And he was well aware of this. Oh yeah, and the fact that he was surrounded by troops of a major division of a complicit government. He was hiding in plain sight. Everyone stop worrying about who takes credit for it. The folks that don't like the President are going to find a reason to not give him any credit for anything. The folks that support the President blindly are going to go the other way. There will be a small minority who will sit in the middle and just deal with the facts (removing all emotion and faulty logic from their decision making). OBL is dead. The hunt for him started before the current administration, but it ended DURING this administration. The President had actionable intelligence and authorized the kill. End of story. It doesn't end 'The War On Terror'. There are people still out there that want to do us harm...and that's not gonna change anytime soon. We're gonna do fucked up shit to other countries....and that's not changing anytime soon. Al Qaeda is not going to fold. If you want to be frank about it, this makes it increasingly difficult going forward because now he's a martyr, and AQ will most likely not be as structured as before. You'll have MORE splinter groups doing their own thing. I don't think they'll have the capabilities to pull of another 9/11 easily, but you'll have more plots and groups to track. Not to mention the revenge plots. And dumping his body at sea was smart. If they took his as a prisoner, then you would have had a massive security situation on your hands. Not to mention the political BS associated with his 'fair treatment'. It would be a logistical nightmare. If you kill him and keep his body, you still have a logistical nightmare because his burial site will ALWAYS be a target. Documenting his death and disposing of the body was the best way to handle this, IMHO.