Bin Laden -- anyone else watching this?

Who cares if he wasn't armed? This was not done in cold blood. This was not a situation where the SEALs stormed an unarmed home. He refused to surrender and was in a house full of people who worked for him, who opened fire on the SEALs. You don't have to be the one physically holding the gun. He presented an immediate and present danger to the lives of the SEALs. I am glad that shot him before any of our SEALs were killed by his flunkies.

The lady is lucky she didn't get her head blown off. She should thank her stars they exerted the minimal amount of force needed to stop her from shielding him or assaulting a SEAL or whatever it was that she was doing.

But then, I am just really thankful he is dead and will never hurt another person. Ever. Justice is done. It is good that he is dead, and the way he died--he got better than what he deserved and he got MUCH better than what he did to the people who died at his hand. I am especially thankful that we are all spared a trial as the alternate route to justice.

I actually agree with all of this, with the exception of the "spared a trial." part. While I AM glad we were spared a trial, the expense of holding him, etc. - it was made clear that the US was willing/attempted to take him alive. His minions made that impossible, and I do not regret that or question their actions for a minute.

I don't think I could qualify anyone living in that compound as a "civilian". The US could have just chosen to bomb the whole damn thing, but they were trying to be as precise as possible. Yes, if a woman was inadvertently (to me, "deliberately" is more of a hunt down, looking for more people to kill just to kill) killed it is a shame, whether she was attempting to shield him, or used as a shield, but it don't think it calls the whole thing into question.

[Meenah]

Wasn't she hiding out with / helping to hide a mass murderer? Maybe she had no choice, I don't know enough about the culture.

[PrincessFiona]

Sadly, I can't work up the moral outrage one way or the other. The last several years of orange alerts, taking my shoes off in airports, not being allowed to bring shampoo and the non-stop talking heads spouting their special brand of bs has left me not really ... caring one way or the other anymore. I try not to fly, don't watch the news ... and ... just can't get myself worked up. I have become apathetic, I guess. Me ... the commymommy. Someone medicate me.

Kris

[DCJenn]

Kris-

I'm feeling the same way- you know what my first thought was? Good, now maybe we can escalate the withdrawal from Afghanistan so that I know for sure that my husband won't deploy there. That's my number one issue. OBL's death changes things only for the families of 9/11 and the guys who were tasked to look for him. The families will have their own reactions and the guys will move on to the new #1 terrorist.

Changes nothing- I will still be inconvenienced (necessarily or not) at the airport, home grown terrorists will still exist, international terrorists will still exist. The best we can hope for is that we catch most of them before they do something bad.

Jenn

[Meenah]

Well said Jenn. I do not want to see SIL go to Afghanistan again, he already survived one deployment.

[GrayMatterWife]

Wasn't she hiding out with / helping to hide a mass murderer? Maybe she had no choice, I don't know enough about the culture.

They are reporting today that OBL shoved her into the SEAL, in an effort to shield himself. Apparently, in his last gesture of making other people be "martyrs" without himself having to walk-the-walk. In death, as in life, he was a selfish, hypocritical coward. Sounds like she was, very literally, in the wrong place at the wrong time married to the wrong man.

To any degree, it was still a righteous shoot. What determines self-defense is reasonableness. Shooting her was entirely reasonable. There was no way for the SEAL to know if she was armed, booby-trapped, or otherwise a threat. Honestly, it sounds to me like the SEAL was trying to just get her out of the way, to get a clear shot of OBL and to protect her from getting shot in the crossfire. If she's downed on the floor, at least she's not standing in the crossfire. Also, the SEALs were diligent about getting OBL's three-year-old son out of the room and to safety.