We are exploring various scenarios because we have no idea what happened.
If, as you conjecture, there was uncertainty as the SEAL Team entered the room, and bin Laden was shot, I have no problem with that. These things happen in war. It would not be right to ask our soldiers to take unneccessary risks.
However, my issue was with the “Kill Mission” order, if there ever was such an order. Such an order would preclude the capture of OBL, even if he was trying to surrender. Our SEALs would not be permitted to make recognition, evaluation and muscular movements that will have life and death consequences. You see him, you kill him. That is the mission. You don’t kill him because he is a threat. You kill him because that is the mission. That is a very different thing.
And saying to the press that we had a Kill Mission ordered is the worst mistake of all. It breaks the First Rule of the Fight Club.
Regarding the Dachau Massacre, clearly executing the Nazi guards was not a matter of military policy. Surely there was no Kill Mission order directing the soldiers to kill all of the guards. In fact, when some did start to kill the guards, they were stopped. So even in that Hell-on-Earth scenario, we did not, as a matter of policy, resort to the sort of thing we did last Sunday.
And saying to the press that we had a Kill Mission ordered is the worst mistake of all. It breaks the First Rule of the Fight Club. Well Einstein...you even got that wrong...First Rule of the Fight Club is you don't talk about the fight club.
Second of all our military does not run by the guidlines of of a street fight gang.
As I said...you do indeed have problems, just as you stated that you do. The worst is getting the facts straight and or understanding the evidence.... the second is using common sense and understanding combat.
Further if I felt my child or friend or neighbor was "threatended' by a known mass killer I would not hesitate to kill him. Islamic Mass murderer's do not surrender to save their life...they surrender so they can have another opportunity to kill again. In Osama's case he never had intention to surrender...and stated so. Rather, his orders to his men were to shoot him if ever captured or an attempt to capture.
Fog Of War:
The uncertainty in situation awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign.
“The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently — like the effect of a fog or moonshine — gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.”......(.Carl Von Clausewitz)
And so as Mother Jones has said.....”Ask yourself whether, after fast-roping from a stalling helicopter into a darkened compound under small-arms fire in pursuit of the world's most wanted man, you'd stop to consider the prudence of each of your options upon actually encountering that man....... If an easy answer comes to your mind, you're doing it wrong.
We are exploring various scenarios because we have no idea what happened. If, as you conjecture, there was uncertainty as the SEAL Team entered the room, and bin Laden was shot, I have no problem with that. These things happen in war. It would not be right to ask our soldiers to take unneccessary risks. Exactly. Now we are getting back to a Real World scenario.
I will bet my house to your donut, that the SEAL Team was given authorization to shoot, on immediate sight, in order to eliminate uncertainty as much as the reflexes of a trained professional warrior can possibly eliminate that uncertainty.
Bust open the door. "To your left!" POP. POP. POP. "All clear! Next room! Next room!" Bust open the door. "Behind you!" POP. POP. POP. "All clear! Next room! Next room!"
Uncertainty is a fact of life before a room is even entered. By definition, in combat, there is "uncertainty" from the very moment there is contact with the enemy.
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" .... Helmuth von Moltke, the Elder
As in any endeavor, the more complicated that you make something, the more chances there are that something will go wrong. In war, when things go wrong, they go terribly wrong.
The KISS Principle ("Keep it simple, stupid") applies.
The terrorist war machine is allowed to wage war by the simplest methods possible. A little over a dozen men in the pre-TSA era,, some box-cutters and no constraining rules whatsoever and the terrorists then kill 3,000 innocent civilians.
The U.S., on the other hand, is expected to maximize it's risk. The U.S. is condemned for simply bursting into a room, spoting an enemy then immediately shooting before the enemy shoots first.
The U.S. must burst into a room and say, "Put your hands up. You're under arrest. You have a right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an ..."
Then ....
Burst of gunfire. One dead SEAL and two wounded ones. Extended firefight to rescue the wounded SEAL's. More casualties. Al Qaeda's supporters in the area are alerted and, in the end, a Blackhawk Down debacle has occurred.
Think about those two raids in recent U.S. history that have been disasters: Desert One and the Blackhawk Down incident. Both violated the KISS Principle.
The Desert One complexity was unavoidable. Live individuals (the hostages) had to be secured and then transported. In all the complexity, something went wrong and the operation spiraled out of control.
You then end up with a Mullah gleefully showing the foot of a U.S. serviceman on Iranian TV.
The Blackhawk Down incident was way more complex than it needed to be because the goal was to CAPTURE the warlord leader of the Habr Gidr clan in Somalia instead of just allowing a U.S. sniper blow his head off from 1,500 yards away.
A sniper kill follows the KISS Principle. A complicated CAPTURE operation does not.
In all the complexity, something went wrong and the operation spiraled out of control.
That violation of the KISS Principle ended up costing 18 U.S. dead and 73 wounded.
For those who do not care about U.S. casualties, that violation of the KISS Principle ended up costing approximately 700 Somali deaths and between 1,000 and 3,000 Somali wounded.
Expecting the U.S. to deal with the al Qaeda war machine as if al Qaeda were a street punk being stopped by the local Police on a U.S. street makes it literally impossible for the U.S. to fight an asymmetric war. That's the bottom line.