JOE KELLY                     
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Column for 5.4.11
On the night it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by members of Navy SEAL Team Six, I got a message from a friend of mine via facebook. There were many messages flying around on Sunday night and early Monday morning as the news broke.

My friend wrote: “They are saying that we tracked down Osama bin Laden and shot him dead. Hooray! Have you heard?”

I typed back that I was at that very moment listening to television reports, but that information was still sketchy. “Is it official?” I asked. “Dead? For sure? How long?”

To which my facebook friend responded: “He’s been dead long enough to know that there weren’t 40 virgins waiting for him.”

My facebook friend added: “They are saying it was a double tap in the face,”

“Double tap?”

“You know, double tap - boom, boom.”

Oh.

I rarely post anything on facebook, but do check it daily. That’s how I keep track of family and friends. In terms of jobs, ages, education, location, and political persuasion, my facebook friends are quite an eclectic group.

What follows are a few of the comments they posted to facebook in the minutes and hours after President Obama announced that the United States had done what former President George Bush promised we’d do. That promise, made while Bush was standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, next to a firefighter, was to get the people responsible.

Here are the facebook comments:

An advertising woman from Holland Patent: “Good!”

An assistant to a local political office holder: “Osama sleeps with the fishes.”

A purchasing agent: “God bless our military. God bless the USA.”

A teacher: “A great day to be an American.”

A white collar worker: “I’m glad we didn’t get him with a bomb. This way he had time to get scared.”

A retired military man: “Edmund Burke wrote, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Well, good men did something last night and they were named SEAL Team Six.”

A woman who works at home: “God bless the USA, the land of the free and home of the brave.”

An insurance underwriter: “I hope the bullet that killed bin Laden was made out of material from one of the Twin Towers.”

A newspaper reporter: “I hope he rots in hell.”

A retiree: “He could run, but he couldn’t hide - at least not forever.”

A college student: “This is what happens when you mess with the U.S.”

Indeed.