well, the big story together, of course, osama bin laden is dead. at this hour, we continue to learn new tee tails about how it all unfolded. both abroad in pakistan and here at home where the strike was ordered. this afternoon, while bestowing the medal of honor on two former soldiers, the president again emphasized the significance of the moment. >> our country has kept its commitment to see that justice is done. the world is safer. it is a better place because of the death of osama bin laden. >> the u.s. now saying dna analysis confirms with 100% certainty that, in fact, it was osama bin laden killed during that 40-minute raid by u.s. forces on a pakistani compound one mile away from the most prestigious military compound in pakistan. this purportedly the bloody scene inside the compound in the

aftermath of the operation. the announcement of bin laden's death last night prompting spontaneous celebrations in america. >> usa! usa! >> we will be covering all angles of this breaking story in the next hour from the threat of retaliation to the future of our war efforts, to what this day means for 9/11 survivors. good afternoon to you, my name is dylan ratigan. it's nice to see you. we begin today with mike viqueira at the white house where the president monitored the operation in realtime from his situation room. mike, are we going to ultimately get a photo of the deceased osama bin laden? i understand that that has been a subject of rather wide debate at this point. >> reporter: well, obviously the u.s. military, the u.s. government is in possession of some sort of photo, if not video and other evidence. you mentioned, of course, the dna, which we learned progressively the numbers, the likelihood that is osama bin laden have grown higher each day

with the dna match, as you report, now at 100%. it's a difficult decision. what we heard from the homeland and international terrorism adviser at the white house, john brennan, in the last hour or so, is any indication. they're always trying to determine whether anything they reveal, any facts, even a picture of the deceased terrorist osama bin laden, will reveal any sort of operational detail, whether it would be compromised when they go after any future bad guys. dylan, you mentioned at the end of that report there, your open, the poignant scene, jubilant scene outside the white house fence here. especially poignant when you consider it was this very location on september 11th, you mentioned the people in the world trade center. the heroes of flight 93 probably saved the lives of hundreds of people, the people who perished in the field in pennsylvania, saved the lives of hundreds of people in the white house or

perhaps in the capitol dome. those folks will never been forgotten as will the people in the pentagon and the plane that crashed into that edifice there, only to be repaired later. a fascinating briefing by john brennan who explicitly said it's very unlikely that this facility, this home could have existed under the noses of the pakistani government or the pakistani people without some support and implicitly said that the pakistani government, he left open the possibility that they, themselves, knew about it. that's going to be talked about and, indeed, that is really taking over the discussion, the reporting and the questioning here in washington as the day wears on. >> yeah. begs it when you look at google earth and you see the proximity of that mansion to the most prominent military academy in pakistan. it's hard to conceive of how that facility could exist in that fashion without it being on purpose. mike, thank you for the reporting. cia director leon panetta who had overall command of the kill mission is warning of potential

retaliation from al qaeda or al qaeda sympathizers. does the death of osama bin laden make us safer or in fact inflame things and expose us to new danger? joining us now, nbc news terrorism analyst roger cressey to address that and the pakis n pakistani question. roger, let us begin immediately today, as a new yorker, the more security on the bridges, more security on the subways. how much more real is the threat to those of us who live in new york, or those who might live in washington or other cities, los angeles, san francisco? in the hours and days following this news? >> dylan, i don't think it's significantly higher. what you're seeing with nypd in new york and other major metropolitan police forces is the standard abundance of caution. they don't have credible, specific threat informationing. they're doing what they think is in the best interest to create a sense of deterrence if in fact there's something they don't know about. al qaeda, if they had contingency plans on the shelf in the aftermath, it would be

focused in the middle east and south asia. they don't have the capability to reach into the united states in a sleeper cell format or from a strategic reach in from the middle east. so i think the threat level is quite low right now, but the mid to long term could be different. >> let's address the mid to long term. how does bin laden play out in your estimation as a martyr? >> to your first question, we are safer today because of bin laden's death. al qaeda central is going to try and respond. they want to avenge bin laden with some type of attack against the united states. they don't have the capability right now to pop it off in the next couple days i believe. they're going to try to put something together. as i said, the mid to long term. the good news is, the u.s. counterterrorism is going to keep their foot on the gas, degrade attend destroy the

