it's about 4,000 feet about sea level. it was there last weekend that the man who was really sort of in charge in pakistan, not the president or the prime minister, but the guy who's really in charge, the head of the army it was there last weekend that the head of the army in pakistan, the guy who's really in charge, he gave a speech to pakistani army rekreutz. he's an important enough guy that the speech was carried live on state television. in that speech, the head of the pakistani army said this. he said quote, the terrorists' backbone has been broken. in other words, he declared victory over terrorism in pakistan. pakistan's version of west point is located in a town you might have heard of now called abbottbad. when the head of pakistan ice army spoke there last weekend when he declared victory over terrorism he was staying about one mile from osama bin laden's bedroom elsewhere in the town. in announcing osama bin laden's death last night, president obama was clear and emphatic that pakistan was not notified

in advance about the strike that killed osama bin laden. nor did personnel from any other country including pakistan take part in that operation. nevertheless, elements of pakistan's intelligence service insisted today that bin laden was killed in a joint u.s.-pakistani operation. for years the pakistan ji intelligence service had said that osama bin laden was dead. now that he actually is dead, they want credit for killing him. after nearly ten years of hunting for osama bin laden, he was finally found and finally killed in a city just outside the capital city of pakistan. he was not in the mountainous border region of afghanistan. he was not in the lawless semiautonomous tribal areas. he was not in a cave. he was in a big, nice house in. a city where pakistani military officers go to retire. a hop, skip and a jump away from pakistani's version of west point. this probably should not surprise us as much as it did. so many of the other big al qaeda fish caught over the last decade have been caught in the

same way as osama bin laden was. not just in pakistan, but specifically in pakistani cities. on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, this man was taken into custody. wlfs he caught? not in a cave. >> he helped plan the world trade center and pentagon attacks was taken prisoner in a dramatic shootout on the anniversary of the attacks. >> he was caught in ka rachy. the largest city in pakistan. that tenz to be the kind of place these guys get caught. >> after searching hundreds of mountain caves the u.s. military failed to capture any of osama bin laden's top commanders. instead it took good u.s. intelligence and the pakistani police to land the biggest catch yet. he's a 31-year-old palestinian number three in the al qaeda terrorist network. backed up by the cia and fbi,

pakistani police captured the man in the town. >> pakistan's third largest city. a year after he was captured in pakistan's third largest city, it happened again. >> in the hunt for osama bin laden tonight another big arrest. another one of his lieutenants. once again it's in pakistan and once again it's in a big, urban center. this time in the city of lahore. 200 miles southeast of the capital. >> not in a cave somewhere. not in the autonomous regions but in pakistan ice second largest city. >> good evening, everyone. a major victory tonight on the war on terror. the suspected master mind of the 9/11 attacks against the united states khalid mohammed was arrested in pakistan. >> he was arrested before dawn in pakistan near islamabad by pakistani and american agents. >> otherwise known as pakistan's

fourth largest city. most of the terrorists who are in custody who had anything to do with 9/11, who you ever heard of because there's a big enough deal for you to have heard of them have been arrested in big cities in pakistan. often in nice houses in big cities in pakistan. if you google pindy what comes up in english is a million mentions of it as a garrison city. the other place in pakistan you find described as a garrison city if it's described at all is the town from osama bin laden was just found. a garrison city. basically just means that sit a military city. it is a city intensely populated with both military personnel, retired military personnel and military facilities. in a country where the military and the intelligence service are the most powerful forces around, where they run everything. where they're way more in control than the nominal government is, where khalid

mohammed and osama bin laden were found where were those people live. where the nation's elite live. where the nation's military officers live. these garrison cities. both of these guys caught in nice, big houses in garrison cities dpr which that country's elite military and intelligence personnel have been telling the united states that terrorism is over. that bin laden was nowhere in sight. that there was no use looking for bin laden anymore, particularly in pakistan because bin laden was probably already dead. as recently as two weeks ago, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff while he was in pakistan, he directly accused pack stab's intelligence service of supporting the main militant group that is fighting u.s. troops in eastern afghanistan. on a trip to pakistan in 2009, hillary clinton bluntly accused the pakistani government of knowing where osama bin laden was. telling reporters then quote, i find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where he is and couldn't get him if they really wanted to. just last week a federal

