Donald Eat your heart out

By that definition, all moujahideen fighters in Afghanistan in the 80s were "CIA operatives". Most of his funding came from his family fortune anyway.

Easier to protect him if he is nearby...

Actual from the BBC News website:

"US media reports said that the body was buried at sea to conform with Islamic practice of a burial within 24 hours and to prevent any grave becoming a shrine."

Please get your facts right. Shortening a report to create an argument is something for Fox News.

It was said a whiiile ago.

do try to keep up with the thread

So...if Pakistan or some other country or pseudo-military organization would quietly and secretly invade the US, stalk out the president and kill him, that would be ok? And the celebrations in the streets of the invading country(ies) would be a good thing?

I certainly do not agree with the sentiment that Pakistani sovereignty should have protected Bin Laden from capture and assassination. You live by the sword and you die by the sword. The US would not be happy if a similar thing occurred on US soil but it also wouldn't be so quick to protect a known mass murdered, at least not so openly. The best analogy, however, would be the Russians murdering that guy in London by poisoning (a guy who was not a known mass murderer) and that certainly did not lead to WWW III. I suspect typical, boring, anti-Americanism is behind the posts here claiming that there is something wrong with clipping this guy, not reasoned thought.

On the other hand, I am not pleased to see cheering crowds and jingoistic chants everywhere. Taking a life is a solemn event and its necessity does not change that in my opinion. I'm sorry that we live in a world where things like this happen and do not choose to celebrate them.

On balance I feel like the world is a better place for this having happened, and I think the operation itself appears to have been carried off immaculately, but I don't think killing ever deserves celebration. It saddens me that there are people who cannot see behind reactionary anti-Americanism to understand why this needed to be done and that its being done in Pakistan neither lessens its import nor tarnishes the act itself.

Obama's popularity was looking pretty low, the American economy was depressed, China has been stealing all the lime-light, the various wars at the moment all look like they achieved nothing, need to give coalition partners proof that America can uphold it's military promises, sending out a message to other countries that no one is safe...etc.
There are quite a few reasons and burying the man at sea was about the stupidest thing they could have done.

It is all a bit odd to me firstly that no one is mentioning that they executed him without a trial, which is just plain wrong and secondly that they could have had him in 2001 if Bush had actually been a decent human being instead of utter scum,

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...en-631436.html

Also do people still really believe that OBL was the head of some James Bond type super crime organisation...or just a name the US plucked out of a hat so they could have a focal point to blame.

He was on the battlefield almost always and the allied forces had "cornered" him many times but somehow he survived only to be killed in a mansion estimated 1.000.000$.
And where is his body? Buried at sea? By "islamic tradition"?
Probably he is still alive and enjoying at some beautiful beach with beautiful girls

Bin Laden is not president of anything; he is an acknowledged mass murderer. Your entire premise is ridiculous.

The guy should have been given a fair trial instead of just killed. Otherwise what is the difference?

Why are people making this equivalency? The attack on the compound was done with the cooperation of the Pakistanis.

What is interesting is that Bin Laden seems to have been held in an ISI safehouse. There were high-placed rogue elements of the Pakistani intelligence/military community protecting him. The Indian government is already latching on to this news to prove that they were right all along about the Pakistani government being corrupt to the core. I don't envy their future, they've got the Afghanis to the west pissed off about being blamed for harboring Bin Laden while he's been in Pakistan all along. You've got the Indians to the east. Not to mention all the extremist elements within their own country who wouldn't mind taking another try at toppling the government.

You do not try enemy combatants in civil courts, which is what he has been classified (justifiably) as. You are also assuming that the assassination was not an attempted apprehension gone awry, which is an assumption that I am not prepared to make.

Again, simplistic anti-Americanism. Boring and predictable.

I see what your saying planthead and they are all valid reasons, but pulling something like that off, and keeping it a secret would be next to impossible, far too many people involved, blowing him up in cave would have been much easier lie, no body just some dna, no team of seals to keep quiet, so gov officials to worry about etc.

As for OBL being some sort of james bond supper villian, lol, of course not, to me he was just a spoilt little rich kid looking for a cause, stupid enough to stick his head up and rich enough to finance it

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The big question is if the US had the possibility to bring him alive in the US for a proper trial & investigation. I think he certainly had a lot of interesting things to say.
I don't understand why they "burried" him in the sea? Were they too scared to keep the body in the US? Since there is no way to verify it, I assume they kept the body.
The world is certainly a safer place today, but tomorrow other osama's will be aligning unfortunately.
2011 has been so far quite a special year:
- revolutions in arab countries
- tsunami/nuclear catastrophy in Japan
- bin laden caught & killed
- hamas & plo agreement
and there are more to come especially in the middle-east.

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Unless you've seen something I have not, you certainly do not know whether they tried to apprehend him and had no choice but to shoot him or whether they intended the whole time to kill him. You should probably wait and find out.

You just pop one in their heads?

Standard ROE-> Hostile Fire may be returned effectively and promptly to stop a hostile act.

That's what soldiers are trained to do when they're being, you know, shot at.