You keep going back to the same limited options. Either murder him or bomb the compound. That is seriously short-sighted. The option I would choose, in your poorly thought-out question, would be to have them complete their mission and bring him back alive. If they had him safely in custody then knelt him down and shot him in the head it is illegal. Period. No debate. That is where throwing ethics and laws out the window come in to play. If they simply executed him while he was in custody, then that is just throwing the laws we have agreed to out the window.
The alternative if they had him in custody was to bring him back as Obama said their mission entailed.
You keep saying that even if they knelt him down and shot him in the head that the ONLY ALTERNATIVE was to bomb the place. I call ********. IF they had him in custody and were in a position to choose whether or not to execute him, they had plenty of options. Bringing him to justice, as was their mission as outlined by Obama, was just one of those options.
Man, whatever happened happened. Whether he was killed in a firefight, or put on his knees- whatever happened happened. That is how the raid on the compound turned out.
So in your what if scenario, lets say he was put on his knees and shot in the head. That was either due to the Navy Seal being pumped up and out of control, or due to following orders to do that.
So what were the options- not send in Navy Seals because they will be too pumped up and kill him anyway? Send in less skilled soldiers that might not be successful in the mission but would probably not put him on his knees if they get to him?
And if the order came from the top, then there was no alternative, this WAS the mission.
And the only alternative to this, is not doing the raid at all. and in that case, the administration was clear the only alternative was bombing the place and killing everyone.
Your "bring him in alive" was not an option. The only possible way that could happen is in the raid, which they did, and he did not get taken alive.
By the way, read Obama's interview on CBS from last night. At one point Obama flat out says that the one part of the mission he didn't lose any sleep over was the possibility of Bin laden getting killed. he then goes on to say that justice was served, and anyone questioning that needs to have their head examined.
His comments only further strengthen my point that technically they wanted him dead or alive, but they by far preferred the dead option. They didn't send in the best Navy SEAL team to serve an arrest warrant.
And I have absolutely no problem with that. I actually applaud Obama for it.