indictment about the mumbai attack. a federal indictment was filed in chicago. it reportedly names a serving pakistani intelligence officer as one of the people who planned the devastating mumbai terrorist attack. pakistan, pakistan, pakistan, pakistan, pakistan. it has been pakistan from the beginning. it's still pakistan. how long is it going to keep being pakistan? today on the occasion of osama bin laden's death, "the new york times" ran a big 5,000-word obituary of bin laden. it describes bin laden bragging about his american made weapons and his trainers who supported him against the soviets in the 1980 ez. the u.s. was being careful to avoid getting drawn into a hot war in afghanistan with the soviets so even though we gave that training and those weapons to bin laden in afghanistan in

the 80's, we never really got it to him all that directly. instead we used a middle man. who do you think we used as a middle man? we used the pakistani intelligence service as the middle man when we wanted to arm bin laden. the whole post 9/11 idea of waging a war on terrorism was to go after terrorists themselves, right? but also go after their sponsors. you go after the countries that sponsor terrorist groups and fund them. iraq never did that. that was a red herring. that was a distraction from fighting terrorism. but afghanistan in its own way was a hard case, too. because osama bin laden supported the taliban in afghanistan. it was bin laden supporting them. he propped them up. he funded them. out of his considerable fortune for years. and yes, they did provide him protection in return. but the real sponsor that built osama bin laden into the terrorist god father he became, the thing other than his own skills and his own money that built his power and provided him

a haven from retribution, that was pakistan. that was our great ally, pakistan. last weekend the head of pakistan's army proclaimed don't worry, he had broken the back of terrorism. while he stood one mile apray from osama bin laden's bedroom. our great ally. joining us now live from benghazi in labia is nbc chief foreign correspondent richard engel. richard, thanks very much for joining us. i appreciate it. >> reporter: it's my pleasure, of course. it's a very windy evening. so, you'll excuse the wind, but it is an incredible development that has been happening. i think you're right. it has always been about pakistan. and yet u.s. troops went and fought in iraq. and that in it be end of the day had nothing to do with bringing osama bin laden to justice. >> richard, what do you think happens next with pakistan in people are describing pakistan as having explaining to do as being embarrassed, as having finally been called out for the lies they have perhaps knowingly been telling all of these years

about osama bin laden. we can't look into a crystal ball about what happens next. based on your understanding of the players here, what do you think happens next between us and that country? >> reporter: i think in the short-term the u.s. military wants to maintain as civil relations as possible with pakistan. of course, osama bin laden is now dead. but his number two is not. three, four, five, and the united states sees an incredible amount of information in that compound where osama bin laden was living including hard drives, computers, and now they want to exploit all that information. assuming that many of these individuals are still in pakistan for the next several months at least, i think you're going to want to see the u.s. trying to tread very lightly on that relationship. whether they will be able to stop what i expect will be a very public uproar from the american people against pakistan

will be a different -- a different situation. >> richard, what do you think the significance is of the geography of where bin laden was found in this garrison city not far outside pakistan's capital. what does that tell you about -- not just potential pakistani complicity here, but also what does that tell you about al qaeda? >> reporter: well, i think it reveals a great deal. the fact that they didn't tell pakistan that this operation was coming also speaks volumes about their own confidence in the ally pakistan. an ally that has received about $18 billion from the united states over the last decade as well. and as you said, it's a garrison town. imagine in if the tables were turned the other way and there was an international terrorist wanted for the deaths of 3,000 citizens from let's say another country, it doesn't have to be named. that terrorist was living in west point in the town of west

point in the biggest house in the town a few miles down from the chow hall and suddenly that terrorist was discovered. how would the united states say, we really didn't know where he was living in a giant compound just down the street from the chow hall in west point? >> richard, you and i have talked before about post 9/11 al qaeda being sort of a franchise operation. something that doesn't need central control in order to continue to be deadly. does it hurt al qaeda's -- even al qaeda's franchise power, their capacity to inspire terrorism to have bin laden dead and dead in this way? >> reporter: yeah, it does. if you're a franchise, and they've suddenly killed your symbol, it hurts the value of the brand. if the symbol of the franchise is osama bin laden, it has always been osama bin laden, then the franchise itself is less valuable.

