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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 6th of May, Friday, I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in somewhere, but not with us.

Massachusetts. She's in Massachusetts. The big state, you've heard of it.

Right. She's been running around going from New York to Massachusetts to Connecticut on a tour of the founders and their favorite three states.

Today we're going to have an entire GabFest devoted to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

What happened?

Our reactions to it, what it means, what it means in terms of the debate, the ongoing debate about torture, and then the war in Afghanistan, which has an important date this summer for a troop drawdown. So the first question to you, David, Sunday night, where were you and what was your reaction when you heard this? I was in my living room. I was watching TV. I don't remember what I was even watching. No, I saw someone, someone sent an email to slate saying they're about to make some big announcement. And so I turned on my TV. It was extraordinary. The White House Senate said basically, the president will talk at 1030. We're not telling you at all what about. That never, it never happened. So there was this weird half an hour where everybody was like bouncing around. I must say that I predicted this, but so did everyone else, I suppose.

I must say that I was asleep.

Is that like the worst thing to confess in the entire world?

But, David, your reaction to the fact when you actually heard the news?

Well, I think like everyone else, I was relieved and felt a sense of satisfaction and closure that this

man who was truly one of the great villains of the world had been killed. It was a justifiable

killing. And I was glad that didn't appear that Americans died or that too many innocents died

or any innocence died in the mission.

I don't, at the time, I certainly didn't have a sense that this was a pivotal moment in American

history, the way it now perhaps appears to be. I felt this was a long time coming. Osama bin Laden

is not operationally important to any war

against the United States or didn't appear to be. And, you know, I guess, I mean, I was having

this debate, although no one took me up on the debate. As far as I could tell, Osama bin Laden won

the war. He launched against the United States. He caused us to change our behavior in all sorts of tragic ways. He cost us billions and trillions of dollars. He brought us into wars that have gone badly and cost us alive of thousands of U.S. soldiers as well as thousands of innocence, he murdered in his various terrorist attacks.

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