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| President Barack Obama |
President Barack Obama met with the commandos who staged the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, saying that because of them the terrorist leader responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks “will never threaten America again.”
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden talked privately with the helicopter pilots and Navy SEALs yesterday at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they also addressed soldiers who recently returned from fighting in Afghanistan.
“I came here for a simple reason: to say thank you,” Obama told a hangar full of service members. “On behalf of all Americans and people around the world --- Job well done.”
Fort Campbell is the home base for the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation
Regiment, which piloted the SEALs of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group on the bin Laden raid, and the 5th Special Forces Group. It also is home to the 101st Airborne Division.Obama and Biden met with the full assault force that took part in the bin Laden operation and awarded the units involved a Presidential Unit Citation, according to an administration official.
“Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals, intelligence, military, over many years, the terrorist leader who struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again,” the president said.
Raid on Compound
The U.S. commandos raided the compound just after midnight on May 2 local time. One of the specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters lost lift and landed hard at the compound. While no U.S. personnel were hurt, the craft had to be destroyed on the ground, and a backup helicopter helped evacuate the assault force, which also was carrying bin Laden’s body and the computers, storage media and documents taken from the house.
Obama called the raid “one of the greatest intelligence and military operations in our nation’s history.”
The administration has warned that the death of bin Laden doesn’t remove the threat from his followers.
That was illustrated by a message from al-Qaeda dated May 3, and posted on websites that have carried confirmed jihadist statements in the past, confirming bin Laden’s death and threatening to retaliate “soon” against the U.S.
Bin Laden’s blood “is too valuable to us and to every Muslim to let it go in vain,” the statement attributed to al- Qaeda said.
U.S. Strategy
Obama told the soldiers at Fort Campbell that the successful mission against the terrorist leader showed the U.S. strategy is working in the war against terrorism and in Afghanistan, which the U.S. invaded following the Sept. 11 attacks masterminded by bin Laden.
“There’s no greater evidence of that than justice finally being delivered to Osama bin Laden,” he said.
Obama has set a timetable for beginning a withdrawal from Afghanistan in July, with plans to have all U.S. combat troops out of the country by 2014.
“Because of your service, because of your sacrifices, we’re making progress in Afghanistan,” the president said. “In key regions, we’ve seized the momentum.”
However, he said the war in Afghanistan “continues to be a very tough fight.”
As of May 5, 1,561 members of the U.S. military have died in the Afghanistan war, according to the Department of Defense.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S. cautioned against a hasty American withdrawal from the region after members of Congress from both parties this week questioned the need to continue sacrificing American lives and providing U.S. aid now that al-Qaeda’s leader is dead.
“Underneath him is a very complicated and complex network that needs to be dealt with,” Ambassador Eklil Ahmad Hakimi said in an interview in Washington today. “So concluding that the job is done is something that we should be very cautious about.”
‘Game-Changer’
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who met with the mission team May 5 at an undisclosed location, told troops at Seymour- Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina yesterday that the killing of bin Laden “could be a game-changer” for the war in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden had “a very close personal relationship” with Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban that harbored al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, Gates said, according to a Defense Department transcript.
“I think it’s too early to make a judgment in terms of the impact inside Afghanistan,” Gates said. “But I think in six months or so, we’ll probably know if it’s made a difference.”
U.S. Resilience
Obama also said the bin Laden mission demonstrated U.S. resilience and its ability to recover from adversity, whether the shock of the Sept. 11 attacks or a deep recession.
“We’re still the America that does the hard things, that does the great things,” Obama said. “We don’t turn back. We pick ourselves up and we get on with the hard task of keeping our country strong and safe.”
On May 5, Obama visited the Sept. 11 memorial being built at the former World Trade Center site, his first trip there as president. While there he met with the families of some of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack, the worst ever on U.S. soil.
The stop at Fort Campbell was added to a previously scheduled trip to Indianapolis, where the president talked about the need for the nation to develop alternative energy sources to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington atnjohnston3@bloomberg.net; Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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