BREAKING: Osama bin Laden is dead, officials say; President Obama addresses the nation

Details are sketchy as of this hour, but Amer­i­ca’s tele­vi­sion net­works, cit­ing mul­ti­ple sources, are report­ing that U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden in Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan, and have pos­ses­sion of his body.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is sched­uled to speak to the nation short­ly. The admin­is­tra­tion has not offi­cial­ly con­firmed the news, but the pres­i­dent is expect­ed to do so when he speaks from the East Room of the White House.

PRESIDENT NOW SPEAKING, 8:32 PM: Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s speech has begun. He has con­firmed the news reports: Osama bin Laden is dead, and the Unit­ed States is in pos­ses­sion of his body. Bin Laden was killed in a fire­fight cen­tered around a com­pound in a sub­ur­ban region of Pak­istan, which had been tar­get­ed by a small con­tin­gent of U.S. forces. (The Pres­i­dent did­n’t elab­o­rate on which branch(es) of the mil­i­tary con­tributed troops to the force).

PRESIDENT REVEALS MORE DETAILS, 8:44 PM: The oper­a­tion appar­ent­ly came to fruition after Amer­i­ca’s intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty began pur­su­ing a lead about bin Laden’s where­abouts last August, the Pres­i­dent said. He dis­closed that he recent­ly signed off on a plan to make use of the intel­li­gence that was gath­ered by fol­low­ing up on the lead. The plan was car­ried out, and it result­ed in a firefight.

The bat­tle at the com­pound was appar­ent­ly very one-sided, because the Pres­i­dent said no Amer­i­cans were killed, and care was tak­en to avoid loss of civil­ian lives. The only lives lost were those of al-Qae­da oper­a­tives, includ­ing Osama bin Laden him­self, and one woman used as a human shield by them.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT SAID, 9:25 PM: Here is the rel­e­vant, tran­scribed por­tion of the pres­i­den­t’s address, con­cern­ing the operation.

[L]ast August, after years of painstak­ing work by our intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, I was briefed on a pos­si­ble lead to bin Laden. It was far from cer­tain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeat­ed­ly with my nation­al secu­ri­ty team as we devel­oped more infor­ma­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that we had locat­ed bin Laden hid­ing with­in a com­pound deep inside of Pak­istan. And final­ly, last week, I deter­mined that we had enough intel­li­gence to take action, and autho­rized an oper­a­tion to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direc­tion, the Unit­ed States launched a tar­get­ed oper­a­tion against that com­pound in Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan.  A small team of Amer­i­cans car­ried out the oper­a­tion with extra­or­di­nary courage and capa­bil­i­ty. No Amer­i­cans were harmed. They took care to avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties. After a fire­fight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took cus­tody of his body.

MURRAY REACTS, 9:02 PM: Here’s Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray’s state­ment. Just came in. One of the first offi­cial respons­es from a mem­ber of Congress.

The Pres­i­den­t’s announce­ment tonight is tremen­dous news for all Amer­i­cans and for coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts worldwide.

The superb work of our mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties have led to the death of the mas­ter­mind of the worst attack in our nation’s his­to­ry.  It is indeed a great moment.

I applaud our troops, intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, and the Admin­is­tra­tion for nev­er waver­ing in this impor­tant goal in the broad­er war on terrorism.

This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant day for the thou­sands of Amer­i­cans who lost a fam­i­ly mem­ber, friend or loved one near­ly ten years ago. And all of our thanks go to those who have been lost in our mil­i­tary efforts and to our vet­er­ans and their families.

This is indeed a sig­nif­i­cant moment and one that will con­tin­ue to pro­pel our efforts to root out ter­ror­ists wher­ev­er they reside. We must con­tin­ue to remain vig­i­lant and focused on the pro­tec­tion of the Amer­i­can people.

