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George W. Bush Gives First Public Reaction to Osama Bin Laden Death Former President George W. Bush made his first candid public comments on the killing of Osama bin Laden during an appearance Wednesday at a conference of hedge fund managers in Las Vegas. "I was eating souffle at Rise Restaurant with Laura and two buddies," Bush said when asked what he was doing when he received the call from President Obama, according to an ABC News contributor who attended the event. "I excused myself and went home to take the call," Bush said. "Obama simply said 'Osama Bin Laden...

Former President George W. Bush made his first candid public comments on the killing of Osama bin Laden during an appearance Wednesday at a conference of hedge fund managers in Las Vegas. "I was eating souffle at Rise Restaurant with Laura and two buddies," Bush said when asked what he was doing when he received the call from President Obama, according to an ABC News contributor who attended the event. "I excused myself and went home to take the call," Bush said. "Obama simply said 'Osama Bin Laden is dead.'" Bush said Obama described in detail the secret mission to...

An al-Qaida suspect who was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques at a secret CIA prison in early 2004 provided his interrogators with a clue — the nom de guerre of a mysterious courier — that ultimately proved crucial to finding and killing Osama bin Laden, officials said Wednesday. The CIA had approved use of sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity, water dousing and other coercive techniques at the now-closed CIA "black site" in Poland where the Pakistani-born detainee, Hassan Ghul, was held, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo, which cited Ghul by name. Two U.S. officials said Wednesday that some of...

"But policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success promise fewer such successes in the future. Those policies make it unlikely that we'll be able to get information from those whose identities are disclosed by the material seized from bin Laden. The administration also hounds our intelligence gatherers in ways that can only demoralize them. Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed...

The Fog of Fog By Michelle Malkin • May 6, 2011 08:36 AM Today’s syndicated column summarizes the week in bin Laden narrative bungles. The Navy SEALs did what they were told to do. It’s President Obama’s civilian messengers who can’t tell a straight story and do right by our heroes who risked their lives. The White House Keystone Kops aren’t just squandering a public opinion bump. They’re squandering the victory of our men in uniform, along with the intel-gatherers who made the mission possible. Milblogger Greyhawk reminds us of a past bungled narrative from this administration that undermined troop...

From the very first moment the world learned that American forces had killed Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, even the tiniest details from the momentous event have captivated the nation. Every single nugget of data has been the stuff of breaking news, handheld "alerts" and watercooler discussion, in a way the country has never previously witnessed. No landmark event of the 20th century, from World Wars I and II to the Cuban missile crisis, from the moon landing to the fall of the Soviet Union – not even the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- have been as widely...

Today, President Obama visited Ground Zero and met with those affected by 9/11. Somehow, however, his visit seemed to look different to every person who witnessed it. Particularly cable news channels. MSNBC seemed thrilled as they eagerly discussed how the visit would totally show up tonight’s Republican debate. Meanwhile, Fox News was less enchanted. Witness the network’s interview with Debra Burlingame, a 9/11 widow, who was brought on to discuss Obama’s meeting with the victims’ families.

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It makes me SICK to think this poser is getting all the glory for killing UBL, and struted around like a peacock today down at Ground Zero, when he attended the "church" of Rev. Wright who famously said, on the first Sunday after 9/11, "America's chickens have come home to roost. Not God Bless America, but G-D America." While the story is Obama was not there that sunday, I will NEVER believe that he did not know that is how Rev. Wright felt. Yet after that, he continued to attend that "church" and had Wright following him around on the...

BALI bomber Umar Patek was seeking a meeting with Osama bin Laden when he was arrested a few kilometres from the al-Qa'ida chief's hideout. The arrest in Abbottabad of Patek, the last major figure who was still at large for the 2002 Bali attacks that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, has raised a critical question: did Patek give vital information to the mission to kill bin Laden, or did his arrest by Pakistani intelligence risk upsetting the American operation? Patek was arrested on January 25, nine days after stopping in the mountain garrison town on his way to meet...

