Why did Obama order Seals to shoot bin Laden?

Chicago PM Sunday 2 September 2012

Editors, The Wall Street Journal

Gentlepeople:

The Wall Street Journal article “Navy SEAL
Memoir Exploits Market” [Saturday 1
September] describes the  Administration's
“quick condemnation” of a book written by
a member elite navy  SEAL Team 6 that
killed Osama bin Laden last year in Pakistan
about to be released.

What should be quickly condemned is the
adminstration order to kill bin Laden in that
action, rather than capture him.

bin Laden was the United States' most
serious enemy in generations, but not by his
own physical actions.  He was the designer
of a terrible scheme that killed 3,000 US
citizens, but since his implementers remain
at large,  bin Laden is just as dangerous dead
as alive.  Had he been captured and
imprisoned in the US, and at worst
waterboarded to death, we could have
collected all sorts of info about threats still
out there.   Of course, the reason for this was
that by executing bin Laden, the President
garnered much credit from the average US
citizen:  “Bin Laden killed 3000, he deserves
the same, the sooner the better.”

This point was even made in the same WSJ
edition in another article “A More Worried
Obama Battles to Win Second Term”:  in the
year 2011 “...Mr. Obama and Republican
leaders found themselves repeatedly at odds,
even as the president made strides on the
national-security front, including the killing
of Osama bin Laden.“

Arnold H Nelson
Chicago ah_nelson@yahoo.com