BACKGROUND FROM THE ADMINISTRATION, 9:44 PM: NPI has just learned much more about the oper­a­tion from the White House. Here’s some of what we heard on a call with senior admin­is­tra­tion officials:

• The com­pound where bin Laden was hid­ing is locat­ed in an area that is “rel­a­tive­ly afflu­ent, with lots of retired mil­i­tary,” accord­ing to a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial. “It’s also iso­lat­ed from the nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and ter­ror­ist attacks that have afflict­ed oth­er parts of Pak­istan,” the offi­cial said.
• The com­pound was built with­in the last five years, and the U.S. sus­pects it may have been built explic­it­ly for the pur­pose of hid­ing the al-Qae­da leader. It was extreme­ly well secured, with high walls, barbed wire, mul­ti­ple gates, and few win­dows in the buildings.
• The intel­li­gence on this com­pound has been a close­ly-guard­ed secret until this evening. The infor­ma­tion was con­sid­ered incred­i­bly impor­tant and was shared with no oth­er country.
• The spe­cial team that took out Bin Laden was brought in using heli­copters. The admin­is­tra­tion won’t say (at least for now) which kind of heli­copters were used or what mix­ture of per­son­nel com­prised the team.
• Bin Laden’s body is being han­dled in accor­dance with Islam­ic prac­tice and tra­di­tion. “This is some­thing that we take very seri­ous­ly.  And so there­fore this is being han­dled in an appro­pri­ate man­ner,” a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said.

CANTWELL REACTS, MONDAY MORNING, 10:05 AM: Here is Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell’s state­ment. We received it a few min­utes ago.

The long wait from 2001 is over. Osama Bin Laden’s death will be remem­bered as a major turn­ing point in our efforts to fight his ter­ror­ism net­work. The Amer­i­can peo­ple are grate­ful for the ser­vice of all our mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence community.

Today, we remem­ber the lives of those who were lost on Sep­tem­ber 11, and we give our deep­est appre­ci­a­tion to those who defend our free­dom every day. The death of Osama Bin Laden is a major step for­ward in the fight against ter­ror­ism, but we must con­tin­ue our efforts to con­front the social and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions that give rise to vio­lent extrem­ism around the world.

By tar­get­ing and tak­ing out Osama bin Laden, U.S. spe­cial forces have neu­tral­ized a mass mur­der­er who direct­ed the slaugh­ter of thou­sands of inno­cent people.

Our world will unques­tion­ably safer, hap­pi­er, and more peace­ful with­out Osama bin Laden in it. It took near­ly ten years, but Osama bin Laden has been brought to jus­tice for his many heinous acts.

Mark Twain once wrote, I’ve nev­er wished a man dead, but I have read some obit­u­ar­ies with great plea­sure. This apho­rism has been grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty on Twit­ter, and seems to be a fit­ting response to the news announced by the president.

Osama bin Laden’s death is more than just a mis­sion accom­plished. It is an oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is time for the “war on ter­ror” to be over. We can­not hope to win a war against a noun. We can­not be free if we live in fear.

As Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt once said:

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will pros­per. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — name­less, unrea­son­ing, unjus­ti­fied ter­ror which par­a­lyzes need­ed efforts to con­vert retreat into advance.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We are play­ing into the hands of those who want to take away our free­doms when we vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­der our civ­il lib­er­ties in the name of secu­ri­ty. (Those who would give up Essen­tial Lib­er­ty to pur­chase a lit­tle Tem­po­rary Safe­ty, deserve nei­ther Lib­er­ty nor Safe­ty).

And we are play­ing into the hands of those who want to take away our free­doms by occu­py­ing lands that do not belong to us.

In the end, Amer­i­ca was made safe from Osama bin Laden by a covert raid… what amount­ed to a police action. The events of today just go to show that the occu­pa­tions begun by George W. Bush have not result­ed in a safer Amer­i­ca or a safer world. It is time for those occu­pa­tions to be ended.

And it is time for us to begin con­fronting the real threats human­i­ty faces… fear, prej­u­dice, hatred, and bigotry.