Uh-oh:

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits surged last week to the highest level in eight months, a sign that the job market continues to struggle to gain any momentum.

The Labor Department said Thursday that applications rose by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the third increase in four weeks. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose for the fourth consecutive week to 431,250.

The Washington Post Editorial Board argues that the killing of Osama bin Laden was compliant with the laws of war:

SOME ARE questioning the legality of the raid in Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. [. . .] Did they comply with international strictures when they killed the al-Qaeda leader rather than capturing him and bringing him before a court of law? [. . .T]he Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) [. . .] was, in short, a declaration of war, and Osama bin Laden was rightly targeted for his central role in the atrocities. Absent a surrender, there is no question that U.S. forces would have been entitled to shoot him on sight [. . .]

Without considering the merits of the particular actions regarding bin Laden, I agree that the laws of war apply to US military actions against Al Qaida. This is true in the context of detention of enemy combatants, and it is also true with regard to torture. The United States committed war crimes when it tortured enemy combatants. That stain remains upon the Nation, unexamined and uncleansed.

Speaking for me only

Matthew Alexander, former senior military interrogator in Iraq:

I don’t torture because it doesn’t work. I don’t torture, because it’s immoral, and it’s against the law, and it’s inconsistent with my oath of office, in which I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States. And it’s also inconsistent with American principles [. . .]

Survivor, American Idol, and Justified tonight. A welcome break from the continuing contradictions in the retelling of the death of Osama bin Laden.

I'm sure there's also other news. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Update: MSNBC reports only one person at the compound in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed was armed, the "courier", and he was in the guest house, not the main house. He and his wife who was with him were killed first, before a second team of commandos even entered the compound.

None of those in the main house were armed, including Bin Laden's son, who was killed coming down the stairs as the commandos were going up. The account is so different from all the versions the White House and Panetta have provided, you really need to read it. There was no firefight inside the house, the only people with guns and shooting were the commandos.

Osama was in his pajamas. There were 22 women and children in the house. Original post below:[More...]

Sam Stein:

Officials inside the Obama administration have grown discouraged by the abruptness with which the news over the killing of Osama bin Laden has turned into a debate over the efficacy of harsh interrogation techniques and torture. [. . .] White House spokesman Tommy Vietor [said . . .]"I think this is a distraction from the broader picture, which is that this achievement was the result of years of painstaking work by our intelligence community that drew from multiple sources[.]

I have an idea for the White House -- how about saying torture does not work and was not a part of the picture of this operation. From Stein - "By most accounts, harsh interrogation measures including waterboarding did not play a role in helping to track bin Laden's whereabouts or his associates." (Emphasis supplied.) Is that too hard for them to say? If so, why?

Speaking for me only

The Guardian has a lot of new details from Pakistani security officials on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and others, and the survivors. More conflicting information. As to Osama's 12 year old daughter who reportedly witnessed the shooting:

Pakistani officials told the Guardian yesterday that Bin Laden's daughter, which various reports named as Safina, Safia or Ayesha yesterday, had been hit in the ankle in the moments before the American assault team reached the room where they found her father, and later passed out. The wound was possibly caused by fragments from a grenade thrown by the assault team as they attacked, one said.

[More...]

Today is the 41st anniversary of the 1970 National Guard killings of Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University. The enhanced audio tape released in 2007 provided evidence the Guards were ordered to shoot.

What precipitated the protest: On Thursday, April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon told the American people that we were sending troops into Cambodia. He had been elected on his promise to end the war. Rallies began around the country on May 1. [More...]

President Obama has decided against releasing the death photos of Osama bin Laden. More here.

Osama had 500 Euros and 2 telephone numbers in his clothing when killed. No word yet (if ever) on whose telephone numbers they were. [More...]

Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002:

[C]oercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” He said that while some of his colleagues defended the measures, “everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”

The usually clear headed Glenn Greenwald misses the boat in his argument on the question of whether torture "works:"

It is sometimes the case that if you torture someone long and mercilessly enough, they will tell you something you want to know. Nobody has ever denied that. In terms of the tactical aspect of the torture debate, the point has always been -- as a consensus of interrogations professionals has repeatedly said -- that there are far more effective ways to extract the truth from someone than by torturing it out of them. The fact that one can point to an instance where torture produced the desired answer proves nothing about whether there were more effective ways of obtaining it.

(Emphasis supplied.) This passage completely misunderstands why torture does not work as an interrogation technique - to wit, because there are "desired answers," the person being tortured will supply them in order to end the torture, making the information garnered through torture unreliable. Is the "desired answer" truthful? Who can know under the circumstances of torture? It's not that there are "more effective ways" of obtaining information, it is that torture is a wholly ineffective way of obtaining information. For this reason, it does not work, EVER. More on the flip.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued this statement Tuesday on the actions of the U.S. in raiding the home in Abbottabad and killing Osama bin Laden.

As to Osam'as amily members who were present, some of whom were injured:

They are all in safe hands and being looked after in accordance with law. Some of them needing medical care are under treatment in the best possible facilities. As per policy, they will be handed over to their countries of origin.

As for the U.S.'s dubious assertion that Osama could have chosen to surrender and avoided being killed (something that could only have happened after the commandos were assured he wasn't hiding an IED under his clothes), as one senior congressional aide puts it: ""He would have had to have been naked for them to allow him to surrender." [More...]