why do people buy franchises like big hamburger chains or ice cream stores is because there is a brand name. that brand of al qaeda has shown that it is not invincible. that osama bin laden can't live with impunity popping up like a jack in the box every once in a while and poking fun at the united states and seeming to have this endless stream of good luck. now that luck has run out and i think that will certainly have an impact. these franchises will go on. they might not be as attractive or as flourishing as they were over the last several years. >> richard, there's been a lot of discussion today about the u.s. decision to bury bin laden at sea. the u.s. saying that that is something that is allowed in islamic tradition. some islamic religious figures disputing that character igs. -- characterization. the idea is to try not to make him a mart iragainst pressure from his side to make him one. >> reporter: to be perfectly,

perfectly frank, it's not common at all to bury people at sea. i've lived in this region for 15 years. i don't think of a single incident. i don't know anyone whose parents have been buried at sea. maybe it's islamicly permissible if they were shipping muslims who died on a ship 500 years ago and they didn't want to keep the body on the ship. sure, i can see how that would be acceptable under islamic law. it's certainly not a common practice. it's very important because you don't want to create a more of a martyr of osama bin laden. you don't want to enhance his image that much further. i think the u.s. probably did this. they dropped him off at sea because i can't imagine too many countries would want to take the body and they didn't want to create a shrine. they didn't want a place where people could go and have a hero worship or even effectively a type of sainthood. it is very bizarre.

that is one of the most bizarre aspects of all of this. that they take the body after they do all the identification and then they wrap it up and slide it off into the ocean. that seems -- it's one of the weirdest parts of this entire story, frankly. >> speaking of weird, just seeing -- thinking about the fact that we're talking about what happened to bin laden's body dropped off the side of the uss carl vincent. you're standing on a ball cony in benghazi with the wind making your hair look ridiculous. >> reporter: a windy balcony. >> you're covering an unimaginable civil war of the libyan people. >> reporter: wait until i see yours. >> the libyan people rising up against gadhafi of all people. mubarak is gone. ali is gone in tunisia. there's an uprising in yemen. an uprising in syria. bin laden is dead. can you -- can you believe how much the muslim world has changed in the past six months?

>> reporter: it has been an incredibly tumultuous period. almost as transformative as it is windy here. what's been amazing is the news coverage today, for example, was about even. it wasn't wall to wall coverage of osama bin laden. it was in the beginning in the first day, in the early hours. but as the day grew on, people started talking on al jazeera and the local satellite channels, these are the main channels about osama bin laden and then they got right back to what are the new core issues here. the revolution in egypt. the revolution in tunisia. the uprising in syria. the war here in libya. people think that is what is going to change this region and truly transform it. there was almost a sense that bin laden was the man of the past decade. and a lot of people in the mideast want to put him behind them. bin laden was an embarrassment to the middle east. nobody likes to be profiled.

nobody likes to be considered a terrorist because they grow their beard or because they go and pray in a mosque. i think there was a great sense of relief. a feeling of good riddance that this disgrace was finally -- was finally dead, no longer associated with the region. people wanted to focus on what really will matter for the future of this region going forward for the next ten years and that is these uprisings. >> richard engel, nbc news chief foreign correspondent braving the wind and a lot else in benghazi in libya tonight. richard, thank you so much for staying up in the middle of the night to talk with us. >> reporter: of course. >> all right. more ahead including some very, very good photo journalism by the white house. and some very, very, very bad photo journalism by me. stay with us.

the white house late this afternoon released this photo. check it out. the caption on the photo is this, president barack obama and joe biden receive an update on the mission against osama bin laden in the situation room of the white house may 1st, 2011. this was taken yesterday. we don't know exactly what is going on at this exact moment. the one pixellated piece of paper on the table was a classified document that they blurred out for security reasons. again, we don't know what's happening at this exact moment. but yesterday is when the operation do go get bin laden happened. we are told that from the situation room they were able to watch live live realtime video with audio of the operation. none of us can speculate as to what was going on at that exact moment that the photo was taken. look at secretary of state hillary clinton. look at the look on her face. look at bob gates. look at mad ral mullen.

look at this, look at president obama. look at that look on his face. this is the day they got bin laden. this is the situation room. that is probably as much as any of us need to know about what exactly the president of the united states was thinking while it happened. it is very good of the white house so from released this photo. i think it's just incredible. we have poetsed it at my blog right now if you want to check it out.

in august of 1996, osama bin laden declared war on the united states. literally issued something he called a declaration of war against the americans.