infrastructure in afghanistan. the good news is we have a tremendous victory over the weekend. we're going to continue to press forth. by need to recognize the threat is still very real. >> the other obvious question that's sort of begging to be asked as we all collect this information is we have given pakistan $20 billion of our tax dollars since 2011 -- or since 2001, excuse me. they were housing osama bin laden in a mansion, literally one mile away from the pakistani equivalent of west point. how is it possible that this man could live in a luxury mansion, so to speak, a mile away from west point, 30 miles outside of the capital and not have that be known? >> dylan, you're going to hear a lot of question that we used to hear on capitol hill a few years ago. what did you know and when did you know it, to the pakistani government. bottom line is pakistan has been a schizophrenic ally of us for a number of years. they have cooperated on many occasions but also been difficult.

that relationship is the not going to change. it is in our country's interest to continue to push the pakistanis to do what we want them to do, but we have to recognize there are times when pakistan is simply going to refuse then it becomes that great cost/benefit analysis of what's in our better national interest. >> from your standpoint, are people wrong to look at this who don't have intelligence training, who don't have security clearance? and find it very hard to believe the pakistani government was not housing osama bin laden? >> dylan, there's no doubt in nigh mind some elements of the government knew about this. the question is, what high -- how high in the organization? just the isi, the intelligence organization, the military, or were there others? and we go to the pakistani government and say, hey, we know that people knew here. you have got to do a better job. what is pakistan's response going to be? what we can't do is say to the p pakistanis, you failed to produce bin laden, we're going to punish you. some of that cooperation is very

critical to destroying al qaeda's infrastructure on the pakistan boarder. that has been in our interest the past couple years. we have to find that middle ground. >> roger, thanks for the analysis. as always, roger cressey, nbc news terrorism analyst. our coverage of osama bin laden's death only getting rolling here this afternoon. straight ahead, is this the linchpin to a way out? the politics of the kill and a gateway to an end game in afghanistan. is it real? also, our so-called ally. with friends like pakistan, who needs saudi arabia? plus, the spirit of our own country, five lessons learned from 9/11. do we still remember any of them? ♪ got brass in pocket...

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we will kill bin laden, we will crush al qaeda. that has to be our biggest national security priority. >> president obama making good on that '08 promise to the american people. one of the few presidential promises he has made good on, sparking celebrations in america. in the middle east, there are still some who revere osama bin laden. a stark reminder bin laden's life may be over but his legacy alive and well. something we've been hearing over and over again today. >> even as we mark this milestone, we should not forget that the battle to stop al qaeda and its syndicate of terror will

not end with the death of bin laden. >> worst thing we can do now is let down our guard and i think we need to maintain our vigilance, assume that there will be other efforts made. >> we have to assume this isn't the end of radical islamists trying to kill americans. there are others out there. >> let's bring in lieutenant colonel anthony schaffer, served a couple tours in afghanistan, involved for the terror group's most dangerous members. sam, host of the majority report. tim carney from the washington examiner. chrystia freeland, reuters editor at large. tony, how old you frame chapter two, the post-osama chapter of america's war on terror. >> we're at a pivot point. the first generation is demised, is don this is the end of it. we chopped off the head and

we've now proliferated it to a much lower level but a larger level. we have the likes of awlaki and others who have taken up the cause in many ways. while they may not be planning large events, they're much more effective in understanding us, our society and i think moving forward with things like "inspire" magazine and trying to encourage folks like major hassan and shashad to make things difficult for days to come. >> nobody understands better the physical mechanics of getting helicopters into pakistan and actually what happened in that 40-minute time period as it is something you, yourself, have both practiced and counseled to. did they, in fact, build a model compound and practice in a second facility? in other words, how did this happen? >> they essentially from what my guys told me today did build a model compound and rehearsed their asses off.

it's a constant thing. one of the principle things, dylan, you always overtrain. you get to the point whether you're superconfident, wherever you go and do the real thing, you're going to be tense, going to be worried. there's no substitute for a lot of training. two other things i'm sure happened, by the way, there's a chapter in "operation dark heart" which covers another unit doing the same thing. they had a scout team ahead of this, didn't talk much about this yet. the fbi had a forensics team going in with the guys from what i heard. they were able to do to the forensic stuff. they overtrained, and frankly, you know, president obama is benefiting from the tragedy of desert one. i hate to go back to 1979 and president carter. what went wrong then has been fixed. president obama is reaping the benefits to have the solid ability to this sort of thing. >> i want to bring the panel into this conversation.

