“No one wanted detainees”: Schmidle on the Bin Laden Operation
Nicholas Schmidle has a piece up at the New Yorker providing the most detailed account I’ve yet seen of the raid that killed bin Laden. It’s a gripping read, obviously very well informed by JSOC sources. From a legal perspective, the point most likely to draw attention is the following passage:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.)