by that point u.s. authorities concerned bill laden responsible for a hotel bomb in yem engine 1992 that was apparently targeting u.s. troops, but it killed two tourists instead. authorities in saudi arabia considered bin laden responsible by then for another bombing targeting a u.s. military training facility in saudi arabia. that bomb killed seven people. 1996 comes bin laden's declaration of war. two years later in 1998 he issues another anti-american declaration. this one saying that all mislimbs anywhere in the world have it as a duty to attack americans. later that year on august 7, 1998, bin laden bombs went off at the u.s. embassies at kenya and tanzania wounding thousands of people and killeding more than 200. two years after that, the bombing of the uss cole killed 17 american sailors. by the time the september 11th attacks happened, osama bin laden had a big resume of terror attacks atributed to him. in addition of years of financing terrorism and

terrorist net woshs. that was all before september 11th. what about after september 11th? since then the story of terrorism targeting the united states itself has mostly thankfully been the story of thwarted attacks starting with the would be shoe bomber richard reed. that was about three months after 9/11. that was also new york city's subway bomber. there was also a would be underwear bomber. and the would be times square bomber. also the would be dallas bomber who among other targets allegedly wanted to bomb former president bush's texas home. then there was the mass casualty shooting at fort hood in 2009. that was also the campaign of terror known as the d.c. sniper attacks. they killed ten people in the d.c. area in 2002. the bloodiest large scale

terrorist attack since 9/11 have actually been abroad. in 2002 a series of coordinated bombings in bali killed more than 200 people. in 2004194 people killed in coordinated bombings of trains in madrid. in 2004 checken terrorists took over a school in russia. by the end of that they had killed 384 people including 186 children. in 2005 more than 50 people killed in coordinated bombings of london's public transit system. in, 164 people killed in coordinated attacks in mumbai, india. what about bin laden? what about bin laden specifically? what about him? of the major post 9/11 attacks and planned attacks that we know of, only one of them has publicly and officially been atributed to planning by osama bin laden himself. only one of them has been said by u.s. officials to have been even conceivably based on instructions from bin laden. that was the attempted plot last

free from mumbai style attacks in europe. coordinated attacks in england, france and germany. that's the one thwarted post 9/11 incident that officials have asserted as far as we can tell as directly linked to bin laden. which is good news. and bad news. i mean, al qaeda central under bin laden getting only to the planning stages of one major terrorist attack after 9/11 and not being able to pull it off? that is a good news story. the bad news of course, is that all of those terrorist attacks and attempted terrorist attacks that i listed in the rst of this segment some of them were al qaeda sponsored, some of them weren't. some of them were al qaeda inspired and some of them weren't. but aall happened without osama bin laden's direct involvement. how much will wiping him off the map make a difference in dmirning the terrorist threat here and in other countries? this is a hard yes. one whose answer might be quite different now than it would have been had the killing of osama

bin laden happened a few months ago. i will explain the tem por ral importance after that when we come back. y -- come on up here! so which razor do you use? the mach3 turbo. it's smooth, it's a close shave. i'm a creature of habit. it's a face-off! mach3 turbo vs. proglide. [ male announcer ] fusion proglide is engineered with gillette's thinnest blades ever so it glides for less tug and pull. it feels a lot better than the mach3. i'm sold. gimme that proglide. it's mine! [ male announcer ] take the proglide challenge. and for enhanced glide, try new fusion proglide shave gel.

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it may be a mark about how hated he was. within hours of the announcement of the osama bin laden's death, international congratulations pureed no. karzai who rules where bin laden launched the 9/11 attacks said al qaeda has murdered and harmed our people for many years. i hope terrorism will meets its fate with the killing of bin laden.

yemen, bin laden's ancestral homeland welcomed the action and encouraged more of them. a yemeny official said we hope that measures will be taken to hend terrorism throughout the world. >> nbc news's richard engel reporting on how the news of osama bin laden's demise resonated around the muslim world tonight. we have a correspondent for al jazeera english. thanks for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> what do you think that americans should try to understand about how the bin laden news is resonating around the world particularly in the middle east as opposed to how it may be resonating here? >> i think there's two points. how important this type of operation was. it's definitely a blow to the symbolic nature of al qaeda and that ideology.

