FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (AP) — President Barack Obama embraced the U.S. commandos he sent after terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, saluting them Friday on behalf of America and people all over the world. “Job well done,” he declared.
The president spoke to a hangar full of cheering soldiers after meeting privately with the full assault team — Army helicopter pilots and Navy SEAL commandos — who executed the dangerous raid on bin Laden’s compound and killed the al-Qaida leader in Pakistan early Monday.
“Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals — intelligence, military over many years — the terrorist leader that struck our nation 9/11 will never threaten America again,” Obama said, speaking at an Army post whose troops have sustained heavy losses in a war in Afghanistan that has grown on his watch.
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He warned that the fight against terrorists still rages, but said: “we are ultimately going to defeat al-Qaida.”
Capping an extraordinary week for the military, the country and himself, he called the bin Laden raid one of the most successful intelligence and military operations in America’s history.
Vice President Joe Biden joined Obama in a briefing and in thanking the members of the mission behind closed doors. He emerged to the broader audience of troops and put it bluntly: “We just spent time with the assaulters who got bin Laden.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.