I guess maybe we will find out how it happened over the next few days...I just know that Obama has a thing for drone strikes, so an “Oops, we took out 9 Al-Qaeda and 1 friendly” could have very well happened. Plus with his mentality he would be adverse to another failed SF mission (too many Jimmy Carter comparisons would be coming his way).
We don’t know that Special forces conducted the previous raid, it may have been SEALs, or even the fairly new (a few years old), Marine Special Operations unit.
Given what we know about this administration, I wouldn’t rule out a drone strike at all. They might reason that with a nice, clean drone strike, there will be no decapitation video. The media would happily just sweep the rest under the table and call it a mishap. Just a bump in the road, ya know.
I think Obama would be just as adverse to a successful mission. It just wouldn’t seem fair to the terrorists if all of them were killed and the hostage lived.