This kerfuffle, racheted up by media hostile to Presdient Barack Obama, over the story of what happened and how it did in the killing of Osama bin Laden is an attempt to detract from a positive story, one that reflects well on Obama. The main thing is that the architect of modern-day global terrorism is now dead. Nothing else matters (although the information garnered from the compound and the hard and flash drives there could ultimately be more significant). There should have been no chances taken with him as he might have been concealing a suicide belt. Moreover, there was talk about whether 'enhanced torture techniques' amounted to torture, but there have been strenuous denials over this and even if it were the case, stringent measures should be put in place to prevent it in the future, for if information had been obtained under torture, the desire to end the pain and speak could have led the Navy Seals in to a death trap. Torture is inherently unreliable. I do think that the pictures of the dead body should be released though because the fear of a propaganda coup for jihadists is overstated – they will carry out revenge raids regardless. Yet people of importance, not all favourable to Obama, have seen the pictures and I am prepared to accept their word (given that some would use any excuse to embarrass the President, yet they are not doing so).
The really worrying question is how bin Laden lived so close to Pakistan’s elite military academy without being detected. It could be that if you’re a small animal hiding from an elephant, the best place is under the trunk nose, but it has long been known that Pakistan’s intelligence services and army face both ways in terms of Islamist extremism. At least, Baron Frankenstein regretted his creation, yet Pakistan could still expire as a result of its experiments and power play. That a country, which is a ragbag of ethnicities where the higher-ups are politically delinquent, has nuclear weapons, is what should cause the whole world concern, rather then the elimination of a largely symbolic figure and the back story behind it.