Inside the hunt for Osama

As reporters dig out the back story of the daring raid that finally nailed Osama bin Laden in a high-walled compound under the Pakistani military's nose, it has become clear that President Obama's decision to go forward with the mission was a gutsy call, one made amid an intense debate in intelligence briefings over a range of less risky proposals.

One proposal was simply to keep surveillance of the targeted compound for actual proof - there yet was none - that bin Laden resided there. Another was to order a drone or rocket attack on the compound to avoid risking the lives of America's elite forces. Obama ended that debate last Friday with a decision to go forward with the raid despite the potential for negative results.

Had the mission gone badly - and there are notable examples of courageous missions gone bad - Obama's political stock for 2012 surely would have fallen.

Had he ordered a rocket attack instead of sending in helicopters of commandoes, it may have been impossible to know or prove that bin Laden was there. Such an attack also would have further jeopardized America's already fragile relationship with Pakistan.

And had Obama not given the order to proceed with the raid, bin Laden may have escaped, again.

In this context, it took personal and political courage for Obama to cut off the debate and resolutely give the order to proceed. Following the mission's success, he also gave a tight-lipped assessment that avoided any hint of gloating, or of frustration with Pakistan's failure to aid in finding bin Laden. Obama just magnanimously called his predecessor, George W. Bush, to inform him of bin Laden's death, and then he simply announced publicly that justice was done.

His decision to proceed with the mission, to be sure, was not made impulsively. It followed many months of CIA surveillance of the Abbottabad compound, and careful mission preparation, including training of special forces on a scaled mock-up of the compound.

"There wasn't a meeting when someone didn't mention 'Black Hawk Down,'" one senior adviser told a New York Times reporter, referring to a disastrous U.S. action in a street battle in Somalia in 1993.

Another catastrophic precedent - the failed 1979 mission ordered by then-President Jimmy Carter to rescue American embassy hostages in Iran - also kept the mission's risk in the forefront. The Iranian operation collapsed when U.S. helicopters ran into a disastrous sandstorm, effectively ensuring Carter's re-election defeat the next year to Ronald Reagan.

Other circumstances spurred debate on an alternative decision. Foremost was the uncertainty about whether bin Laden resided in or was at the compound. In addition, the mission to send teams of elite forces in four helicopters to a certain firefight on a moonless night was inherently risky, particularly given its close proximity in Abbottabad to a major Pakistani military base.

Indeed, as it turned out, Pakistan scrambled jets on reports of a firefight at the compound. The special forces team not only managed to get out in time to avoid a confrontation with Pakistan's military: The team also brought out a trove of valuable documents and discs, along with bin Laden's body.

In retrospect, Obama's patient oversight of the planning of the raid - he chaired all of the five White House meetings among key intelligence staff that led to the decision - followed the pattern of circumspect judgment he has established in other venues. He heard all of the questioning and debate, and then made an informed yet gutsy decision, even as the nation's far-right birther wingnuts beat the drums against his presidency so virulently as to prompt him to obtain and release a copy of his birth certificate.

In the partisan realm that shrouds Washington, it's important to recognize Obama's leadership under fire. Relatively few Republicans have stepped up to give the president any credit for bringing bin Laden to justice. Yet it was his restructuring and elevation of the intelligence community's search teams and his own intense focus on finding bin Laden that helped achieve that result.

That takes nothing away from the courage and expertise of the Navy SEALs who successfully executed the daring raid. It simply reflects the credit that is due Obama for the political courage and leadership that it took to support and clear the way for the special forces to do their job.

Upcoming Events