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-Osama bin Laden Killed in Raid/ found @ luxury Pakistan Compounding --

By: Patricia Zengerle and Alister Bull Patricia Zengerle And Alister Bull –
Mon May 2, 5:57 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. forces finally found al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not in a mountain cave on Afghanistan's border, but with his youngest wife in a million-dollar compound in a summer resort just over an hour's drive from Pakistan's capital, U.S. officials said.

A small U.S. team conducted a night-time helicopter raid on the compound early on Monday. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden and an adult son, one unidentified woman and two men were dead, the officials said.

U.S. forces were led to the fortress-like three-story building after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom U.S. officials said was identified by men captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with or protected by bin Laden," a senior administration official said in a briefing for reporters.

Bin Laden was finally found
--more than 9-1/2 years after the 2001 attacks on the United States -- after authorities discovered in August 2010 that the courier lived with his brother and their families in an unusual and extremely high-security building, officials said.They said the courier and his brother were among those killed in the raid.

"When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound," a senior administration official said.

"The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden," another administration official said.

The home is in Abbottabad, a town about 35 miles north of Islamabad, that is relatively affluent and home to many retired members of Pakistan's military.

It was a far cry from the popular notion of bin Laden hiding in some mountain cave on the rugged and inaccessible Afghan-Pakistan border -- an image often evoked by officials up to and including former President George W. Bush.

The building, about eight times the size of other nearby houses, sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005. When it was constructed, it was on the outskirts of Abbottabad's center, at the end of a dirt road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up, officials said.

-From -Yahoo Home Page ~

-Could bin Laden's death increase risk of domestic terroism attacks?

Osama bin Laden's death is a major blow to al Qaeda, counter-terror experts agree. And yet, in the short term, they caution that it could actually increase the threat of a domestic attack.

Interpol, the international police organization, today warned its member countries, including the United States, "to be on full alert" for attacks by Islamic terrorists looking to avenge the killing of the movement's long-time spiritual leader.

The U.S. government is said to have conveyed the same message internally. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last night issued a preliminary "situational awareness alert," obtained by the AP, saying bin Laden's death could inspire retaliatory attacks from al Qaeda or its allies--or even from radicalized individuals in the United States.

But in a statement to the press, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that although the department remains "at a heightened state of vigiliance," it doesn't plan to issue a broader security alert. Napolitano explained that DHS officials only approve that shift when "we have specific or credible information to convey to the American public."

Still, counter-terrorism experts see the possibility of an increased threat level in the immediate wake of bin Laden's death. "There is a window of vulnerability in the short term," Frank Cilluffo, a former special assistant for homeland security to President Bush who now runs George Washington University's Homeland Security Institute, told The Lookout in an interview. But he stressed that for several years, terror groups and individual actors have been trying to launch attacks on the United States--almost all unsuccessful--so bin Laden's death may not be a game changer.

Former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden told Bloomberg the United States should "brace for retaliatory attacks," as the news service put it, from al Qaeda and affiliated groups.

And former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on NBC's Today Show this morning: "There has been intelligence that suggested that if Osama bin Laden were ever captured or killed that there would be a violent attack on America or Europe, in one way or another."

Vince Cannistraro, a former operations chief at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, suggested that any domestic attacks likely would mirror other recent attempted terror plots in the United States--meaning, in other words, that they wouldn't be terribly advanced or elaborate. "I don't think there will be sophisticated retaliatory actions here in the U.S.," Cannistraro told The Lookout. "We may very well see emotional ones."

Cannistraro, who now works as a consultant on terrorism and security issues, said the more serious retaliatory threat is to places where terror groups have a greater operational capacity to strike.

"There will be attempts in other places in the world," he said, singling out Yemen in particular, where the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is based. Awlaki is said to have had contacts with both Umar Abdulmutallab--better known as the Underwear Bomber--and Nidal Malik Hassan, the Fort Hood shooting suspect.

Still, in the longer term, counter-terror experts agree, bin Laden's demise massively undercuts the ability of al Qaeda and its allies to continue recruiting followers and mounting successful operations.

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"It's a catastrophe for them," Cannistraro said. "Bin Laden was the movement itself."

Although he wasn't immersed in the day-to-day operations of al Qaeda, Cannistraro said, bin Laden appointed the people who were, as well as acting as a spiritual leader and motivator. "The leadership came from bin Laden," Cannistraro said. "His leadership is gone."

But in recent years, the Islamic terror movement has become more decentralized, meaning that even taking out the leader won't decisively end the threat. "Many of the operations are being designed at lower levels," said Cilluffo. "It's no longer 'Wait from on high,'" for terrorist plotters.

"The building, about eight times the size of other nearby houses"

On tv I heard that in addition to that, the building has 19 foot high walls around it, no internet or telephone service, and they never put out any garbage to be collected(they burned it instead). Those factors are what drew plenty of suspicion.

Thank you, JK
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Yahoo tells us to get further updates, etc, regarding this world breaking news on Osama bin Laden's recent death, we must go to <www.reuters.com>. Here's what I found just now. 5/4/11
@ 6:18 AM, EDT --(best I could do, as it is skimpy, etc.)

Afghanistan says Pakistan should have known bin Laden was there

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Related VideoU.S. seeks answers over Bin Laden
6:08am EDT The compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad is seen framed by nearby trees May 3, 2011. Bin Laden lived for the past five to six years in the compound deep inside Pakistan where the al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. forces, President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism adviser said on Tuesday. Bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan before a 2001 U.S.-led invasion helped topple its Taliban regime, was holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad in Pakistan before Sunday's operation to kill him.

Credit: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro

KABUL | Wed May 4, 2011 6:18am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - Pakistan's spy agency should have known Osama bin Laden was hiding not far from its capital, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday, the first direct comment from Kabul about its neighbor's apparent inability to track the al Qaeda leader.

Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said the case also raised questions about Pakistan's ability to adequately protect its nuclear weapons.

Bin Laden, architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was killed by a U.S. strike team in a military garrison town about 60 km (35 miles) north of Islamabad on Monday.

U.S. lawmakers have demanded a review of aid to Pakistan after the disclosure that bin Laden could have been living in the house, which is not far from Pakistan's main military academy, for five or six years.

"When we talk about the location of the house and a military academy nearby ... at the very least it should be known about the activities inside the house and who is living there," Azimy told a news conference.

"If Pakistan's spy agency was not aware of the house near the academy, it brings the agency under question. If I was a security analyst, I would raise these very important questions."

Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency and the army have been conspicuously silent about the raid, which has raised questions about whether they knew all along where bin Laden has been hiding.

The ISI has also been accused of maintaining ties with fighters targeting U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan. Kabul and Islamabad have long had a difficult relationship.

Azimy said the killing of bin Laden also raised broader questions about the ISI and the Pakistan military, including its ability to safeguard its nuclear arsenal.

"If the agency was not aware that the biggest terrorist had been living there for six long years, how can it protect its strategic weapons?" he said.

"How can the world be assured that the strategic and atomic weapons would not be in danger in the future?"

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was far less direct in his first comments about bin Laden's killing on Monday, saying that it proved the global fight against Islamist militants was "not in Afghan villages."

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Paul Tait)

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i thinks its totally fake news