Ok so again, you speak in absolutes completely ignoring what has already been said. See, I already said it was preferable to raid the compound and SPECIFICALLY NOT kneel him down and summarily execute him. You seem to be unable to separate the 2 for whatever reason. Bombing it was not the only other option. Wow are you really that dense? Do you really think the strategy meeting went:
"Ok what are the options."
"Bust in there, kneel him down, and shoot him in the head."
"Ok other options."
"Bomb the bejeebus out of it killing everyone."
"Ok any others?"
"Nope, that's it."
And talk about being all over the place. You specifically state the purpose of the raid was to kill OBL, then when presented with evidence to the contrary, you change your story to say "kill or capture". Nice back-pedal there, sticking to your story.
You are also woefully uninformed about our military if you think the only reason the Seals are in existence is to go around slaughtering people at the behest of the president. They are trained for missions like this, not just a bunch of rabid dogs with no understanding of anything but kill kill kill. Obama said, they were to bring OBL to justice. Obviously they were authorized to use deadly force in attempting to apprehend him. But I assure you they are trained to do more than just kill. You need to get the image of Schwarzenegger jumping up out of a stream with twin M60's mowing down everyone around him out of your head. If they could have apprehended him alive, I believe they would have, since that is what the President said the mission was. And I certainly hope they didn't apprehend him then kneel him down and shoot him in the head, even if it had been their direct order. That would have been illegal.
I am not backpedaling from a damn thing. I said the mission was to "capture or kill Bin Laden" as in, "we don't care either way as long as one of them gets done." The mission was never claimed to be "capture Bin Laden unless he starts shooting as us then kill him" or whatever you are trying to make it. Killing him has always been an acceptable outcome.
So your bogus strategy meeting aside, I think it went down something like this:
Obama: What are the options?
Adviser # 1: We can probably get him alive if we get lucky and catch them totally off guard.
Obama: Then what do we do with him?
Adviser # 2: We could hold him on a sub somewhere and extract whatever intel he gives us, and then put him on trial under a military court on the sub.
Obama: I can't really do that after I campaigned against it. Plus the pressure from the rest of the world would be pretty great to give him a normal trial, and the red cross would entitled to inspections.
Adviser # 3: We could just bomb the place and kill everyone inside. He'd be dead for sure.
Obama: The collateral damage would be too great. If we're doing this without getting approval from Pakistan, we don't want any collateral damage.
Obama: Lets just have the best of both worlds... Lets raid the place and catch them totally off guard. That way we can hopefully get all of the computers and we don't even need to interrogate Bin Laden. And if we catch any fire from any of them at any point during the raid, we can justify killing Bin Laden. Then we'll throw his body in the ocean so the terrorists don't have a shrine.
It is HIGHLY possible, even PROBABLE that it went down like that. Even dutch, who you jumped into this to agree with, is saying that it probably went down like that. If you don't think that is pretty dang close to what happened, then you're off your rocker.
Again, the Obama administration has said several times now that bombing the compound was the only alternative to this raid, and at least some advisers pressed for that option with Obama over ruling them.
So I ask again, even if they knelt Bin laden down and shot him in the head, would you prefer that to bombing the compound? Because it's pretty clear Bin Laden was getting killed either way. Taking him alive was not a serious option. If it were a serious option, they would have tased him, gassed him, shot him in the leg, or any number of non lethal forces the US military has at its disposal.
They didn't do any of that. They shot him in the head. Why? Because that is what they went there to do.
