Taking no prisoners

[rov1100]

Why is it part of SAS training to kill the suspects on sight without getting them to surrender? The Iranian hostage scene where the SAS killed all the known terrorists was a case in point.

This time the American seals (equivalent to the SAS) shot Bin Laden rather than taking him prisoner. I think you can assume at 1am Bin Laden was not dressed and armed to offer any resistance.

Is this why pictures of his killing have been withheld?....it doesn't look good shooting an unarmed man even if he was Bin Laden

[mike11111]

Apparently Bin laden was asked to surrender but refused. SAS are not trained to kill on sight, only if otherwise they or others would be at risk of being killed

[rov1100]

If that is the case MIke there should be no hesitation in showing the film

[mike11111]

Those who would have needed to see the film would have seen it. To broadcast it on worldwide television smacks of the days of public executions.

[WELSHYORKIE]

Plus the showing of such a film would only increase tension across the muslim/arab world

[what..the?]

he was awake enough to use a women as a human shield, he refused to give himself up for sometime, he was creating an ever increasing danger to the seals so he was taken out, he got the women shot too, I think it was the right decision to take him out not even knowing the facts.

The reason they kill on sight it because they could have time to trigger an expolsion, grab a human shield or just start shooting all the hostages or SAS/Seals. These people should not been given a 'pass go card collect £200' they walked into the situation planned it in depth and undertook it against all odds what did they expect to happen? Be invited out for refreshments?

i hope such 'shot on sight' tactics stop others who are tempted but unfortunately it's not that simple and some extremists do it purely for this reason, to die for the cause

[Gromit]

Bin Laden was a CIA agent. There is no way they would let him surrender, he knew too much.

[Gromit]

// he was awake enough to use a women as a human shield, he refused to give himself up for sometime, he was creating an ever increasing danger to the seals so he was taken out, he got the women shot too //

Not quite how events unfolded...

// Osama bin Laden 'did not use wife as human shield'
Al-Qaeda leader was not armed and his wife was not killed, it emerges as US officials "clarify" early accounts of the raid. //

[what..the?]

well thats what it said on the news yesterday?

[Cowtipper]

I think if a chopper blew up in my back yard I could manage to get dressed and stagger around to find my pistol. Sources say he was armed and using a woman (presumably his wife) as a human shield. I think the people in Iran represented a clear and present danger. I'd like to see the pictures for myself, but I would imagine after the "Birthers" got such a black eye they liked the strategy.

[Gromit]

what..the? Cowtripper.

That is old news. The US have clarified the story. Not armed. No human shield.

http://www.telegraph....-as-human-shield.html

[alexanderd]

He is going to be enough of a martyr as it is without showing pictures of him being shot, remember Sadam and his hanging.

[Cowtipper]

http://www.whitehouse...lling-osama-bin-laden doesn't say that.

Nor does http://www.whitehouse...ident-osama-bin-laden

Obama may be a lot of things but he watched the show go down. If he says he was killed in a fire fight I'm going to believe him until it gets recanted.

"However, during a background, off-camera briefing for television reporters later Monday, a senior White House official said bin Laden was not armed when he was killed, apparently by the U.S. raid team."

An off camera briefing? The man you quoted is a Chinese correspondent in Beijing. I'll take Al Jazeera's word for it. If you see it you'll see it there first.

[Gromit]

Cowtipper

Those have got yesterdays date on them. They have 'clarified (changed) the story.

http://www.reuters.co...idUSTRE7416G220110502

[Cowtipper]

They got the identity of two people wrong. Its in the briefing I posted.

[Cowtipper]

All the online references come from a single source( Politico). Not a single one has an independent opinion separate from that. No other media was there.

[NOX]

Oh dear so it appears that since he didn't use his wife as a human shield and she is not dead the US have a real live witness on their hands poor cow:(

[DTCwordfan]

why do we need to see somebody being executed? I think we should be able to take some confidence that it was done with commensurate professionalism.

He was offered surrendering.

it works out better as where would you keep him, then you have the whole palaver of having him tried - on US soil? then the ensuing row about executions and their morality. Or through the Intl Court of Justice - that would drag on for years.

Better having him shot, close the chapter on the book, not that this was the last chapter of it unfortunately.

An as to the SAS raid on the Embassy, just as here, they aren't exactly going to sit around and say "Oh we have been naughty little boys and Mr Seal or SASman, just take my hands and put them in your bondage handcuffs and I will be oh so nice and complicit with you." Get real, there's a hell of a risk of return fire and the rest. Shoot first, ask the questions later and, apparently, they have already extracted a mountain of paper from the compound.

[modeller]

We should always capture them ,bring them back to this country and and long as their human rights are not violated , sentence them to 100 hours community service.