Short article on SEAL who (says he) killed Bin Laden

Interesting and not the same as what was written in No Easy Day, which I read and reviewed on Amazon  but never did post here.

This is from the Telegraph (UK) and the link includes a one minute video.

Mr O’Neill told Fox News that it was "just luck" that he ended up as the man to pull the trigger when fellow commandos peeled off to search other rooms during the raid on bin Laden’s Pakistani compound.

In accounts given to other US media outlets, fellow Seals on the raid have said that the fatal shot was fired by an unidentified “point man” up the stairs from the second floor when bin Laden peeked out of his bedroom.

But the Montana native insisted that there was no doubt about his recollections. “Absolutely, 100 per cent,” he told interviewer Peter Doocy when asked whether he was the last person to see the terror leader alive.

He also dismissed the contradictory claim in a book by another Seal, Mark Bissonette, that he finished off the injured bin Laden. “War is foggy,” Mr O’Neill said. “The author is telling the story as he saw it, and based on the debrief that he heard. The debrief was cleaned up, but missing a few details. I can just speak on what I saw.”

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On the second floor, the other Seals were clearing the rooms, leaving just the point-man and Mr O’Neill to head up to the third floor, he said.

After they climbed the stairs, his comrade rushed two women behind a curtain, throwing himself on top of them, believing that he would be sacrificing his own life as they were presumed, wrongly, to be wearing suicide bomb jackets.

That left Mr O’Neill alone to face and kill bin Laden, according to his account. He said that he acted within military rules as the al-Qaeda chief was also presumed – and also wrongly – to be wearing a suicide vest and had not surrendered. “It was a kill-capture,” he said. “I think everyone wanted that.”

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They also had the body of bin Laden to take with them. Mr O’Neill said he was one of the four men who carried the corpse out in a body bag to the grounds where one of them jabbed a syringe into his leg to collect his DNA for proof that the dead man was indeed the al-Qaeda chief.

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"To be part of something so historic, you can't ask for more…we wanted it bad," he said. "It doesn’t get any better. This is it this is why we're here. We are at war because of this guy and now we are going to go get him."

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His decision to reveal his role was taken after he spoke with relatives of victims of the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks at the new 9/11 museum in New York. He said that he saw their relief and “closure” at learning the details of bin Laden’s demise.

The show finished with Mr O’Neill receiving a tearful embrace from one of those family members. “You killed the devil,” the man said, “and I salute you.”