Goal was to kill, not capture bin Laden
Navy SEALS's decision to fatally shoot the terrorist mastermind -- even though he didn’t have a weapon -- wasn’t an accident.
In the weeks before President Obama ordered Navy SEALs into Pakistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, administration officials weighed using American warplanes to obliterate the terror mastermind's fortified compound from the sky or sending commandos on a high-risk mission to assault the structure from the ground.
But there's one option the administration appears to have never seriously considered: taking bin Laden alive.
In an important new detail about Sunday's raid, the White House disclosed on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when the SEALs shot him in the head and chest, killing him instantly. The administration said that bin Laden resisted capture, but hasn't suggested in any of its public comments that the SEALs were in any immediate danger when they opened fire on him during their assault on his compound in an affluent Islamabad suburb of Abbottabad.
The SEALs' decision to fatally shoot bin Laden -- even though he didn't have a weapon - wasn't an accident. The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.