US President Barack Obama has just confirmed the death last week of the terrorist leader of Al Qaeda who orchestrated the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3000 people.

He was killed in a compound in Pakistan by US soldiers after a firefight following almost 10 years of war against the terrorist network.

Obama has said that 'Justice has been done', whilst I do not agree with the death penalty, I really do feel that millions of people will agree with him and feel that today the US has achieved its outcome of bringing down this man that has evaded them for so long.

I couldn't believe it for a few minutes until Obama himself finally declared this man dead and feel the strangest physical sense inside, I think its relief mixed with excitement mixed with a finality...but I am far from sure what it is as I haven't felt like this before. Perhaps this is that same sense of relief and jubilation and 'what next?' that people felt when it was confirmed in Britain and her allies when Hitler was confirmed dead.

In my 31 years of life there has not been a person that so many wanted dead. It is so strange a sense to be hearing that after such a long but determined and derided campaign to see this day come to fruition.

I hope America and much of the world can celebrate an end to this ugly chapter of a man who failed to achieve his aims in his own life.

Looking at the Muslim world now I wonder who has truly won the hearts and minds of the people and what ultimately will occur, well for the next 20 years anyway in this volatile place that has been at war for much of the past century.  Has it been democracy that the United States pushed into the centre of the region with their removal of Saddam Hussein and was it all along the US aim of countering this Fundamentalists designs on the region by committing to give them an alternative to his view. 

Right now we have fallen regimes across north Africa, partition of Sudan, the crumbling of other republics headed by totalitarians, but relative stability in the democracies of Turkey, Israel, Lebanon and Iraq as well as the monarchies of the Arabian peninsula. It was Bin Laden's aims to destroy these monarchies and democracies, but it seems the actual collateral damage has been the republics.

But that deliberation is for tomorrow today its all about the victory of Bush and Obama in doing what they said they would and dead or alive getting Osama Bin Laden.