Craig Wallace, a veteran of the first Gulf War, was watching “Fast Five” in a local movie theater when a text message arrived on his phone: Osama bin Laden was dead, a friend had written.

Wallace believes, as President Barack Obama said Sunday night, that justice was served. Wallace also thought about the thousands of people who died not only on Sept. 11, but in the years since.

He has known American soldiers who died in Afghanistan or Iraq. There are thousands others, he said, who have died during the wars in those countries, and Wallace thought of them, too.

“People need to know they can’t attack our country,” Wallace, of Redmond, said as he waited for lunch in downtown Bend. “It’s a high price. It’s been a really high price.”

In Central Oregon on Monday, people were eager to discuss Sunday night’s news that American troops had killed bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The compound where bin Laden had holed up had 18-foot walls, no phone or Internet connections to the outside world and was about an hour’s drive away from the capital city of Islamabad, according to various reports.

News of the raid broke shortly before Obama spoke to the nation from the White House late Sunday night.

Eric Bush, chief of the Prineville Police Department, is the commander of the 41st infantry brigade combat team and was on active duty in Baghdad for 14 months, beginning in 2009.

Bush considers bin Laden “a symbol of why we are fighting.” His death, he says. “is probably one of the most strategic victories we’ve had in the global war on terrorism. I think it was very important for the American people to get this closure.”

Sam Carpenter, founder of the Kashmir Family Aid, a nonprofit that worked with Pakistani schools after an earthquake struck the country in 2005, has made several trips to the area where bin Laden was killed.

In 2005, he spent two days in Abbottabad and, a few years later, drove through the area. The dry, rugged hills and mountains nearby reminded Carpenter of Eastern Oregon.

He remembers a lively city, with fruit stands along some of the streets. Carpenter also recalls Abbottabad as heavily militarized. Indeed, the compound where bin Laden was killed was less than a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy, according to The New York Times.

Carpenter said he was touched by the immediate reaction of Americans to the news of bin Laden’s death.

“Tears came to my eyes,” he said. “I haven’t seen a unified, flag-waving crowd since 2001.”

Former Redmond City Councilor Irv Nygren spent three decades working in Pakistan, beginning in 1963. During that time, Nygren worked most as a teacher but also as a church pastor.

The Nygren family spent time in and around Abbottabad, and one of their sons was born in a Christian hospital less than 10 miles north of the city. Abbottabad, Nygren said, not only was home to the elite military academy but also to an English-language boarding school that drew some of the brightest students in the area.

Nygren has heard from some people he knows who work at the hospital near Abbottabad, and there is caution is their messages.

“They’re just going to be careful, but they’re worried about retaliation,” Nygren said.

Others thought of their family members in the military. Dave Rodgers lives with his wife in Bend for part of the year, and their son Matthew is in the U.S. Navy. Matthew has served three tours of duty in the Middle East, his father said.

The parents were watching the game between the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets when they noticed a buzz from the crowd. The noise grew to a roar, with the crowd chanting, “USA, USA!”

Soon, the Rodgerses were exchanging text messages about the news with friends and family, many of whom also have children in the military.

Through his son, Dave Rodgers knows many people in the military. Those friendships, he said, “made this news so incredible for us yesterday and today.”

At the U.S. Army’s recruiting office in Bend on Monday, little appeared to have changed. There was no rush on the office by potential recruits, according to 1st Sgt. Bryan Zacher, the station commander.

“It’s good news (bin Laden) has been brought to justice, and, for us, it’s business as usual,” Zacher said.

As Army recruiters took calls around the lunch hour, Yegor Moisseenko, a 19-year-old Deschutes River Woods resident, was walking in for a visit.

Moisseenko enlisted in the Army about a month ago, he said, and the recent news did nothing to change how he feels about his decision.

“There’s plenty of problems in the world, and this was just one of them,” Moisseenko said.

Though he worries that bin Laden’s death could inspire retribution, Bush believes killing the leader of the al-Qaida leader was appropriate and that the action could harm support for the terrorist group.

Bush also said it was key that American troops killed bin Laden in person, and not by using remote technology.

“When we saw our friends and family dying in front of us on live TV (on Sept. 11), it was extremely personal,” Bush said. “I think he deserved to know that it was the United States that brought him to justice and not some blinding flash of light.”

