Yesterday's killing of Islamist terrorist kingpin Osama Bin Laden is something we can all celebrate.  In a superbly executed operation, U.S. special operations and intelligence forces were able to verify that Bin Laden was at a fortified compound in Abbotobad, Pakistan and took decisive action to remove this monster from this world.  While being a master strategist and promoter of religious hatred, Bin Laden proved at the end to be a deranged coward who used one of his "wives" as a human shield to protect himself from his inevitable fate.  Soon after this, he got to meet Jesus and heard the dread words "depart from me you accursed" and he now finds himself in hell where he is, undoubtedly, suffering with all the Islamist fools who followed his deranged visions.  While it would have been nice to exhibit Bin Laden's corpse at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum, dumping it into the ocean is also appropriate as his body has provided a nourishing meal for fish in that area by now.

It was also especially amusing to read a news account of how some "Muslim clerics" felt Bin Laden's corpse had not been treated with sufficient sensitivity by the Navy in its dumping his body into the sea.  A man who authorizes the murders of thousands of people does not deserve such consideration when it comes time to dispose of his physical remains.  Where were these "clerics" and their concern with human dignity when Osama's minions massacred innocents on 9/11 and in many other areas around the world?  If anything, we should have wrapped Bin Laden's body with a pig cadaver before throwing it into Davey Jones' locker. 

Bin Laden's takedown is a testimony to the patience of our military and intelligence communities and to our national security leadership. It's particularly nice that the last faces he saw on this earth were those of American soldiers.  I'll even praise Obama for his willingness to allow this action to be carried out, though he should credit the enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by former President Bush as being critical to achieving the information necessary to execute this operation.  It's to bad Obama felt the need to say that we are not targeting Islam because it is the perversity of this religion which has caused so much death and misery to the world in its nearly 14 centuries of existence.  Islam is also the ideological lodestar for the terror perpetrated by Al Qaida, Hamas, Hizbollah, and other like-minded organizations.  While we celebrate today, we must continue to aggressively target Al Qaida's decentralized cells in areas such as Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and elsewhere as well as critical leaders such as Ayman Zawahiri and others.  The intelligence we captured during the operation should provide useful insights into Al Qaida operational strategy and tactics.   We must also maintain security vigilance at home as well to guard against possible revenge attacks.

We must also ask questions about what Pakistan did or didn't know about Bin Laden being camped out just a few hundred yards from their national military academy in an affluent community populated by military retirees.  It is a matter of record that elements of Pakistan's intelligence agency (ISI) created the Taliban nearly two decades ago and have actively provided aid and comfort to Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.  It's also common knowledge that some elements of the Pakistani government and military have been reasonably cooperative with us in our efforts to kill or capture high-value terrorist targets while others have "spit into the wind" on a regular basis to see whether they should support their indigenous Islamist terrorists or cooperate with the chief provider of their foreign assistance.  There will be interesting developments on this in the days and weeks to come.  Despite this victory, the war against Islamist terror will continue to rage and we will need to keep military and intelligence forces in the Islamic world for the foreseeable future.  In some cases, we may be able to conduct multilateral operations against these forces.  However, it is more likely that such operations will be unilateral ones conducted without the permission of the host country as yesterday's attack demonstrates.

I also want to thank the analysts, soldiers, and operatives who carried out this mission.  While there names will probably never be known during our lifetime, they rank in American military  iconography with individuals such as those who assassinated Japanese Admiral Yamomoto during World War II and with other secret heroes of U.S. intelligence and military operations.  Hopefully, they and their families will receive appropriate medals and financial rewards for their exemplary service to our country and for bettering humanity by eliminating Osama Bin Laden.