Osama bin Laden Killed

Scroll down for John Brennan's press briefing.

Here's the President's speech, announcing that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The speech was delivered at about 11:45 pm ET:

You can read the text of the President's full remarks here on the White House site.

Secretary Hillary Clinton makes a statement:

The hideout of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is pictured after his death. Getty image. This ABC News video is a gruesome tour of the bin Laden compound taken after the U.S. raid. I hesitated to post it. More video here:

White House press briefing. National secruity advisor John Brennan conducted most of the press briefing, and he was really interesting & quasi-informative. I suspect John Brennan is a son-of-a-bitch, and if I had to get stuck someplace scary with one other person, I would like that person to be John Brennan, as long as Brennan was on my side:

40 Minutes in Abbottabad. James Oliphant of the Chicago Tribune: "After landing by helicopter at the Pakistani compound housing Osama bin Laden early Monday, local time, the U.S. special operations team tasked with capturing or killing the Al Qaeda leader found itself in an almost continuous gun battle. For the next 40 minutes, the team cleared the two buildings within the fortified compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, trying to reach Bin Laden and his family, who lived on the second and third floors of the largest structure, senior Defense Department and intelligence officials said Monday. 'Throughout most of the 40 minutes, they were engaged in a firefight,' said a senior Pentagon official...."

Follow the Messenger. Mark Mazetti & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden’s whom American spies had been hunting for years was finally located in a compound 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, close to one of the hubs of American counterterrorism operations. The property was so secure, so large, that American officials guessed it was built to hide someone far more important than a mere courier. What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work, culminating in a helicopter assault by American military and intelligence operatives that ended in the death of Bin Laden on Sunday and concluded one of history’s most extensive and frustrating manhunts."

The New York Times has an obituary of bin Laden.

AP: "The State Department early Monday put U.S. embassies on alert and warned of the heightened possibility for anti-American violence after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by American forces in Pakistan. In a worldwide travel alert released shortly after President Barack Obama late Sunday announced bin Laden’s death in a U.S. military operation, the department said there was an 'enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counterterrorism activity in Pakistan.'”

Greg Miller & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "... al-Qaeda has metastasized in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, expanding its reach and adapting its tactics in ways that make the organization likely to remain the most significant security threat to the United States despite its leader’s demise."

Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "In Afghanistan>, where Osama bin Laden was based for many years and where Al Qaeda helped to train and pay insurgents, there was relief and uncertainty about how his death would play out in the fraught regional power politics now shaping the war. While senior political figures welcomed the news of his death, they cautioned that it did not necessarily translate into an immediate military victory over the Taliban, and urged the United States and NATO not to use it as a reason to withdraw."

Brian Stelter of the New York Times on "how the bin Laden announcement leaked out."

"A Moment of National Unity." Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Obama’s announcement, which came just before midnight, was grounds for celebration for a country still scarred by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, producing a rare moment of national unity at a time of deep divisions on many domestic and foreign policy issues."

Los Angeles Times Editors: "Sunday night's announcement should remind the nation that the presidency is not just an office to be contested and that American values are not merely empty words to be used as political rhetoric. Obama ordered the seizure of America's most vile enemy, who resisted and was shot down. The world is better and safer for his death."

Paul West of the Los Angeles Times: "A foreign policy novice when he came to office, President Obama can now claim a national security victory that eluded his predecessor for almost eight years.... The caliber of his leadership, often the target of withering attacks by the Republican opposition, has now been bolstered in a very tangible way.... This may not be the turning point many Obama supporters would like it to be -- but the immediate result will almost certainly be a rise in his sagging popularity."

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "President Obama’s announcement late Sunday that Osama bin Laden had been killed delivered not only a long-awaited prize to the United States, but also a significant victory for Mr. Obama, whose foreign policy has been the subject of persistent criticism by his rivals.

Mike McPhate of the Washington Post on Abbottabad, the town where Osama was killed.

Glenn Greenwald: "... what, if anything, is going to change as a result of the two bullets in Osama bin Laden's head? Are we going to fight fewer wars or end the ones we've started? Are we going to see a restoration of some of the civil liberties which have been eroded at the alter of this scary Villain Mastermind? Is the War on Terror over? Are we Safer now? Those are rhetorical questions. None of those things will happen."

I stand with MLK, who said 'I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.' -- David Sirota, Tweet

David Sirota, in Salon, on U.S. public reaction to bin Laden's killing: "... an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head. This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory -- he has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed."

Karen Garcia: "Cynic that I am, I have to wonder about that massive compound surrounded by razor wire, practically right next door to Pakistan's version of West Point, going unnoticed all these years. Doesn't the CIA have Google Earth Didn't they talk to the neighbors, who have noticed for a long time that the occupants of the compound never brought out any freaking garbage?"

A personal note from Greg Sargent, which I highly recommend.

Eight years ago Sunday:

George Bush, May 1, 2003.