As U.S. special forces assaulted Osama bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan, a Twitter user was already recording a rough outline of the events to come. Sohaib Athar, who describes himself as a 33-year-old programmer and consultant "taking a break from the rat race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops," happened to be staying up late at the time. And, from an account called Really Virtual, he live-blogged what he heard. Athar's real-time dispatches and self-effacing follow-ups have transformed him into an instant online celebrity. He's received at least one marriage proposal--through Twitter, of course--as well as requests...

WASHINGTON – Only one of the five people killed in the raid that got Osama bin Laden was armed and fired a shot, a senior defense official said Thursday, acknowledging the new account differs greatly from original administration portrayals of a chaotic, intense and prolonged firefight. The sole shooter in the al-Qaida leader's Pakistani compound was quickly killed in the early minutes of the commando operation, details that have become clearer now that the Navy SEAL assault team has been debriefed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

New revelations about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveal that the SEAL raiders encountered a false door and found a small arsenal of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle in bin Laden's bedroom. As the Navy SEALs have been debriefed about their mission that left the al Qaeda leader dead, the White House has been forced to correct details of what happened during Sunday's raid at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound. Despite the changes in the White House version of what happened during the 40 minute raid on bin Laden's sprawling million dollar mansion, officials were unapologetic about the...

The criminal case against Osama bin Laden, which has rumbled through the New York courts for the past 13 years in his absence, is set to be closed following his assassination. Prosecutors representing the US government are expected to file papers this week asking a judge to dismiss the case against bin Laden, the late leader of al-Qaeda, due to the death of the main defendant. The first indictment against bin Laden was filed in secret at a federal-district court in Manhattan on June 10, 1998, before most of his most renowned acts of terrorism. It was eight pages long,...

The Pakistani who owned the compound that was Osama bin Laden's final hideaway meticulously bought up adjoining plots of land over two years and once cryptically told a seller that the property he bought for "an uncle" had become very valuable. The new information that emerged Wednesday provided a new glimpse of one of two key figures who sheltered bin Laden in his last years and whose identities remain one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the al-Qaida chief. ..... [ snip ] ..... Property records obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday show that a man named Mohammed Arshad bought...

I am sending out a question to those living in Chicago or Suburban Chicago. My dad has Arab neighbors next door who has their address posted in Arabic (not numbers). Their son was kicked out of school for making a bomb threat. Yesterday, I picked up my father at 2:00 PM and there were 10 cars in their driveway and along the street which was insanely bizarre. My family has lived there since 1990 far earlier than when they moved in and we never seen anything like that. So I was suspicious and took a bunch of photos. Tonight, there...

Besides recovering four bullet-riddled bodies from the compound, Pakistani security agencies also arrested two women and six children, aged between 2 and 12 years, after American forces flew toward Afghanistan. Some reports suggest 16 people, including women and children, were arrested from the house, most of them Arab nationals. A Pakistani security source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden family members had been transported to Rawalpindi, which is near Islamabad. He added, “They are now under treatment in the military hospital of Rawalpindi, where they have been transported in an helicopter.” A source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden’s had...

President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will reignite the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. The decision to make public the images sought in a legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union comes amid a political firestorm over alleged torture of detainees under President George W. Bush. Some of the photographs, which will be released before May 28, are said to show American service personnel humiliating prisoners, according to officials. The images relate to more than 400 separate cases involving...

According to a report posted by Yahoo, it appears that most teens do not know who Osama bin Laden is. Two thirds of people who searched “who is Osama bin Laden” on Sunday turned out to be teenagers: Teens ages 13-17 were seeking more information as they made up 66% of searches for “who is osama bin laden?” More from the Yahoo report: According to Yahoo!, The Top Searched Questions on Osama bin Laden are (based on Sunday, 5/1): Is Osama bin Laden dead? How did Osama bin Laden die? Who killed Osama bin Laden? How old is Osama bin...

India had twice told the U.S. that Osama Bin Laden was not in a cave somewhere but hiding in an urban area close to Islamabad, according to a report by The Times of India. The information is also likely to fuel speculation that Pakistan knew of the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts. The first lead came in mid-2007, soon after bin Laden's ally Ayman al-Zawahiri attended a Taliban meeting in Peshawar, that was also attended by leaders of Haqqani network, an insurgent group based in North Waziristan, and at least two ISI officials. Zawahiri is said to have rushed to Islamabad after...