and more importantly it's important to keep in mind that the islamic world is not a monolithic entity. what affects muslims in indonesia is not the same that affects muslims in nigeria or turkey. sometimes what happens is an oversimplification to say this is endemocratic and widespread and one that endures a great deal of support. keep in mind that muslims from the arab world have suffered a lot of violent extremism of osama bin laden have denounced him and rejected him. more recently we have seen that denounceuation throughout the world. >> how much of his symbolic importance and of al qaeda's some bollic importance was rooted in the sense that he couldn't be caught? for ten years since 9/11 he had been able to evade what amounted to the largest manhunt in international history. was that his perceived

invincible invinciblity. was that part of his symbolic performance? we'll hear more about this in the coming months and years. how he was able to remain out of the reach of the united states and other allies is going to become clear in the coming months. i think what's more important here certainly in terms of understanding his some bollic significance is he's an individual who represented an ideology which although advocated and used very inappropriate means to justify his actions, unfortunately there are those who supported and tried to actually expand that ideology, but nonetheless it was one that others would have accepted. the symbolism of taking out osama bin laden is really the message that is being delivered to the next person that's coming in line not necessarily to his supporters. if there is indeed as somebody

as an operational or symbolic figure head for this organization. he can rest assured that he's a tart of the united states and others. that in itself is a very, very strong idealogical blow to the organization. >> to that end, i hear what you're saying about the deterrence effect at least the idea that the perceived certainty of punishment that you will have things catch up with you may change people's calculation about this. may change their sense of whether or not what they're doing is heroic. and because of that, there is this looming question about pakistan here. about the fact that osama bin laden was found not in some lawless, ungoverned area, but relatively close to pakistan's capital city in a place that's full of former military officials and quite near pakistan's military academy. is pakistan in a tough spot in terms of seeming potentially complicit in the hiding of osama

bin laden, but not having facilitated this action in a way that they have other arrests? >> there's no doubt that pakistan finds itself in an almost lose-lose situation. if on one hand we're going to take pakistani officials words for value that they knew about the pop ration or that they had the intelligence or cooperated with the united states, then there's no doubt that that has put them in the same boat with the united states in becoming a target for perhaps future al qaeda attacks. so that is one problem from the pakistani perspective. the other problem is if they did not know about this operation, if they did not know about the intelligence that led to this operation, then it undermines pack stop sign's sovereignty. and undermines the sovereignty of this current pack stop signee government in that it allowed a western country to completely violate its air space, carry out this military operation. so the pack stop signee government findsist in a

difficult position in either scenario or narrative it decides to adopt. one thing to keep in mind, not to pay too much attention to where osama bin laden was and how close he was to islamabad. certainly we'll learn more about the intelligence. keep in mind that throughout the course of history identifying people has been very difficult in. the united states tracking down the unabomber down several years and heefs here in the united states with if fbi and other intelligence agencies pursuing him. it's not necessarily indicative that pakistan knew where osama bin laden was and did not do enough to bring him to justice. we're going to learn more about that. just a point to keep in mind. >> i would say with the unabomber because he was found in the back end of nowhere in montana, it raised fewer questions than if he'd been found in a nice house in nyack. >> absolutely. there's a lot of tough questions to be answered by pakistani officials. certainly one not to jump to conclusions in terms of what

role they may have plaid or not played. >> absolutely. it's a point well taken. it's always really nice to have you here. thank you very much. >> thank you, rachel. >> mr. ahead, including some bad, but really heartwarming singing. and why i should never be the one responsible for holding the camera. stay with us. let me tell you about a very important phone call i made. when i got my medicare card,

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ten years ago before 9/11 the u.s. defense budget was half the size that it is now. ten years ago before 9/11, there was no department of homeland security. had someone suggested that there ought to be one, you probably would have teased them for using a weird word like homeland. ten years ago before 9/11, you walked through a metal detector to get through an airplane, sure. but this was the kind of thing you'd only do maybe on a third date. sometimes on your flight even the pilots would keep the cockpit door open and you could see them work and the world fly by through their windshield if you peered down the aisle. before 9/11 the u.s. had troopd based in saudi arabia. before 9/11 the u.s. legal history of torture was of our government prosecuting people for that. wartime was no excuse. before 9/11, the national security agency having access to everybody's emails and phone calls and texts and bank records and everything would have been a scandal. before 9/11, we did not have a new militarized intelligence

