From Politico:
Obama rejected original plan for bombing; wanted proof - Navy SEALS held two rehearsals last month, with war cabinet monitoring from White House - Raid planned for Saturday but pushed off a day because of weather - Chopper stalled as it hovered over the compound - Forces blew it up and left in a reinforcement craft -- How the fiery raid went down, as told to Playbook by senior administration officials: The compound -- about an acre, with a three-story house - is in Abbottabad, a suburb of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Officials were very suspicious of the 12- to 18-foot-high walls, and seven-foot wall on the upper balcony. Residents burned their trash, and there was no telephone or Internet connection to the compound, valued at $1 million. But officials never had anything directly proving that Osama bin Laden was living there. The U.S. had discovered the compound by following a personal courier for bin Laden. Officials didn't learn his name until 2007, then it took two years to find him and track him back to this compound, which was discovered in August 2010. "It was a "Holy cow!" moment," an official said.Bin Laden buried at sea. Chuck Todd says there is a recording of this burial that some have seen, but Obama hasn't yet.
The original plan for the raid was to bomb the house, but President Obama ultimately decided against that. "The helicopter raid was riskier. It was more daring," an official said. "But he wanted proof. He didn't want to just leave a pile of rubble." Officials also knew there were 22 people living there, and Obama wanted to be sure not to kill all the civilians. So he ordered officials to come up with an air-assault plan. The forces held rehearsals of the raid on April 7 and April 13, with officials monitoring the action from Washington. Read more at Politico
How bin Laden was hunted down through a courier.
Stars and Stripes headline: An American bullet in bin Laden's head.
A bogeyman is dead and mixed emotions over celebrating BL's death. I look at it this way: I'm not going to celebrate bin Laden's death. I'm celebrating the accomplishment of Obama, the military, CIA, special ops....
Some news outlets have already moved on to the obvious--al Qaeda still a threat.
ABC inside the compound:
bin Laden compound burned to the ground:
