White House officials showed no signs of rethinking their decision to reverse the ban on enhanced interrogation techniques. But conservatives suggested that Obama had their policies to thank for perhaps the clearest national security success of his tenure.
Keep America Safe, a national security organization run by Liz Cheney, a daughter of the the former vice president, expressed gratitude “to the men and women of America’s intelligence services who, through their interrogation of high-value detainees, developed the information that apparently led us to bin Laden.”
Rising towers
On Monday, administration officials emphasized what they said was bin Laden’s lavish lifestyle and suggested that, when faced with death, he hid behind his wife to avoid capture. The accusation of cowardice is a serious one in the male-dominated Muslim culture.
“He had nothing to offer to young people across the Middle East and Asia,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “This is a clear choice being presented to the region. Do you go the way of cynical violence that has been shown to be a dead end? Or do you follow a path of peaceful protest to secure universal rights and freedoms?”
To further amplify their message, Obama administration officials briefed Bush administration terrorism officials about the raid, knowing they would be called by the media to comment.
“In many ways, what the U.S. says and does may not matter to the die-hards — those are hard audiences to reach,” said Juan Zarate, who served as deputy national security adviser for terrorism issues during Bush’s second term. “What they’re trying to reach are the Muslim communities writ large, where there may have been some sympathies with al-Qaeda in the past, in the hopes they can now wash their hands of them once and for all.”
In Lower Manhattan, the former site of the twin towers buzzed with activity following the news about bin Laden.
Construction cranes operated, a sign that the long-awaited building of the Freedom Tower is underway. Two gleaming towers have risen on the edge of Ground Zero, while a third has begun to rise.
“Ten terrible years ago, a terrible evil visited this place,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said Monday during a visit to the site. “The construction you see here is a rebuke to those who seek to destroy our freedoms and liberties. Osama bin Laden is dead and the World Trade Center site is teeming with new life.”
Kelly Colasanti, whose husband, Chris, died in attack on the World Trade Center, was asleep Sunday night when her daughters, Cara, 14, and Lauren, 11, told her that bin Laden was dead.
She learned what there was to know when her morning newspaper arrived at her Greenwich Village apartment, the mailing label still reading “Christopher Colasanti” nearly 10 years after his death.
By midday, Kelly said she felt a sense of sadness and anxiety. She is pleased that a threat to the country’s security is gone, but she said the crowds rejoicing in Times Square and in front of the White House seemed odd.
“I just don’t understand the celebratory nature of it,” she said by telephone. “Am I not feeling this anymore because something happened to me?”
Staff writers Colum Lynch in New York and Paul Schwartzman in Washington and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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