White House: We would have taken bin Laden alive

John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser, briefs the press in Vineyard Haven, Mass., Aug. 24, 2010.

/ AP Photo

The U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden Sunday in Pakistan would have taken al Qaeda's leader in alive if it was possible, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Monday.

"If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that," Brennan told reporters during a press conference.

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Brennan told reporters that the White House thought bin Laden would likely resist capture but that taking him alive was considered a "remote" possibility.

"We were not going to put our people at risk," Brennan said. "The president put a premium on making sure that our personnel were protected, and we were not going to give bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces."

Capturing bin Laden alive would have presented numerous uncomfortable challenges, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. Where would he be held? Who would do the interrogation? Would the U.S. have to read him his rights?

Most counterterrorism experts did not view bin Laden as an exploitable source for intelligence, Orr reports. There was little chance he could substantively add to what the government knows about his organization. Beyond that, bin Laden, alive in captivity, would have added to his mythological standing among radical jihadis and would have presented an ongoing tool for radical recruitment.

Bin Laden was shot in the head and died in the firefight with the elite squad of American forces Sunday. Three adult men also died in the raid. A woman used as a human shield by one of the fighters at the compound also died.

One of the men killed was one of bin Laden's sons, whose name has not yet been released. There were no U.S. casualties.

[1VNVet]

This was such B.S. as it was planned all along and it is one of the reasons that I truly don't believe it was Bin Laden and I do believe that he died years ago as has been said by a retired officer who had met him. When I was a member of our Special Forces in Vietnam, we were given verbal orders to go in and get a known VietCong and there was two ways to get them.

One was to simply go in fast, two shots, one to the head and one to the heart and get out and two was to go in fast, eliminate all resistance, take the prisoner alive and if he resisted, shoot him only in the arms or legs but usually that was not necessary as we had means to stun the target even if only for a few seconds which of course gave us enough time to capture.

This Seal Team had body Armour and all Seals and all Special Forces are taught martial arts and take down tactics even if weapons are present.

Even if only 2 or 3 Seals entered the room, one could have used Stun gun, taser, rubber bullets etc etc etc to take this man alive .

I believe it was our plan to go in, kill any male that was present, remove him, bury him at sea and of course that buries any and all proof that it was indeed Bin Laden.

No body, no Proof..........and Seals are not allowed to talk about their missions just as we were not!

GREAT Fabrication plan mr. so-called president!

[gangesdak]

It is a good thing that Osama was not taken alive. Us people, unlike modern Europeans, do not have to prove how civilized we are. US has done what it had to do. Had Osama been taken alive and brought to the USA, the case would have been in the court for a generation. First the jurisdiction, then his religious rights, then his human rights. Whoever had come up with dumping the body in the untraceable sea for the shark feed had done a great service to the USA.

[nopatriot]

I think really they did!
And I simply understood tried to catch alive, but could not do it.
However, some people can not believe this.
And some said " DNA test is not in a minutes, takes for a few days."
So, Please convince us.

[berlinfoto-2009]

Or then may be the U.S.G. had plans for bin Laden, similar to what they had for Adolf Hitler.
Their plans for Hitler, had the captured him alive was to give him the best physical health care possible, to keep him alive for as long possible, while driving him totally insane with mental torture.
Do your research, this is true.

[berlinfoto-2009]

White House: We would have taken bin Laden alive.
The totalitarian wanting men, the authoritarian men, that were sent to Pakistan would have tortured him to death had the captured him alive.
TELL ME ANOTHER ONE.
What we read in the news is one conspiracy theory after another, or a conspiracy of lies.

[goldenaguila]

All I have to say is that violence begets violence. We are a violent nation and our foreign policy reflects that. When this country was settled Native peoples were slaughtered and then we had slavery and Blacks were lynched by racist white mobs. Here we are in 2011 and our Nobel Peace prize winner Mr Obama scored some political points for what? Assasinating a man who was trained and hired by our government back in the 80's to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan? He was once an ally and friend.
Our government has a history of befriending evil people like Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Duvalier, Noriega, Somoza, Sujarto etc.. WHen we befriend dictators who allow U.S companies to go in and exploit their natural resources it is ok. It is ok to go into these countries and train their military at the School of the Americas in methods of torture and killing. It is ok for our government to knowingly allow these dictators to use their US trained armies to slaughter innocent men women and children in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Ruwanda, Indonesia etc....
What's my point? America has blood on its hands and the whole world knows it and as long as we continue this type of foreign policy we will continue to create more and more people who hate us.
It saddens me that our President has stooped this low and he has lost my vote. Why do we as a nation glorify killing?
Our country is the bully of the world. We have the weapons and the technology to get our way anywhere in the world. It makes me sick knowing that that is what we are known for and that folks is why people hate us!
Meanwhile our country is economically depressed, there are not enough jobs, people are living in their cars and we are being ravaged by natural disasters. Mr Obama really has no plan to get us out of this mess but hey he killed Bin Laden.
Obama for President in 2012!!!!!! Mr Obama how is that Nobel Peace Prize working for you?