the one thing that occurs to a lot of folks, tony, we'd love to hear your answer to this as well, how much politically, tim, do you think this starts to open up the gateway to a withdrawal from afghanistan? >> the question to ask is, what degree did our invasion and occupations of iraq and afghanistan help us get him? if we had found him in afghanistan or northwest pakistan, i would have said, yeah, this flushed him out. as you were saying, he was sitting in a suburb. that opens all new questions about what are we doing in afghanistan and is that making us safer? >> you're nodding. why? >> well yeah, that's absolutely the question. i mean, why are we in afghanistan at this point? i mean, are we capable of getting all those tiny little post hydra cells by waging a war in afghanistan, waging a war in iraq? i don't think so. yet we've killed bin laden, what's changed today. >> again, to that end, $800 billion was the cost of the war in iraq. $400 billion the cost of the war in afghanistan. the overall cost between 9/11

and bin laden's death, $1.3 trillion. and the guy's living in the suburbs of islamabad next to the pakistani west point. we know after this wave breaks, we're going to be back on the debt ceiling. what are we doing? >> so, this was an expensive execution operation, but i think we're asking exactly the right question. the question is, now, so the goal from day one, from 9/11, was we are now, we the americans are going to hunt down and kill osama bin laden. you've done that. when does the peace dividend start? when does america say, okay, mission accomplished and now it's time to start spending that money somewhere else. and you know what, there are lots of places at home where i think america can spend the money. >> did the iraq and afghan operations -- >> were they relevant? >> -- contribute at all? >> i think that's a great question. historians should answer it. there's an even easier question we should be asking which is,

okay, whether they accomplished it or not, it's done, right? osama bin laden has been captured. he has been killed. what is the strategic interest of america going forward? how much money does america have to spend on it? >> tony, you heard the mega panel. the two core questions. again, in what way were or are the afghanistan and iraq were relevant to killing a man who was living nicely in the suburbs of islamabad next to a pakistani west point? and two, regard less of his relevancy, shouldn't we get out of here at this point? couldn't we do something else with $1 trillion or $2 trillion? >> we have to focus on pakistan in all aspects. they have a nuclear weapons program. the real issue here for that region is the cold war between pakistan and india. that is clearly what we need to focus on in some regard. with that said, there's no purpose to be in afghanistan, the numbers we have. when i was there in '03 we were winning by the fact we weren't try to formulate or postulate a

golf nan governance for the people of afghanistan. we were there to do business. do what's necessary for national security, not establish a jeffersonian style democracy. if i were the president i would announce tomorrow the drawdown and get people out of there immediately. >> i have a question for you. we're talking about pakistan. what do you think we had to give them in exchange for this? i've seen different reports as to whether or not pakistan helped us in this. my understanding is it would have been tricky to get those helicopters in from afghanistan. let's assume for the moment, maybe we can't possibly know for sure, at least i can't from where i sit. what would we have to trade with pakistan for this type of access? >> well, the way -- let me say this as clearly as i can without getting in trouble or my sources in trouble. the pakistanis didn't know we were going in to get bin laden. they knew they were doing something. i think that's why the president had to call president of pakistan to let him know, president zardari, that we were doing something. this is, without giving away

anything that's too technical, pakistanis didn't know we were coming. the intelligence was not shared. frankly, i don't think we gave much up to them, other than i think deals made to get the initial intel on this a year ago. this was -- i think the reason you're hearing radio silence from pakistan, they're as shocked as anyone else that we got bin laden. >> at the end of the day, tim carney channels a lot of people's views on these wars which is, okay, i get it, 9/11 was a horrendous tragedy. heartbreaking, terrifying, disruptive. the worst event you could imagine in pretty much any category. the quest to administrate justice, as the president put it, by pursuing osama bin laden and has now been achieved, very understandable, admirable by many measures and certainly necessary. the concern, i think, by so many in this country is that the decade between 9/11 and the

