You raise a good point. Before we even knew that Sunday's speech was going to be about OBL, it was being billed by the press as a major national security issue. I think there is much more to the story.
(All of my conjecture is from reading the article)
It seems that Valerie Jarrett and Obama were against any kind of action and so they inititated a delaying tactic ... wanted to use ground troops (under the auspices of avoiding collatoral damage) hoping that there would be significant delay in organinizing the mission
Part of Jarrett’s communication to Panetta was that he would organize the mission and make the call, therefore placing blame for any failure on Panetta’s shoulders. I guess cowards always project their cowardice on others ... in this case believing that Panetta would be reluctant to initiate this kind of operation because of the risk. They didn’t understand that they had given Panetta operational control and that he already had prepared for a ground assault.
Panetta and company kept word of the mission from Obama and Jarrett until the last possible moment and it seems that Daley had to intervene with Jarrett in order to get her to STFU ... to stop her from getting the president to intervene.