bureaucracy that "the washington post" described as an additional 1,271 government organizations, 1,931 private companies and an estimated 854,000 people holding top secret security clearances. before 9/11, no one in publics and private life talked about article three courts. courted called for under the constitution because those were just what courts were. we didn't have anything but article three courts. why would we? before 9/11, we didn't drop bombs using flying robots. before 9/11, we had not lost 3,000 people in lower manhattan and at the pentagon and in pennsylvania. before 9/11, we did not have 2.2 million americans who are iraq and afghanistan veterans and not the national promise to do right by them as a country in respecting their service. before 9/11, we had not lost more than 6,000 of those

veterans in our post 9/11 wars before u.s. forces finally founder and killed osama bin laden. if you were a kid when 9/11 happened, it may be hard to imagine our country without these things in place. if you were an adult when 9/11 happened, you probably never could have believed this is how we would have chosen to spend the decade after. joining us now is a man who was a first responder on 9/11 who deployed to iraq yesterday and who founded iraq and afghanistan veterans of american when we came home. paul rye cough. >> my pleasure. >> am i right? eight years ago yesterday? >> i'm blurry after the last couple of days. >> i was with you on saturday night until 6:00 in the morning. >> that's why i'm blurry. >> i think i'd be up until 3:00 in the morning with this news. did you go down to ground zero? >> yeah. >> what was it like? >> it was sobering. i was down there almost ten years ago. i never thought i'd go back down there again to see people celebrating and cheering.

they were chanting usa, usa, right across from where people did it ten years prior when bush had the bull horn. it was really sobering. something i'll never forget. it was really moving there were so many cops, veterans down there. it was an unforgettable moment. >> is it discordant to have both celebratory and as you say, sobering. do you have a tension about the celebratory sense of it? >> definitely. we're really grounded in the reality of how much of our lives as a community of veterans have been dedicated to this moment. for the last ten years our brothers and sisters have been looking for this guy. hunting for this guy even when a lot of americans forgot about it and moved on to other things. our community's paid a tremendous cost. we think about the friends we lost. we think about the families and the folks wounded. we're proud. we're especially proud of the s.e.a.l.s and the operators in this operation that are incredible. now the world's going to find out why we have such respect and

rad plags for them. >> you talked a lot -- your book did a lot, too, you talked about a divide. maybe an inevitable divide about those who have made sacrifices on 9/11 or since and because of 9/11. the divide because those folks and the rest of the country that has nod had those sacrifices. is there an opportunity at this milestone to try to close that divide, to get people beyond the slogans and ribbons to honoring service and sacrifice in a bigger way? >> definitely. i hope so. i think people need to remember how they feel night. remember how they felt last night. remember that unity. remember that sense of pride. and carry it over. memorial day is coming up in a couple of weeks. we need folks to remember that day and keep this energy and momentum and keep this unity. it's unlike anything i've ever seen. the only time i've seen this has been after 9/11 and that was for something different. we have an opportunity to

harness that and become stronger as a country. >> i wonder what you think about -- we're sort of seeing -- a lot of talk about j sock in the news about joint special op ration command. it's been been around since 1980. it's not a new thing. it is newly imempowered for a secret branch of the military. there seems to be a total integration operationally between cia, paramilitary forces and j.s.o.c. we have a fifth branch of the military and we don't find out about the missions unless they end up with a high profile outcome. how does that affect our ability to appreciate the sacrifices if we're not allowed to know about that? >> we'll probably never know the names of the folks on that operation. delta, deaf group, the s.e.a.l.s, these folks are almost superhuman. i've seen them operate and train.

it's like nothing else. their dedication, their entire life built for that moment where they might have that shot at bin laden is like nothing else. you can't compare it. olympic athletes, professional athletes nothing like the prowess and professionalism of these elite groups. we'll probably never know the namings. >> do you worry about accountability, about appropriate political engagement with the military to have a big secret branch in the military. do you worry about the other side of that? >> i do. of course. we need folks to understand what they are. we don't need to know their names. we need to know what they do. this is the evolution of the modern battlefield. this is what is more effective going forward. you're not going to have tank battles in eastern europe. you're going to have small operations. that's probably going to engage military domination in our lifetime and the near future. we need to understand it. we need america to understand and appreciate how special these folks have and how much we ask of them. >> the founder and executive