killing of bin laden was effectively either a misguided, exploitive, insane. there's more words i can't use on television. effort that created a power vacuum in iraq that now is easily going to be filled by iran, allows iran to expand its projected power as opposed to the balance iraq once provided to iran's projected power. >> right. >> and we're $1 trillion poorer for all of this. is tim correct in channeling a lot of american skepticism about the relevancy of either of these wars to the objectives articulated relative to 9/11? >> dylan, you and i are analysts in many ways, and i think what you have to do is sit down with the end in mind. i don't think our policymakers actually did that. we have made some huge policy mistakes.

some of these i have witnessed directly. some of these the american people have been asking about all along. this is the bottom line. if we set out to get an individual like bin laden, that should remain our focus. we've diverted ourselves down rabbit holes which have cost a lot of money. frankly, the northern waziristan campaign has helped build enemies because we've killed folks there who were not terrorists and those families may come back to haunt us down the road. this is a time to atone for mistakes we've made and at the same time identify those things which really are in our national interest relating to defense. libya, i don't see. pakistan it clearly i think an issue by the fact they have nuclear weapons. and i think right now in afghanistan, we cannot do much more good there. there's nothing more we can do. we need to get the paschun and northern alliance guys getting talking in a peace process and move out. >> your headline, i'm going to wrap this up, if you were in charge, you'd announce the drawdown tomorrow.

>> absolutely. >> listen, tony, always a pleasure. thank you for your time and analysis. we'll take a momentary break here. the mega panel stays. still ahead, osama certainly gone but not forgotten. ten years after 9/11. did osama bin laden as a political activist really accomplish what he set out to do? ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] with amazing innovation, driven by relentless competition, wireless puts the world at your command. ♪ with heart-related chest pain or a heart attack known as acs,

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so osama bin laden is gone. his legacy will not soon be forgotten. some argue that at the time of his death last night, osama bin laden was mostly the iconic figure, the head of the al qaeda network. you can't avoid his impact on all of us in america on a daily basis for the past ten years. you see it every time you board a flight. whether it's increased security or tsa pat-down.

you see it in the permanent culture of fear in this country's political dialogue. you see it in anti-american sentiment that has blossomed in the last decade. row see it in the loss of american civil liberties and, of course, you see it through the death of our soldiers and our deficit. we spent more than $1 trillion in the past ten years. some said it as evidence bin laden ultimately achieved his objectives long before his death. director of analysis, sam, tim carney and chrystia stay here. did osama do what he set out to do? >> he created the legend as you mentioned. the battlefield is really divided between the ideological battle field and the physical. on the ideological, bin laden has been marginalized greatly

over the year, but it's a lot harder to kill an ideology than one person. that's something the world all over is going to be dealing with as al qaeda affiliates and franchises live on and carry on that jihadist mantra. on the physical battlefield we've seen much less effective al qaeda affiliates and franchises attempting to reach the same level of al qaeda core but not quite succeeding there. even al qaeda in the arabian peninsula based out of yemen has shown innovation in tactives and attacks overall but haven't been able to pull off one of those meaningful strategic transnational attacks that require high levels of operational security overall. >> what do you guys think in terms of osama bin laden's impact on the way americans live? on the american politics and the loss of american brand equity overseas? >> i actually don't think so. i don't agree with the premise. you know, i think that if you

think back to 9/11, very quickly, the view developed that the fight against radical islam was going to be the cold war of this millennium. it was going to be the organizing principle, sort of the challenge for the west. i think it's turned out to be a much smaller thing. not minimizing the cost, not minimizing the number of people who've died, but it's turned out to be a much more low-level threat. i think the big question today is, you know, a big internal, domestic industry was built up around that. the homeland security industry, the sort of the fighting radical islam industry. i think the real challenge in terms of domestic politics today is for people to say, you know, bin laden is dead, thank goodness. and let's now really close this chapter and move on to other challenges. i think you're going to hear a lot of people, you heard rumsfeld today saying, oh, no, the threat is still there, we have to spend another $1 trillion in the next decaddecad

