President Obama Announces Osama bin Laden Has Been Killed (VIDEO)
East coast fans of 'Celebrity Apprentice' were probably quite surprised when NBC pre-empted the ending of the episode, before the elimination, with an unplanned 'NBC News Special Report' (Sun. 10:50PM ET on NBC) for a speech by President Obama.Earlier in the night, word had come out that Obama was going to speak to the American people at 10:30 PM ET, but it was later than that by almost an hour. All the major broadcast networks carried the speech, pre-empting regularly scheduled programming on the East Coast and delaying start times on the West Coast.
By the time the president's speech began, CNN and all the other major news outlets were reporting that the president would be revealing that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American forces and that his body was in US custody.
"Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda," Obama opened.
In just about ten minutes, the president detailed the gathering of intelligence that began with a lead in August 2010. From there, they followed the trail to a compound in Pakistan.
"Finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice," Obama said. "Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abadibad, Pakistan.
"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary 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."
Almost ten years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the mastermind determined to be behind them and so many other acts of terror is dead.
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