Raid’s meticulous planning pays off

WASHINGTON — Even as the Navy SEALs slid down ropes from their hovering helicopters, there still was some uncertainty that the man they were after was inside the massive compound on the edge of the sleeping city in northeastern Pakistan.

After all, Osama bin Laden was long thought to be hiding in a cave or other refuge in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area bordering Afghanistan. But one of the raiders thought he recognized the leader of al-Qaida, and dropped him with a shot to his left eye as the SEALs stormed the house during a nearly 40-minute firefight.

The raider compared the dead man’s face to bin Laden’s picture. They seemed to match. Then one of the dead man’s wives positively identified him. Yet it wasn’t until later that DNA tests dispelled any lingering uncertainty.

Bin Laden was dead.

“Justice has been done,” President Barack Obama declared on national television after he and close aides, who had monitored the operation as it unfolded on the other side of the world, were sure the leader of al-Qaida was killed before dawn on Monday, Pakistan time.

“It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here,” said John Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House news conference. “The confidence was building, yet at what point do you feel confident that you have the person you were after?”

No Americans were killed or injured. Four people other than bin Laden died: the trusted courier thought by U.S. officials to have harbored bin Laden and his family for several years; the courier’s brother; bin Laden’s son, Khaled; and one of the terrorist leader’s wives, shot as she shielded her husband.

Details of one of the riskiest and meticulously planned covert operations ever pulled off by the CIA and the U.S. military emerged in briefings and interviews Monday with administration, intelligence and military officials after the raid outside the city of Abbottabad. All but Brennan requested anonymity as matter of policy.

The helicopters, flying from Afghanistan in the dark, had to operate undetected in one of Pakistan’s densest air defense zones, evading radars and missile batteries protecting the capital, Islamabad, and the adjacent military headquarters city of Rawalpindi.

One helicopter developed a mechanical failure and crashed outside the compound’s towering walls. It was blown up before the raiders departed so its top-secret equipment couldn’t be captured. Pakistani jets scrambled, but not until the SEALs were long gone with bin Laden’s corpse.

“We weren’t detected coming in and going out. Even the helicopter crashed, and we blew it up,” said a U.S. official. “We did not encounter Pakistani forces at any time.”

Two women in the compound were injured and treated at a military hospital, said two Pakistani officials, who asked not to be further identified. One was believed to be another bin Laden wife, the one who identified his body, and the other a daughter.

Before leaving, the SEALs swept up computer hard drives and other materials that intelligence analysts are now scouring for the identities and whereabouts of other al-Qaida operatives, and other information that can be used to fight the terrorist network, U.S. officials said. Only bin Laden’s corpse was removed, flown to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the northern Arabian Sea.

After samples were taken for DNA testing, it was washed in private by two Muslim members of the U.S. military, wrapped in a white sheet, placed in a weighted bag and slid into the water from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson to the recitation of “religious remarks” by a U.S. officer that were translated into Arabic, officials said.

They insisted that all was in accordance with Islamic practice.

The accounts left critical questions unanswered. Perhaps the most significant: Did anyone in the Pakistani army, which has ruled the country for more than half of its 64 years of independence, or the powerful spy agency linked to groups allied to al-Qaida, the Inter-Services Intelligence, help harbor bin Laden or know of his presence?

“I think it is inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time,” Brennan said.

Pakistan’s premier military academy is a mile from the compound, and the area is home to numerous retired senior officers and two infantry regimental headquarters.

“There is no way that ISI couldn’t have known about this,” said Thomas Lynch, a retired U.S. army colonel who is now a research scholar at the National Defense University in Washington.

— Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy-Tribune News Service

There is a motto etched on a Navy SEAL training school building in California: “The only easy day was yesterday.” It captures the grit and willpower required to be a member of the Navy’s elite force.

Sunday’s operation was one that two presidents have called America’s No. 1 priority: Bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

It shoved the SEALs into the limelight. A spokeswoman for the group said Monday she could not say a word about the mission, even to confirm that the force was involved. Some major news organizations identified the group as SEALs while others were more circumspect, referring more broadly to special forces.

Meanwhile, “Navy SEAL” was one of the top search terms on Twitter. The group’s official Facebook page was covered with thank-you notes.

Former SEALs and military experts said the mission had the hallmarks of the Navy’s top fighting team. “It was a classic, textbook SEAL operation,” said Kurt Olsen, a former SEAL who based the comment on news accounts describing the way the American teams went into bin Laden’s compound.

— The Baltimore Sun