President Obama is about to address the nation and declare that U.S troops have killed Osama Bin Laden, and that the U.S military is in possession of his body.
The most wanted man in the world, responsible for the attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 is now dead. The man whose actions led directly to U.S involvement in two countries across vast tracts of Asia is now dead.
One has to wonder though what will happen in Quetta, in Baluchistan, where the Al Qaeda leadership is supposedly holed-up? What will the Pakistani government in Islamabad do to quell any violence that might flare up?
The President of the United States has not addressed the American public yet, and there’s much more to say and debate. But the news is out and it will travel far. Threat levels are sure to go up sky high at all U.S bases, for all U.S assets. And somewhere somehow, someone is plotting a significant retaliatory act, enraged by this news.
Nevertheless Al Qaeda has just been humbled, kicked out and pushed out of the scene for a moment and more: U.S forces went into enemy territory guarded by friendly leaders, killed Bin Laden and retrieved his body. The world will want to see Bin Laden’s body, and the U.S military has it to show as proof.
Indeed, whatever its current leadership and operational structure Al Qaeda just lost the P.R war on this war on terror.
Now, what will be the consequence of this news on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan?
Update: President Obama has revealed that the U.S had intelligence on Bin Laden and pulled at the thread on that intelligence for nearly eight months. Until today, when he and the his National Security team determined that there was enough operational, clean intelligence to launch a targeted assault on Osama Bin Laden who was holed up in Abbottabad in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakthtunkhwa Province, some 30 miles northeast of Islamabad.
This is President Obama’s strongest point: “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.”
