No, no, no, no...boom! boom! "Out go the lights."UBL told her "Don't turn on the light."
I have read several books on the take down of UBL last year...now am reading the new one by Peter Bergen. In it he claims UBL was awakened just after midnight by sounds of explosions nearby, and one of his daughters came rushing upstairs to his quarters and asked him what was going on. All the electricity had been cut to the entire neigborhood (by whom...remains not known), so there was no electricity in the compound. UBL told his daughter to go back down stairs and go to bed. Then bin Laden's youngest wife Amal who also stayed with him on the 3rd floor evidently made a motion to get up to attempt to turn on the lights, at which point UBL told her "Don't turn on the light." which according to Peter Bergen (the author) were UBL's last words, which I only guess came from the debriefing of Amal afterwards by the Pakistan govt.
Still, it is interesting to know his last spoken words.
Also revealed in the book, that the third floor, the unauthorized addition on to the 2 floor house, had a ceiling which was very low, about 7 feet, and UBL was supposedly six foot four. Also the third floor had windows only one one of it's four sides (not counting the balcony area surrounded by the 7 foot high wall which was on one side). So when the explosions and first helo came crashing down etc, he was partly blinded by his own security arrangements, of having windows only on one side of his 3rd floor lair.
No, no, no, no...boom! boom! "Out go the lights."UBL told her "Don't turn on the light."
I expected something like "where is my RPG", or "run, I will fight with them"![]()
Hmmm, so they didn't give him the opportunity to surrender. That's going to shatter many Liberal illusions.
My world...my beautiful world...I'm melting![]()
I still think his last words was "oh sh1t"......
He looked at his bodyguard and said, "Remind me to kill you later knucklehead". Nuck, nuck.
derka derka mohammed jihad. definitely his last words.
Good he was thinking about the environment and conserving electricity at such a stressful time. Maybe we got him all wrong?
Econo-bin-laden.
The way I read the book, the author is saying that the words spoke "don't turn on the light" were perhaps some minutes prior to the SEALs entering the room, one would guss UBL thought the electricity was still working (which it wasn't). The author also mentioned that UBL unlocked the steel bar gate to the 3rd floor when he went out to peer down the stair well to see who was making the noise of the explosions of blowing thru the steel gates on lower floors (perhaps there was fire from the AKs of his son who was killed on the lower floor?), when UBL left the 3rd floor gate, he did not "relock" the steel gate, so the SEAL assault team did not have to blow it with a charge as they had the lower gates. So once the SEALs reached the 3rd floor steel gate it was open and they went into the room immediately and you know the rest.
One other thing I learned that I had not understood, was the story of them not having a tape measure to see how tall the corpse was....and one of the guys laying down next to him to approximate the height...I thought this happened in the compound, according to the book this happend after they all got back to Afghanistan and were at the air base (Jalalabad), where Admiral McRaven etc inspected the dead corpse to verify it was UBL.
The book also makes the comparison of the isolation of UBL at the compound in Abbottabad, to Hitler's last days in the bunker....both men plotting attacks with troops they no longer controlled.....though to me, UBL's isolation from around 2005-6 until 2011 was infinitely longer! His only excercise was his "pacing" in the compound garden which was covered above with tarps etc to prevent him being seen from satellites or drones. Evidently he never left the compound for five to six years.