[tmittelstaed]

"...Our government has a history of befriending evil people like Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Duvalier, Noriega, Somoza, Sujarto etc.."

yes it does. And the fact is that we really aren't doing that very much anymore. That is why your dredging up all those historical examples because there's not a lot of current ones out there.

Most of that "brefrending" came about as a result of the superpower cold war games, and the cold war was because of the USSR. That's why we aren't doing that so much anymore, because Russia finally saw the (green money) light and became more interested in making money than ideology.

When the largest country in the world has thousands of nuclear missiles targeting all your major population centers, you tend to do crazy things. Such as pointing all your nuclear weapons at it's cities and turning the world into a chessboard, where your moving pieces around.

Granted some of this nonsense is still going on in the MidEast due to our vital dependence on oil. But, have you caught the price of gas lately? We as a country are literally pricing ourselves out of being able to use gasoline. You think gas prices are bad now, well just watch the next decade. OPEC is 90% controlled by foreign governments and they set the world prices on oil. Even in Canada - well Canada produces a million barrels a day MORE than they consume - they are a net EXPORTER - yet they still have insane pump prices on oil. I give it a decade, no longer, and the US will be mostly on electric cars. We won't be able to afford any other way. And once that happens we are going to withdraw from the world oil game and let China and the other countries who haven't gone to electric cars, interfere with the Mid East.

As long as the US is friends with Israel it will never be entirely trusted in the Mid East. Our choice is to be friends with Israel - a known nuclear power and a country with a religion that is pretty compatible with ours - or be friends with the other Arabs who don't have nukes and who have a religion that is 100% in opposition to our culture's. The choice isn't that hard to make, Sherlock.

[rwsmith29456]

Should have displayed the body like Mussolini and have people kicking in his head and P***ing in his face.

[shazbat34]

Nah, the lines wouold have been too long.

[formrusmcsgt]

White House: We would have taken bin Laden alive
---
I don't buy it.

The decision was made long ago to terminate and bury at sea if found in my view.

Two reasons:

No trial.

No burial site.

[Birdman04]

Exactly. There is no way on God's green earth he was going to be taken alive or given a funeral.

[John_Rational]

Not true. When Israel captured Adolf Eichmann they put him on trial for genocide, found him guilty, executed him, then cremated the body and spread the ashes over the Mediterranean sea. The trial is a slam dunk and the body can always be buried at sea.

[rationall7]

I can see it now in 2012 "Obama keeping US Safe/Safer Than GWB" (((LOL))) put that in your tea pipe and SMOKE it.

[corneliusvansant]

"Here is the question:" Mr. President, "We know where bin Laden is; can we send a special force to capture him?" But far more elegantly in his speech Obama put his role this way: "At my direction . . ." It was a not so subtle grab for glory; more likely, the plan was laid out before Obama was asked the question. I don't give him much credit for a decision he had no choice in; say no and he was cooked.

But the pragmatic politician must pursue pacifism with an almost imperceptible progression. Obama has been both pacifist yet default pragmatist in this War on Terror, to which he has been no friend. Half of his cuts in his budget are from the military.

He has tried to disguise the cause of terrorist violence by patronizing terrorist supporter nations that in the end, snubbed and lost respect for him. He stopped capturing and interrogating the enemy, choosing to kill with Predator - including collaterally, grandchildren.

The President lost my support when he was asked to provide urgent reinforcements in 2009. It took half a year; even then, he sent substantially less than what he was asked for. He tried to change the name to Overseas Contingency Whatever, and attempted to bring terrorists into this country to be tried with citizen rights.

[DoaDoaBe]

He should have been taken alive, beaten and scourged live on pay per view until he admitted Allah is not real. Then he could have been put down like a dog.

The video excerpt of him denying Allah could be played for Guantanomo detainees over and over again as a form of torture.

[AOCGUY]

You deny the existance of God?

[DoaDoaBe]

Of course. God isn't real. But even so, Allah is only God to Arabic speakers. To the rest of us, he's the petty god of islam.