Posted on 05/02/2011 4:07:12 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
(Reuters) - U.S. special forces set out to kill Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the sea to make it harder for the al Qaeda founder to become a martyr, U.S. national security officials told Reuters on Monday.
"This was a kill operation," one of the officials said.
"If he had waved a white flag of surrender, he would have been taken alive," the official added. But the operating assumption among the U.S. raiders was that bin Laden would put up a fight -- which he did.
Bin Laden "participated" in a firefight between the U.S. commandos and residents of the fortified compound near the Pakistani capital Islamabad where he had been hiding, the official said.
The official would not explicitly say whether bin Laden fired on the Americans, but confirmed that during the course of the 40-minute operation the U.S. team shot bin Laden in the head.
Three other men and a woman lay dead after the raid, but no Americans were killed. John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, said U.S. officials believed the woman was one of bin Laden's wives and that he had used her as a human shield.
Brennan said the commandos were prepared to capture Obama alive, but they knew that was a remote possibility.
"If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that," Brennan told reporters.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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