"Pritzker Military Library Presents" Mark Bowden - The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (TV Episode 2012) Poster

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6/10
A Briefer Course.
rmax30482318 January 2015
Warning: Spoilers
It's an outline of the activities of Osama bin Laden, who was chiefly responsible for al Qaeda's attacks on 9/11, and of the organization and execution of the raid that finally killed him ten years later.

The rough outlines of the story are already familiar to anyone who followed the news. It was a sexy deed, the kind that some of us approve of en masse. But it's a vast improvement over "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." Since "Allah" simply means "God," the outcome would be problematic.

What was new to me was that after the killing of bin Laden, an extra twenty, very dangerous minutes were spent in the compound by SEAL team six, gathering physical evidence of al Qaeda's organization and plans. It was, as one talking head observes, "the mother load." Since so much of the stuff that happens in the war on terror is sub rosa, we don't know how many plots against the US and other Western nations have been thwarted because of those data.

The editing is a bit clumsy, especially during the first twenty minutes or so, otherwise it's a retelling of a gripping tale with some new perspectives that don't ordinarily get much attention. What if the Pakistan Air Force's F-16s had caught up with the two escaping helicopters and shot them down, which they were legally entitled to do?
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