spotlight for years.

The fact that bin Laden was found in a garrison town -- his compound was not far from a military academy -- has embarrassed Pakistan and the covert raid has angered its military.

Pressure is building in the U.S. Congress to suspend or at least review U.S. aid to Pakistan.

VIDEO FOOTAGE

The Pakistan army, for its part, threatened on Thursday to halt counterterrorism cooperation with the United States if it conducted any more similar raids.

It was unclear if such attacks included drone strikes the U.S. military conducts regularly against militants along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Pakistani security officials have charged that U.S. troops, after landing by helicopter, shot the unarmed al Qaeda leader in cold blood rather than in a firefight, as U.S. officials first suggested.

Amid differing accounts this week of how much hostile fire the SEALs encountered in the compound, one Pakistani security official said on Friday that U.S. forces should release video footage he said they "must have" of the operation.

U.N. human rights investigators called on the United States to disclose the full facts "to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards."

The Pakistani military also said on Thursday it had decided to reduce the U.S. military presence in the country.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said the Defense Department had not received notice from Islamabad about any decision to change the size of the U.S. military contingent in Pakistan. He said there were a little under 300 U.S. military personnel in Pakistan, many of them trainers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the relationship was "complex" but pointed to Pakistan's effort against the Taliban and al Qaeda in its own tribal areas and the use of its territory as a U.S. supply route.

"At the same time, there's no question they hedge their bets," said Gates, fielding questions from service members at an Air Force base in North Carolina. "Their view is that we have abandoned them four times in the last 45 years. And they're not sure we're going to stay in the region."

"So we just have to keep working at it, on both sides," he added.

zocoss SG

Washington (CNN) -- The one major problem for the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden was the crash of one of their helicopters.

It was no ordinary military chopper. Numerous aviation experts say they see several telltale signs of stealth technology in photos of what was left after the SEAL team tried to destroy the craft.

Some think it was a secret aircraft.

"Had this particular helicopter not crashed, we still would have no idea of its existence," said Gareth Jennings, the aviation desk editor for Jane's Defence Weekly.

Jennings and other aviation experts say the helicopter may have been a heavily modified version of the UH-60 Black Hawk, a mainstay of the military's helicopter fleet.

But it may include stealth technology developed for the now-canceled RAH-66 Comanche helicopter. That aircraft was designed to be an armed reconnaissance craft capable of carrying only two people.

Two of the aircraft were built for test flights before the Army canceled the program in 2004, not because of performance but because it needed money to upgrade existing helicopters. At the time, Les Brownlee, then acting secretary of the Army, said, "We will retain relevant technologies developed in the Comanche program."

At the same 2004 briefing about the cancellation of the Comanche, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said, "much of what we've gained out of Comanche we can push forward into the tech base for future joint rotorcraft kinds of capabilities as we look further out."

The helicopter in question was left on the ground at the al Qaeda leader's compound during the raid early Monday.

The SEALs were able to destroy much of the main body of the helicopter when it became clear it couldn't fly. But the tail rotor assembly came down on the other side of the compound wall and was left largely intact deep inside Pakistan when the SEALs finished their mission.

Pakistani troops were seen hauling the wreckage away on trucks covered with tarps. The Department of Defense, which would not comment about any speculation about a "stealth helicopter," also wouldn't say whether it's asked Pakistan to give the wreckage back to the United States.

"Given the very strong defense ties that Pakistan and China currently have, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see this wreckage end up in Beijing," Jennings said.

"And that has to be of great concern to the U.S. Department of Defense, because with that technology, the Chinese or any third party could either incorporate that technology into their own aircraft or they can figure out ways to defeat that technology, thereby rending stealth technology like this largely useless in future operations," he said.

What makes the experts think the aircraft that crashed in Abbottabad was a secret "stealth helicopter?"

• "The first thing that stood out, and it may seem like a small thing, is the color scheme. Whereas most Black Hawk Army helicopters are painted olive green, this particular one is gray. Not just any gray; it's infrared-suppressant gray, and the purpose of the IR gray, as it's known, is to help reduce the vulnerability of the helicopter to ground-launched heat-seeking missile systems," Jennings told CNN Pentagon Correspondent Chris Lawrence.

• Photos from Abbottabad show that the chopper had a five-bladed tail rotor. "On a conventional Black Hawk, you have four blades. The addition of the extra rotor blades on the tail rotor hub reduces the acoustic signature of the helicopter there by making it hard to hear, giving the SEALs that extra few minutes to get over the compound before anyone on the ground quite knows what's going on," according to Jennings.

• Those five tail rotor blades are partially covered by a disk-like object that Jennings called a "hub-mounted vibration suppression system." He believes it provides more noise suppression and some possible protection for the tail rotor from bullets of shrapnel. And it's not typical on military helicopters. "No, I've never seen that on an operational helicopter before," Jennings said. But he added that a similar system was part of the Comanche helicopter design.

• The blades on that tail rotor also appear to be shorter and thinner than typical Black Hawk helicopter's blades. One former Army Black Hawk pilot, who asked not to be identified, said, "More blades and shorter blades means the helicopter would make less noise in flight."

It's not just the tail rotor blades that are different. "On the main rotor assembly that was actually destroyed by the SEAL team on the ground the blades themselves are threaded, which signify that these are carbon composite rotor blades as opposed to conventional metal rotor blades, which again signifies aspects of stealth technology that have been incorporated into this particular helicopter," Jennings said.

• Some photos show parts of the helicopter appear similar to non-secret stealth aircraft. "What's left of the tail section of that helicopter, the shape of the fuselage, it's canted. It's angled. It's a shape that's synonymous with fixed-wing stealth fighters such as the F-22, the F-35. Essentially, it's designed to defeat radar. If you eliminate right angles in an aircraft design, radar waves can't bounce back," Jennings said.

mancha SG

The US don't keep secrets for long.

Its just a matter of time.

Sooner or later.

mancha SG

Osama Bin Laden A.K.A Tim Osama was the CIA operative who did not die a few days ago

Osama bin Laden was pronounced dead on 2 May 2011 at 01.00 hrs Pakistan Standard Time by USA Navy Seals. That makes it official. When he actually croaked is immaterial.

Jiani SG

The US don't keep secrets for long.

Its just a matter of time.

Sooner or later.

wiki leaks!

[email protected]!

Limcarlisle SG

If not for the news or CNN, I would have totally forgoten about him. He name hasn't been heard for a couple of years and all the while I was thinking he gave up or something. and then Boom! the I just happen to switch the channel to CNN and saw that he was dead. I was just so happy! I mean I feel like everything will be better now.

mancha SG

What I don't understand is why they have to throw the body at sea as some form of burial? He wasn't cremated to be having his ashes scattered at sea

Cremation would constitute cruel and unusual punishment for him.

Sea burial is permissable, and just fitting for him. Hope he enjoys his 72 mermaids.

Honeybunz SG

What I don't understand is why they have to throw the body at sea as some form of burial? He wasn't cremated to be having his ashes scattered at sea

Muslims don't do cremations. They only do burial. Sea burial usually applies when the person dies on the ship. But in this case, nobody dares to take his body. This means that nobody will bury him. So have to do sea burial.

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