Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Afghanistan, visited a police checkpoint with a wanted poster bearing his own face and demanded the $100 finder’s fee referenced on the poster, the Washington Post reports.

He was arrested on the spot.

“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by National Review, on the raid President Obama ordered to kill Osama bin Laden.

David Ignatius reports one of the documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces the night he was killed instructed “special cells” in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.

Said the al Qaeda leader: “The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency… Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour… and killing him would alter the war’s path.”

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 60% of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been not worth fighting and just 30% believe the Afghan public supports the U.S. mission there — “marking the sour state of attitudes on the war even before the shooting rampage allegedly by a U.S. soldier this weekend.”

Indeed 54% say the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan without completing its current effort to train Afghan forces to become self-sufficient.

In a daring nighttime raid, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued two
hostages, including one American, who were being held by kidnappers in
Somalia, MSNBC reports.

The details are reminiscent of the raid that resulted in the death of
Osama bin Laden: “two teams of Navy SEALs landed by helicopter near the
compound where the two hostages were being held. As the SEALS approached
the compound on foot gunfire broke out, the U.S. officials said, and
several of the militants were reportedly killed… The SEALs gathered up
Buchanan and Thisted, loaded them onto the helicopters and flew them to
safety at an undisclosed location. The two hostages were not injured
during the rescue operation and are reported to be in relatively good
condition.”

“The first indication of the rescue operation came
Tuesday night in Washington from President Obama himself. As the
president entered the House chambers to give his State of the Union
Speech, he pointed to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta standing in the
crowd and said, ‘Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight.'”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “was stopped by security at the Nashville airport Monday when a scanner set off an alarm and targeted his knee, although the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

Paul refused to submit to a pat down by airport security and said he was “detained” at a small cubicle and couldn’t make his flight to Washington for a Senate vote scheduled later in the day.

“A TSA official speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal screening policies said Paul was never detained.”

Gawker reports that Anthony Shaffer “is suing the Pentagon and the CIA over their extraordinary attempts to censor Operation Dark Heart, the book he wrote recounting his days as a military spy in Afghanistan and elsewhere. One problem he’s run into: The government has the original unredacted manuscript he wrote. And it won’t give him a copy. Because it’s classified.”

But he can buy it on eBay.

When the Pentagon discovered the book contained sensitive information, it had already been printed and dozens of review copies sent out. So even though the government bought all 10,000 copies of the book directly from the publisher and destroyed them,  there are still copies floating around.

Just published: SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden by Chuck Pfarrer.

The Daily Beast notes the author “certainly had access” and was a SEAL Team Six assault-element commander in the 1980s.

The Obama administration “is exploring a shift in the military’s
mission in Afghanistan to an advisory role as soon as next year,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “a move that would scale back U.S. combat duties ahead of
their scheduled conclusion at the end of 2014.”

“Officials said agreement on a formal shift to an advisory role could
come as early as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in May — in
the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign.”

“Turn on CNN in 15 minutes. The president will have an announcement —
and, by the way, tell Ted to get ready to open that bottle.”

— CIA Director Leon Panetta, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, talking to the wife of restauranteur Ted Balestreri, who bet a $10,000 bottle of wine that Panetta couldn’t find Osama bin Laden.

American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the public face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed in Yemen, CNN reports.

“The U.S. regards al-Awlaki, who was believed to be hiding in Yemen, as the biggest threat to its homeland security. Western intelligence officials believe al-Awlaki is a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active al Qaeda affiliates.”