On May 1st, 2011, just before midnight Eastern time (some reports say shortly after midnight), then-President Barack Obama announced from the White House’s East Room that, after years of evading capture, Al- Qaeda leader and 9/11 attack planner Osama bin Laden had met his demise at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as a result of a U.S. military raid.
“Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children,” Obama stated.
“A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability,” he added. “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.”
Unwittingly, this man tweeted about the operation:
The New York Times reported at the time that there were celebrations across America after the news broke, including in Washington, D.C., and New York City:
The news touched off an extraordinary outpouring of emotion as crowds gathered outside the White House, in Times Square and at the ground zero site, waving American flags, cheering, shouting, laughing and chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” In New York City, crowds sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Throughout downtown Washington, drivers honked horns deep into the night.[…]
The mostly young people who celebrated in the streets of New York and Washington saw it as a historic moment, one that for many of them culminated a worldwide manhunt that started when they were children.
Some climbed trees and lampposts directly in front of the White House to cheer and wave flags. Cigars and noisemakers were common. One group started singing, “Osama, Osama, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”
As early as the late 1980s/early 1990s, bin Laden was becoming “increasingly hostile to the United States. In particular, he opposed the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and Somalia and sought to drive our nation’s personnel out of these areas by force.”
Before the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network had also been implicated in terrorist attacks against the United States’ interests overseas, including two in East Africa in 1998:
One of terrorist organization’s major plots came to deadly fruition on August 7, 1998, when al Qaeda operatives bombed U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.The near simultaneous attacks killed more than 200 American, Kenyan, and Tanzanian citizens and wounded another 4,500 people.
There was also the deadly bombing of the USS Cole on October 12th, 2000:
On October 12, 2000, however, terrorist operatives set off a small boat filled with explosives next to the USS Cole during its fuel stop in Yemen. The attack killed 17 Navy sailors, injured nearly 40 other crew members, and severely damaged the ship.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six, was carried out by Ramzi Yousef, whose uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was the mastermind behind 9/11. Yousef trained at an Al-Qaeda camp. Mohammed and bin Laden became associates in 1996, and he later joined Al-Qaeda in late 1998/early 1999, after which the planning for 9/11 really took shape.
Also in 1993, the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia occurred. Osama bin Laden perceived the United States’ response to it as weak, which emboldened him to plan and carry out other attacks:
The street battles that ensued on Oct. 3 and 4, 1993, involved U.S. Army Rangers and commandos from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known as “Delta Force.” During a successful mission to capture lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, hundreds of Somali gunmen engaged the U.S. teams and killed 18 soldiers, wounded 73 others and shot down two Army Black Hawk choppers.
America’s subsequent hasty exit from that mission, which was originally to support United Nations humanitarian operations in Mogadishu, emboldened a little-known terrorist leader at the time named Osama bin Laden, who boasted that the U.S. superpower was weak for withdrawing after losing G.I.s in “minor battles” there.
According to the CIA, the notorious global terrorist leader “was buried at sea from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the north Arabian Sea” at 12:59 a.m. Eastern time, May 2nd, 2011.
Do you remember where you were when you heard the news of OBL’s death?
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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