>> i don't think there was an ex-potential threat to us. i think the real threat to us was the one that we exactly failed to defeat. that was us turning on ourselves, destroying our own ideals, like civil liberties. the idea we can't try khalid shaikh mohammed in a civilian court. the idea we come up with a third form of prisoner somewhere in between military and civilian justice. i mean, i think that's a legacy we have yet to really deal -- >> tim is becoming a good conservative like me. the problem is the government response to the disaster. i remember on september 12th walking across capitol hill seeing lots of men with very large machine guns. i thought this was permanent. i thought we were going to keep getting attacked. that hasn't happened. you want to fly from cleveland to salt lake city today, you can't do it without somebody giving you a friendly pat. the government's response has given bin laden a little bit of victory, but you know what the fact is, i bet -- i don't know.

i can't read these guys' minds. i bet the jihadists were hoping they would be blowing us up every couple months. >> their objectives haven't been achieved, but our own fears as to

forge a political deal with the taliban in afghanistan in order to shape an exit strategy from that war. and they certainly use that leverage. they want two things. one is the u.s. recognition of pakistan's fear of influence within afghanistan. and secondly, more importantly, they know that they're facing a much bigger an larger rival to the east in india. that's why they need an external power patron like the united states to help support it.

in the balance between india and pakistan. this is a high maintenance region. conducts a balance of power policy between india and pakistan. at the end of the day pakistan is left with a deep sense of betrayal and vulnerability. that's something the pakistanis are taking in the wake of the strike. >> how would you change the odds of an american withdrawal from afghanistan? >> i think they increase substantially. with the elimination of bin laden, the idea of nation building in afghanistan almost becomes an unnecessary irrelevant exercise. we're going to start to see that debate heighten in the days ahead. now that obama has already declared that the focus of the war in afghanistan has been the decapitation of al qaeda. bin laden is hugely symbolic toward the end. we're going to start to see the withdrawal plans accelerate. pakistan remains an integral part of that. bet that's why the u.s. pakistani tension is certainly a challenge for the days, months

ahead. >> it's always a pleasure. thank you for the analysis. tim, sam, it's great to see you guys as well. certainly -- >> as always. >> historic day to say the least. still ahead here, better dead than alive. ten years later the wounds still fresh for those of us who lost loved ones and friends on 9/11. their feelings and our feelings on ridding the world of the man who orchestrated the murder of so many here in new york. a lot of times, things are right underneath our feet, and all we need to do is change the way we're thinking about them. a couple decades ago, we didn't even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. technology has made it possible to safely unlock

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it's my back. trust me. it works great for pain. [ male announcer ] nothing's proven to relieve pain better than extra strength bayer aspirin. it rushes relief to the site of pain. no matter where you're hurting. feel better? yeah. thanks for the tip. [ male announcer ] for powerful pain relief, use bayer aspirin. in the darks days we made a solid commitment to the dead and living we would bring to justice those responsible of killi inin innocent people. yesterday, osama bin laden found out america keeps its kmi commitments. >> michael bloomberg reacting to the death of osama bin laden. flash mobs everywhere, penn state university, iowa state university. the naval academy. so many of the protesters under

the age of 10 at the time of the actual attacks. in philadelphia, word of the president's announcements brought the crowd to a standing cheer where they chanted usa, usa, in unison. all of it, of course, part of a sweeping picture of a nation devastated by 9/11. set within that picture, pockets of families fractured by the daily reality. the emptiness of mothers, fathers, siblings, children and friends who never came home that day. joining us now is executive director of the cannon fitzgerald relief fund. her brother, gary, was among one of those killed. and julie, chairperson for the community board one in lower manhattan. happens to be my neighborhood. julie, it's nice to see you. hope is going all right. hi, julie. your emotions? >> you know, when i, dylan, when i first saw that bin laden had

been killed, my first reaction was to be completely numb because people started calling me and saying, turn on the tv, turn on the tv, turn on the tv. and when i turned on the tv, the first thing i saw was the planes going into the building. and i saw people being evacuated, covered in ash, which was the pictures that were there. and against the backdrop of turn on the tv, turn on the tv, it pushed me right back to 9/11, and so my initial thought was, you know, numb. my second was fear. and my third was just an overwhelming sense of loss of my brother and pain and cannon fitzgerald lost 658 people. i run a relief fund. we have almost 800 victims. so ask me today how i feel having had time to think about it, i'm grateful to the men and women of the military who, you know, worked so hard to keep us

