Bin Laden Dead; What Does It Mean To Us?

Osama Bin Laden, the man behind the deadliest attack on American soil and who sparked a worldwide manhunt, is dead.

In the South Sound, news of his death brings special significance. With our ties to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, thousands of wives, husbands, mothers, fathers and children have seen their loved ones shipped overseas in the name of fighting terror.

Many have lost loved ones to the same cause. In all, 126 military personnel from Washington state have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn - the country's main military operations in the Middle East since Sept. 11, 2001.

Logistically, the instillation has grown and seen influxes of soldiers and their families since then. The Northwest itself, with its Stryker brigades and Navy ships, was one of the launching points for the war on terror.

Roughly 1,000 troops from Joint Base Lewis-McChord are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, said base spokesman Joseph Piek. 

"On nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al Qaeda's terror - justice has been done," said President Obama in a nationally televised address tonight.

So knowing all that, knowing more so than any other region how much Bin Laden symbolized evil, and the mission to bring him to justice symbolized the will of the American people, Patch asks the following:

What does Osama Bin Laden's death mean to us here in the Northwest?

Here is the national story of Bin Laden's death from the Huffington Post:

Osama Bin Laden is dead, President Obama announced Sunday night, in a televised address to the nation. His death was the result of a U.S. operation launched today in Abbottabad, Pakistan, against a compound where bin Laden was believed to be hiding, according to U.S. intelligence. After a firefight, a small team of American forces killed bin Laden and took possession of his body, the president said.

The announcement that Obama would speak came at 9:45 p.m., less than an hour before he was initially scheduled to go on the air. The unusual hour, and the fact that the White House gave no details about the topic, set off a flurry of speculation.

Officials long believed bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, was hiding in a mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.