White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is holding a briefing right now. He said Osama bin Laden was not armed when he was shot during the raid. You can watch live here.

Carney says the photo of bin Laden is very gruesome. No decision yet on whether to release it.

If you'd like to follow the trail to Sheikh Abu Ahmed, aka Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the Osama bin Laden courier who made a phone call in 2010 that led to the authorities to focus on the home in Abbottabad where Osama, the courier and his brother were killed, here's a good start:

Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, Associated Press:

[I]n 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden's personal courier. "Hassan Ghul was the linchpin," a U.S. official said.

The Telegraph and Wikileaks

The Wikileaks Guantanamo files on Muhammad Mani Ahmad Al Shalan Al Qahtani and Abu Farajal Libi (al-Libi).

Marcy (Empty Wheel) [More...]

Oral arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raise the question of whether Donald Trump could sue to have President Obama removed from the ballot for the 2012 election:

Leaders in the so-called "birther" movement argued their case over President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship before a federal appeals court Monday in Southern California, claiming the full birth certificate he released last week had been doctored.

[. . .] The appellate panel wonder[ed] how the lawsuit could have merit, given it was filed after the election and Obama had already taken office. "You did not file a claim at the time when the kind of relief you would be talking about might be plausible," Judge Raymond Fisher said. "It doesn't do anything for your candidates now."

[. . .] Assistant U.S. Attorney David DeJute acknowledged the courts may be the proper venue had a lawsuit challenging a candidate's citizenship been filed before an election. "I think a candidate can challenge the qualification of another candidate, assuming of course that candidate does so in a timely manner," DeJute said.

(Emphasis supplied.) It appears that if Donald Trump runs for President, he could file a "birther" suit against President Obama and seek his removal from the ballot. The ball is in The Donald's court (pun intended), no?

Speaking for me only

ABC:

"We are looking at releasing additional information, details about the raid as well as any other types of material, possibly including photos. We want to understand exactly what the possible reaction might be to the release of this information," said White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan on "Good Morning America."

[. . . ] The gruesome photos show bin Laden shot in the chest and the head by elite Navy SEALS on Sunday. The head wound is above his left eye and is a particularly grisly picture which has tempered officials willingness to display it.

I found this from the NYTimes interesting:

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.

You see? The key was the denials extracted from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Faraj al-Libi through torture. Or maybe not:

The Daily Mail has an extensive article on the Navy Seals, "the silent warriors who took out Bin Laden."

The Seals website is here. They are deployed in 30 countries. Team Six, which in 2009 changed its name to the US Navy Special Warfare Development Group or DEVGRU, is the Seal team that conducted the raid.

The leader of the Naval Special Warfare is Rear Admiral Edward G. Winters III. Their mission statement is here.

Relying on information from "top level official sources", Pakistan's newspaper "The Nation" has a completely different version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Conspiracy theorists will have a field day.

About 200 Pakistan Army men provided ground support, top level official sources told TheNation. During the operation, four helicopters of the Pakistan Army hovered over the fortress-like hideout....

....Initially, the US military personnel opened fire at the outer wall of Osama’s hideout, which was retaliated by the house inmates with heavy gunfire. After almost twenty minutes of cross-firing, the US forces directly targeted the house with sophisticated bombs, eventually killing Osama, his eight bodyguards, seven close aides and an unspecified number of family members including a young son, children and two wives.

Then there are those who don't believe Osama is dead.

On the other side, there's Wikileaks which says Pakistani security forces helped Osama evade detection and capture. [More...]

Don't miss Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight (ABC, midnight ET) on the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Transcript below: [More...]

The accounts by unnamed administration officials on the strike against the Osama bin Laden compound diverge on so many key points, I'm not spending any more time reading them right now. Everytime I start to write something up, another news story pops up with contrary information.

Whether it's Osama bin Laden, his courier, the bloody bedroom scene where he was killed, what happened to the other bodies, whether the helicopter crashed or was shot down, the blatantly false claim by Republicans that torturing detainees at secret overseas prisons led to the courier who led them to Osama's hideout, or other news of the day, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

From Ranker.com's list of top 50 funny Internet reactions to Osama bin Laden's death, this blooper someone posted on You Tube tops their list. A Fox News anchor mistakenly announcing President Obama was dead.

Also on the list, some funny graphics, including this and this; this Facebook replica, and another, in which someone named Victoria truly didn't know who Osama was (scroll through, she really didn't).

And this You Tube video creation of Donald Trump as Hitler, fuming and becoming unglued when he learns of Osama's death.

The list is bound to grow.

The headlines will probably appear en masse that Osama bin Laden was a coward who used his wife as a human shield. That's not what John Brennan said.

John Brennan said, "when she fought back and there was an opportunity to get bin laden, she was positioned in a way that indicated she was being used" as a shield. He stated he doesn't know whether she placed herself there, whether the son placed her there, or whether Osama put her there. He only knows she was used as a shield (by someone to protect Osama.)

Earlier in the conference he said a female was in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a human shield to shield Osama "from the incoming fire." So they were firing in. He said he did not know whether Osama got his hands on a weapon or whether he fired during the "firefight."[More...]

Jay Carney is conducting the White House briefing on the killing of Osama bin Laden. You can watch live here, it's just starting. John Brennan is up: (Live-blog)

If they had the ability to take Osama alive, they were prepared to do that. But they thought that was a remote possibility. There was a firefight and he was killed.

Killing Osama was killing the head of a snake. It gives us an opportunity to show the people of Pakistan that al Qaida is something in the past.[More...]

The principals convened mid-day. Obama joined them early afternoon before operation got underway. He left and rejoined the group when it started. They monitored the entire operation on a real-time basis. "The minutes passed like days." Obama was concerned about the security of our personnel. It was very tense. When we were informed that bin Laden was found, there was "a sigh of relief." Refuses to answer whether there was video, but says there were visuals they could track on an ongoing basis.