The Assassination of Usama or Osama Bin Laden

I've been thinking about whether or not I would have ordered a kill of UBL, if I were in the position of President Obama. Both killing UBL and not killing indicates a no-win situation.

After a lot of consideration, I've decided I would NOT order the kill and here is why:

Truly, UBL is a dangerous person to the United States. About 3000 people died on 9-11 alone due to Al Qaeda's bombing of the Twin Towers.

There has been no doubt that other attacks would be coming to America. A few already have been thwarted. Should those attacks have happened, a few hundred people would have died. These piece-meal attacks would have killed a few hundred people at a time. The Intelligence community has been able to prevent attacks and for that, I think all of us are grateful. We don't want even one American, or anyone else for that matter, murdered by these terrorists.

However, Al Qaeda's top henchmen have stated for quite some time that, should UBL be captured or killed, they would detonate a nuclear bomb inside the U.S. A nuke will kill many more than a few hundred people.

Was killing UBL or taking him out of Pakistan the only choices available? I think now. It is stated that the compound at which UBL lived in Abbotabad, Pakistan had no Internet or telephone connections. The means of communicating was through couriers. Had UBL been left alive in that compound with this family and the people who lived there, BUT without the ability to communicate with anyone else, how much damage could he order? His cohorts wouldn't know what to do. They couldn't get direct orders from him and wouldn't know why. This would leave them without the idea of using a nuke on Americans, although they probably would continue with small attacks.

There are American servicemen who speak the language of that area of Pakistan. They could have been placed as guards around the compound (dressed as Pakistani military) so that it appeared the guarding was being implemented by the Pakistan government, not the U.S. Further, with as much money as the U.S. provides to Pakistan, those government authorities probably could find loyal police or military to guard the compound.

These are just a few thoughts and I'm sure there are many more ideas I could come up with as time allowed.
At this time, I simply think the retribution for the death of UBL will be a lot worse than anything that would have happened had he been left alive, but with his communication abilities stopped.

Another thought - why didn't they bring the wife out? She would have had so much information to share about the comings and goings at the compound.

Also, why didn't the Seals drag UBL into another room if they were ordered to kill him so that all those children didn't have to witness the shooting? His wife and, apparently, about 10 children were in that room watching the killing. Of all those children, only one has to grow up wanting to revenge his dad's death for us to continue to be threatened for decades into the future.

Right now I'm listening to comments about the press briefing to occur shortly regarding releasing the photograph of UBL after his death and showing the gunshot wound. Apparently, President Obama will NOT release the photo and thinks because there hasn't been any retribution so far, there won't be. Therefore, not releasing the photograph helps to stop any attack. To release it, according to the President, could inflame people and cause retribution. This is bizarre to me. If revenge is in the plans, the photo will not make a difference, one way or the other. I never quite understand where the President is coming from.

Most people in this country know that the Al Qaeda leadership and members are EXTREMELY patient and plotting. Many probably are scattering since they data has been confiscated and the Al Qaeda people don't necessarily know what information the U.S. Intelligence community now has. However, they will settle and they will plot and I do believe we will get hit hard unless all of them are found and captured.

If many more Al Qaeda people are arrested, the mission has completed a double duty - kill UBL and gain information. However, if many of those others aren't arrested, simply killing UBL with the potential ramifications for a nuclear attack is NOT, in my opinion, worth it.

Of course, the President must consider his billion dollar re-election and this assassination is a boon for that.

It could occur in the future that this whole thing turns on the President and is more of a negative than a positive. We shall see! I do think President Obama makes a lot of decisions that are of a self-sabotage nature.