Credit Where It's Due

"Baghdadi's death represents a huge blow to the organization's capacity to swell is ranks, mobilize its existing supporters and develop the momentum that could restore it to its past glories."
"That said, ISIS [Islamic State] will still be a potent, underground terrorist threat."
Ranj Alaaldin, fellow, Brookings Institution, Doha

"[The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces] played a key role [in the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's compound]."

"[The US has been] in close touch [with SDF Commander Gen. Mazloum Abdi] about all aspects of what we’re doing."

"He, his people, and his intelligence sources, played a key role in all of this. It’s a very, very important role. Nobody should underestimate how key the SDF was in all of this."

U.S. Senior State Department official

We have declassified a picture of the K-9. Donald Trump

"We’re not releasing the name of the dog right now. The dog is still in theater. The dog, the K-9, the military working dog performed a tremendous service as they all do in a variety of situations."

"Slightly wounded and fully recovering but the dog is still in theater, returned to duty with its handler."

"So we are not going to release just yet photos or names of dogs or anything else."

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

An agent of the Syrian Democratic Forces had successfully infiltrated ISIS to become a vital informant. He was able to lead the special U.S. forces to the exact location where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was in hiding, and to relay to them vital information on how to access his hiding place; warning that the front entrance would be booby-trapped, leading the special ops group to blast a hole in the side of the building for entry, according to SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali. In addition, a piece of Baghdadi's underwear and blood sample obtained by the information was used to verify the terrorist leader's identity through an on-site DNA test prior to the raid taking place.

Just as the U.S. special forces were instructed, after they raided Osama bin Laden's compound at Abbottabad, Pakistan, to bury his body at sea to ensure that his corpse would not endure as a venerated inspiration buried in a shrine dedicated as an Al-Qaeda memorial, so too was the body of Baghdadi taken by helicopter as the special forces withdrew after destroying Baghdadi's compound, to be similarly buried at sea. What will remain as a testimonial to the psychotic killer's memory is the bitterness of those whose loved ones were butchered by his command.

Eleven children were found in the compound, aside from the three that Baghdadi dragged along with him when he fled the American soldiers closing in on him with their K-9 dogs. The eleven children were evacuated from the compound and taken into safe custody, their near future presumably given over to a humanitarian effort to decompress them psychologically from the hate-filled Islamist screed they were programmed with. Their mothers -- at least two of Baghdadi's wives who were present at the compound, were found shot dead, though they were wearing intact suicide vests.

Later that same day, according to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which coordinated with the U.S. on the joint operation, ISIS spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir was also killed, along with two other ISIS leaders, near Jarablus, norther Syria. Al-Muhajir was viewed as Baghdadi's second-in-command. On the death of the two principals, however, another groomed leader was  elevated to succeed Baghdadi. Neither the 'ideas' of the ideology of death nor the faithfulness of Islamic State followers will die for lack of oxygen, unfortunately.

People look at a destroyed houses near the village of Barisha, in Idlib province, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019, after an operation by the U.S. military which targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group. President Donald Trump says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead after a U.S. military operation in Syria targeted the Islamic State group leader. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

There were eight U.S. stealth helicopters involved in the well co-ordinated raid, long in the planning, with Delta Force and Navy Seals who flew over Barisha, a village holding a few thousand Syrians in Idlib province close to the Turkish border. Close to midnight when they arrived, the group was fired on from the ground, and they reacted by demolishing the source of the fire, then the special forces  troops rappelled to the ground close to the Baghdadi compound.

Russia and Turkey were advised beforehand of the passage of the group overhead, but not of the raid, since the helicopters had to fly over northern Syria now controlled by Russia and turkey. While Seals set up a perimeter after landing, Delta Force approached the compound wall in the knowledge they had to bypass the booby-trapped main gate They entered through the wall they had penetrated with explosives instead, encountering a number of close cadres of Baghdadi within the compound, killing a half dozen, themselves sustaining no injuries.

This is when the dead wives were encountered and the eleven children moved into custody, and the presence of a number of tunnels discovered, one of which Baghdadi fled down; a dead-end tunnel, not the one that was believed to be open-ended. With three children in tow, soldiers and military dogs in hot pursuit Baghdadi chose to detonate a suicide vest ending his life and those of the three children. The tunnel roof collapsed, and the bodies were laboriously excavated from the rubble, a DNA test concluded again, positive.