Tuesday, May 17, 2011

AP on Abbottabad

Okay, up until now, I've avoided writing much about Osama bin Laden's death for several reasons:
1. In operations such as this, much of the initial information proves to be either incorrect due to the fog of war (see the constantly shifting explanations by the White House until they finally announced they weren't saying anything further); or is selectively leaked to make one part of the bureaucracy look brilliant/courageous.
2. The really good gouge, both on the raid itself and on the intelligence trove discovered is going to be kept quiet for as long as possible (except, of course, if you have a Vice President who . . . er, seems not to understand the meaning of discretion), and should be so that our Special Operations Forces can utilize these tactics again in the near future against other targets. 
3. In addition to this being the busiest time of year for my day job, I was swamped writing pieces on this topic for the Washington Postthe Weekly Standard, and Foreign Policy.
4. There is are a lot of questions that are simply unanswerable at this time.

I'll actually have a lot of posts on bin Laden's death and its aftermath/strategic effects coming shortly.  But for now, I'll point you to this piece today by Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press, which appears to be the most detailed account yet of the Abbottabad raid to date.

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