safe and who finally got bin laden. i'm grateful that he doesn't have the ability to terrorize anybody anymore. you know, and so i'm -- i'm hopeful that while it can never, you know, do away with the pain that we feel for our losses, that my family will potentially be able to sleep a little bit better tonight. >> julie, how do you feel? >> well, first of all, dylan, i want to say that it's given our community somewhat of a sense of closure. this is the moment that our community, our city and our nation have been waiting almost ten years for. but it doesn't take the fact away that 3,000 people were senselessly killed by this individual. and we have a 16-acre hole in the heart of our neighborhood and it doesn't take away the fact 9/11, $83 billion of economic damage on new york city. so none of that can be taken away, but this is still a moment

our community has waited a long, long time for and we certainly wanted to see this happen. >> i can relate on some level, edie, to the resurrection of the emotion, how this brings it back in some ways. it freshens emotions that i haven't felt in a long time. >> sure. >> at the time having lost both colleagues, friends and sources in that tragedy. it's interesting that you put it in the context of gratitude which i think rings very true for me, julie. when you look at the suffering, how do you reconcile the desire to be able to move forward with not only the economic hole that's in the ground, there and all the rest of it, and how do you sort of benefit from the nurturing effect or the healing effect, perhaps, of the gratitude that edie was just describing? >> well, that's exactly right. i mean, one of the things that's going on here, dylan, is the fact people counted this neighborhood down and out.

people said no one is going to want to live in lower manhattan, work in low eer manhattan or vit lower manhattan. we have 30,000 new residents that moved into lower manhattan since 9/11 and is a testament to the ability to be able to rebuild. we want to give a message to al qaeda, that's the message we to give, we're able to rebuild. they're not able to put this city down. it's a message that resonates across the country today. >> go ahead. >> can i talk to you a second act the word closure? it's a very difficult word for us. i think if you're a family member and you've lost loved ones here, closure is really not the right word. because if somebody that you loved was murdered and certainly as publicly as this all was, there is no closure. there's justice that bin laden, you know, is no longer a threat to us, but there's no closure.

it's not the correct word for this. i love that, you know, downtown is redeveloping. the world trade center site is sacred ground. we appreciate that there's going to be a memorial there to our loved ones. but closure, you know, closure canotes the end. there's not an end to terrorism. there's not an end to, you know, the pain that we feel from the loss. it's still very real for all of us. and so i -- i just -- i think closure is the wrong word. >> if you were to think about is there -- i guess my question is, is there a distinction in your mind as to how you view your relationship with the events of 9/11 before osama bin laden was killed? and how you feel afterwards or

how you may feel afterwards? >> you know, i -- this was very -- this was very, very a long time in coming. you know, just as the families would like to see khalid shaikh mohammed and the co-conspirators try so that there can, you know, be justice there, this is justice on this end. we've worked very hard at the fitzgerald relief fund to form our community and i think the families come at this with a lot of very mixed emotions, but we are uniform in our relief that he is no longer a threat to us. >> an old friend of mine who was an investor on wall street was talking about this today. he described the death of osama bin laden as a comma in this story, not a period. >> i think that's correct. i don't -- look, nothing would

make me happier than to say that in my heart of hearts i believe this is the end and we can all, you know, go about our lives now as if the war on terror is over and that we're all safe and, you know, we can all live as happily ever after as we can without the person we love in our lives. i don't believe that. i don't believe that my families believe that. i think looking at it as a comma as opposed to a period is an appropriate way to look at it. but it's a good comma. >> yeah. >> i have to say, i agree with edie on that. i think that's a really important point. what we need to recognize is not only can we not bring these loved ones back, but we cannot even restore all the taj that was done on 9/11. both to families and to the community. and we also have to recognize that lower manhattan and many other parts of this country still remain a top terrorist target and what we are we doing to ensure that?

we open the memorial on the ten-year anniversary. to me that speaks for itself in terms of where the terror risk is. >> yeah, listen, i'm grateful to be able to both listen to both of you and for your willingness to share your thoughts and feelings today. edie, thank you so much. julie, thank you as well. we're going to take a momentary break here. up next, united we stand. does america still remember the lesson learned in the months following 9/11? kelly with her thoughts on that question after this break. [ sneezes ] allergies?

