Taking Credit & Taking Lives

This account of the SEAL raid on Bin Ladin's compound is fascinating on its own but the author's belief, quoted below, that Obama's rush to take credit destroyed any hope of using the intelligence gathered is crushingly dismal. Correcting the ‘fairy tale’: A SEAL’s account of how Osama bin Laden really died

President Obama stepped up to a podium in the East Room of the White House that night to announce bin Laden’s death. That rapid announcement, explained Pfarrer, posed a major threat to U.S. national security. “There was a choice that night,” Pfarrer told TheDC. “There was a choice to keep the mission secret.” America, Pfarrer explained, could have left things alone for “weeks or months … even though there was evidence left on the ground there … and use the intelligence and finish off al-Qaida.” But Obama’s announcement, he said, “rendered moot all of the intelligence that was gathered from the nexus of al-Qaida. The computer drives, the hard drives, the videocasettes, the CDs, the thumb drives, everything. Before that could even be looked through, the political decision was made to take credit for the operation.”