Speaking from the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama announced to the nation on Sunday that the hunt for Osama bin Laden has come to an end. Lauding meticulous intelligence work, the president explained that DNA evidence confirmed the slain body of a terrorist operative is that of the Sept. 11 mastermind.
What led up to this event?
August 1998: President Bill Clinton institutes "self-defense exception" to authorize capture of bin Laden, dead or alive.
A Sept. 16, 2001, report from CBS News says that then-President Clinton connected the Aug. 7, 1998, attacks on U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi to Osama bin Laden. Ordering the apprehension of the terrorist, Clinton empowered the CIA and its operatives to assassinate bin Laden, if necessary. In order to do so, the president invoked a "self-defense exception," since the American government is forbidden from ordering assassinations.
December 2001: President Bush sends troops into Afghanistan during the Battle of Tora Bora but fails to apprehend bin Laden.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attack on the United States, President George W. Bush quickly identified Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the operation. The Washington Post said that intelligence reports placed the terrorist in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where American troops engaged him. He fled, in part, because of what insiders term the administration's "gravest error in the war against al Qaeda," namely the failure to rely on sufficient American ground troops to capture him. In October 2001, the Taliban considered handing over bin Laden to the United States, if -- as outlined by the Guardian -- the Bush White House could prove his involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.
October 2004: Osama bin Laden broadcasts on Arabic TV, taking full responsibility for the 9/11 attacks
CBC News reported that this 18-minute video is the first time that the purported Sept. 11 mastermind actually took responsibility for the terrorist act. The al-Qaeda leader explained that the group planned and went through the attack because of the urge to "regain the freedom" of their nation.
September 2007: A second raid of the mountainous regions of Tora Bora almost leads to the capture of bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri.
United States troops, together with military forces from Afghanistan, once again raided Tora Bora. MSNBC reported that this military action was due to U.S. intelligence information placing Osama bin Laden in the same spot where he eluded capture in 2001. The military action failed to secure either bin Laden or al Zawahiri, prompting an official to suggest that he didn't really "know if he was there." Blasting the tactics dictated by Washington, former Army Special Operations Col. Michael Sheehan went on record stating that "our response is normally too big, too slow, too cumbersome and too risk adverse."
May 2011: President Obama announces the death of Osama bin Laden
President Barack Obama must have heard the colonel's message loud and clear, because in his speech crediting the American operatives that killed bin Laden, he specially outlined that "a small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability." The body of the al-Qaeda leader is now in American custody.
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