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kelly golf . kelly goff with a reminder. >> most of us will never forget where we were on 9/11/2001. 5/1, 11, the evening we were told osama bin laden is dead. i'd like to spend a few more minutes talking about us. as a new yorker i remember 9/11 a mixture of pain and sadness. that day was the embodiment of the worst. the days to follow is the embodiment of the best america has to offer. there were stories of heroism inspired by that day. the few of the most powerful lessons we learned, how incredibly resilient our country is. if we knock americans down, we get back up. that's who we are. another lesson we learned, our country didn't stop making great

generations after world war ii. the average age of death in the war in afghanistan has been 25. hopefully the next time someone writes about how selfish and entitled generation y is, they'll include a line this generation is the one making the ultimate sacrifice for our country. another important lesson, one delivered courtesy of the president. when he said to us last week he and we have better things to do than speculate on his birth certificate, one has to wonder if the possibility of this historic moment was weighing on hill. this does make the birthers, donald trump and the royal wedding seem incredibly insignificant by comparison. there are real issues in the real world that deserve our time and attention. and all of us as members of the media and americans should do a better job of allocating our time and energy accordingly. but perhaps the most important lesson we learned is that americans are stronger together than we ever will be apart. watching the shift in tone toward national unity immediately following 9/11 it

was as though every elected official in the nation had taken a maturity pill and understood for once something wasn't about them or their party but about our country. it would be nice to see a return of that tone. it existed for a nano second after the giffords shooting. here's hoping the recent news will bring it back a little while longer. >> thank you, kelly. we'll be back with thoughts about this extraordinary day in american history right after this. and a choice. take advil now... and maybe up to 4 in a day. or, choose aleve and 2 pills for a day free of pain. smart move. ♪

we're back. what's been a truly extraordinary day of events in american history. osama bin laden the face of terror in this country for the past decade shot and killed by u.s. forces at his longtime home

in pakistan. it was the end result of a massive operation, months at the very least, in the making. to get bin laden dead or alive. >> if we had the opportunity to take bin laden alive, if he didn't present any threats, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that. we had discussed that extensi extensively in a number of meetings in the white house and with the president. >> last night's events, fulfi fulfilling a campaign promise of the president's. it marks a milestone in a decade-long war on terror that's taken thousands of american lives and cost us nearly $1.3 trillion as our bullets killed hundreds of thousands in the middle east. the circumstances surrounding bin laden's capture just adding to pakistan's dubious distinction as an american ally. his compound, as we've noted, one mile from the most prestigious military academy in pakistan. yet the u.s. had to hunt him down, reportedly, with no help from our ally.

>> we have a lot of reason to believe elements of their intelligence community continue to be very closely in touch with and perhaps supportive of terrorist groups. >> bin laden gone, but by no means forgotten. his sympathizers across the middle east condemning his death, vowing revenge. u.s. soil, stepped up security, concerns of a stepped up terror threat in the wake of this weekend's events. commuters in new york went back to work with extra police on bridges, in the subways and at the airport. commissioner ray kelly, with a better safe than sorry approach. >> our assumption is that the bin laden disciples would like nothing better than to avenge his death by another attack in new york. >> concerns about retaliation have done little to lesson the spontaneous celebration that have taken place. from ground zero to the white house to middle america. a small sampling of the united country we saw in the days and weeks following 9/11.

as we all know, a lot has changed since 9/11. in our own country. and not for the better. any post-9/11 sympathy from the international community has largely turned to condemnation of u.s. foreign policy from guantanamo, to abu ghraib. that due in part to the two wars we've started since then, one of them on a false premise, iraq, the other unwinnable. if anything comes from bin laden's death, perhaps it will be the political capital to get out. this weekend marks another milestone in the war on terror that has become a way of life in america. let's hope it can remind us all why we are in this. to fight for the freedoms that were stolen from us first on that bright september morning by foreigners and subsequently taken from us by our own government in the name of our own security. we all know the absurdity that that has represented. that does it for us.