director of veterans of afghanistan. somebody who if you get a call from hotel security, hotel security at 6:00 in the morning telling you to come down to the lobby and deal with the disturbance that your guests are calling. if you're anywhere near paul, you should think twice about that answering that call and getting dressed and going downstairs all worried with bribe money in your pocket. i'm just saying. >> another mission accomplished. >> thanks, man. >> thank you. >> all right. after yesterday's blockbuster ent-s president obama's harshest critics on national security have some recalibrating to do. which means you should watch ed schultz tonight. he is up next. after receiving the news about bin laden last night, a joy us crowd smooshed into the white house gates. part after that smoosh was me and my camera with what was maybe a frostry fingerprint on the lens. for that i too blame paul. that's next. thank you for calling esurance.

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after the president's speech about the killing of osama bin laden last night i was in d.c. so i grabbed my flip cam and i went over to the white house to see the response in the streets. we do not have all that many spontaneous rush out into the streets hug strangers emotional catharsis events in our great big socially awkward country and most frequently when we have

them they are about sports or sometimes politics but last night at the white house, at the naval academy in annapolis, west point, college campuses, times square, ground zero, we had one of those nights. it was not about sports. it was not about politics. and lacking an american template for how to mark this kind of national occasion we fell back on singing. on spontaneous, heart felt, off key singing of the star spangled banner. the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there o say does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free

and the home of the brave >> that last shaky grainy amateur video with the really bad audio? professional photo journalists, your jobs are safe. i'll be right back with more.

in 1998 less than two weeks after the u.s. bombings in tanzania and kenya which wounded thousands in a single day and killed more than 200 people president clinton announced he was going after osama bin laden. >> today i ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in afghanistan and sudan because of the imminent threat they

presented to our national security. our target was terror. our mission was clear. to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by osama bin laden, perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today. >> president clinton commending american war ships to fire cruz missiles at suspected al qaeda sites and firing at a distance and not getting what they were aiming at. in 2001 president george bush got word while reading a book to school kids in florida. president bush went to new york while it was still very much smoking. he announced he would get the person responsible for the attacks and then he kept on saying it. >> i want justice. and there's an old poster out west as i recall that said, wanted, dead or alive. >> four weeks after 9/11 the

u.s. invaded afghanistan first taking out the taliban government that had sheltered bin laden and that he had propped up and then pinning al qaeda and some thought bin laden, himself, in the mountainous caves of tora bora. but bin laden was said to have escaped. that time across the border into pakistan. and then we started the war in iraq. now we have 9/11, nearly 3,000 lives, and we've had two wars in which we've now lost more than 6,000 american lives. what we did not have all this time was osama bin laden and so they started to play him down. >> you know, again, i don't know where es. i -- i repeat what i said. i truly am not that concerned about him. >> six years since the tragedy of september 11th. we haven't seen another attack. this is a man on the run in a cave who is virtually impotent other than his ability to get these messages out. it's propaganda. >> i guess if you can't catch him just make it seem like you're not really trying to anyway. never mind how much you used to say you were hell bent on it or

the occasional video message from his proverbial kif or cave or pakistani mansion. then senator barack obama made a point of saying repeatedly he did take osama bin laden seriously. he thought it was important to kill him. and he would get it done. he would pursue osama bin laden as a top tier priority even if it meant crossing international borders, even if it meant rattling our shaky alliance with pakistan. >> if we have osama bin laden in our sights and the pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then i think that we have to act and we will take them out. we will kill bin laden. we will crush al qaeda. that has to be our biggest national security priority. >> biggest. we will kill bin laden. we will kill bin laden. and then finally after all these years, the news late on a sunday night. they killed osama bin laden. they took custody of his body. >> at my direction the united states launched a targeted operation against that compound in abbottabad, pakistan.

a small team of americans carried it out with extreme 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. >> you would be forgiven the night they killed bin laden for putting down your homework or your tv remote or whatever and running to the white house and, say, climbing a tree and singing the national anthem with a thousand strangers. you've waited a long time for this. some of the people i was out there with at the white house with last night have waited half their lives. i don't know what it means at this point in history that american forces have killed osama bin laden. i don't know what it necessarily means for politics domestic and foreign but i know america promised a decade ago to bring osama bin laden to justice. you can see how americans feel about our country making that promise. three presidents said they'd bring him to justice.