On Why Bin Laden Killed Not Captured

As top American officials and a Navy SEAL who was on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden grapple over whether the al Qaeda leader "resisted" before he was shot, the SEAL said in a recent interview that in the heat of battle, the men on the ground weren't going to take any chances with their target. In a firsthand account of the May 2011 raid, written under the pseudonym Mark Owen, the Navy SEAL Team Six member who was right behind the "point man" who first shot Osama bin Laden said that before they took off for bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the commandos were told that it was not a kill-only mission. "A lawyer from either the Department of Defense or the White House made it clear that this wasn't an assassination," Owen write "We were less than five steps from getting to the top [of the stairs] when I heard suppressed shots," Owen writes. "BOP. BOP. The point man had seen a man peeking out of the door on the right side of the hallway about ten feet in front of him. I couldn't tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room." It wasn't until other members of the team entered the room that they realized the man had been hit in the head and then, after shooting him in the chest a few more times until he stopped twitching, they realized it was bin Laden, the book says. America's most wanted man was unarmed and though there was a rifle and a handgun in a room nearby, neither had a bullet loaded in the chamber. "He hadn't even p s in his book, "No Easy Day." "'If he is naked with his hands up, you're not going to engage him,' he told us. 'I am not going to tell you how to do your job. What we're saying is if he does not pose a threat, you will detain him.'" But later in the book, Owen writes that bin Laden was shot the second he poked his head out of a door frame, apparently before he had a chance to resist or present a visible threat. At the time, Owen said he didn't know who his teammate's bullets had hit, if anyone.

Rebels claim to shoot down jet

The Free Syrian Army rebel group today said it shot down a Syrian military fighter jet in Idlib province (al-Arabiya), near the Turkish border, while claiming to have destroyed military helicopters and tanks by the Tiftiaz military airport in Aleppo. The apparent attack comes as Syrian security forces continue a deadly assault on rebel strongholds throughout the country. Meanwhile, foreign ministers of member countries of the UN Security Council (al-Jazeera) are set to meet today to discuss the worsening humanitarian situation in Syria after eighteen months of conflict. Not only is the international community divided over Syria, but even those countries most supportive of the rebellion have not settled on a common strategy, while the disarray among the Syrian opposition further deepens disquiet over intervention. Whether by design or luck--or the failures of the opposition--the Assad regime may well have created a situation in which it survives for quite some time, even if in considerably diminished form," writes TIME's Tony Karon. "Turkey has been one of the Assad regime's most vehement critics. As the number of refugees pouring across its borders has surged amid spiraling violence inside Syria--there are now more than 80,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, according to the foreign ministry--the government in Ankara has pushed to make the refugee issue an international one," writes Newsweek's Mike Giglio. lict, though no new resolutions are expected.

Syrian Refugees Flee To Jordon

The number of Syrian refugees fleeing political unrest (NYT) to Jordan more than doubled to more than ten thousand people last week from the week prior, while refugees escaping to Turkey have reached around five thousand per day, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday. The influx of Syrian refugees to neighboring countries comes amid a Syrian military assault on opposition strongholds in and around the capital of Damascus that has left hundreds of people dead, including many civilians. Meanwhile, a coalition of Syrian opposition activists presented a report--The Day After Project--in Berlin, outlining a democratic transition of power if President Bashar al-Assad's regime were to collapse. "So Iran is playing for keeps. It is ironic that while so many in the West derided the notion of a 'Shia crescent' when it was first raised by Jordan's King Abdullah, that notion is believed in Tehran--and believed to be worth killing and dying for. It is true that Iran's backing for the bloody Assad regime will increase its unpopularity in the Arab world, but Tehran's rulers must have concluded that power in Damascus is worth whatever it costs," writes CFR's Elliott Abrams on his blog Pressure Points. "Our collective excitement at the possibility that the Assad regime will be destroyed, and the Iranian ayatollahs weakened in the process, is blurring our vision and preventing us from seeing the rise of al-Qaeda in Syria. In March of this year, jihadis mounted seven attacks against Assad. By June, they had led 66 "operations," and over half of these were on Syria's capital, Damascus," writes CFR's Ed

Syrian Helicopter Down

A Syrian military helicopter went down in a ball of fire Monday after it was apparently hit during fighting between government forces and rebels in the capital Damascus, activists said. A video posted on the Internet showed the chopper engulfed in flames and spinning out of control shortly before it hit the ground amid bursts of gunfire near a mosque. Rebels shout "Allahu Akbar!" or God is great, as the helicopter goes down. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified. Syria's lightly armed rebels have grown bolder andk their tactics more sophisticated in recent months. There have been claims of fighters shooting down helicopter gunships in the past, though the government has never confirmed it.