Excessive Caution

For more than a decade, the USA had sought bin Laden, and missed half a dozen times. In 2002 and 2003, not long after bin Laden had escaped in the cave-riddled mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, interrogations of CIA detainees revealed the nom de guerre of one of his couriers. The man, who hasn't been named by U.S. officials, was a protégé of the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a trusted assistant aide to Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a former al Qaeda No. 3 captured previously.
It took several more years simply to learn the courier's real name. In 2007, CIA analysts finally obtained it. In August 2010, the CIA was able to follow the courier directly to the place where he lived: the Abbottabad compound. Intelligence officials had locked on to him when he made a phone call to a number they were tracking.
His property came in for intense scrutiny. Teams from the CIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency studied it with satellite and other surveillance equipment. Built in 2005, the compound was on the outskirts of the town center, at the end of a dirt road. The main three-story building had few windows facing outward. There was a terrace on the third floor with a seven-foot wall, preventing people from seeing inside. Spies couldn't even rustle through the trash for clues. Unlike almost all the neighbors, the residents of the compound burned their garbage.
In September, Obama was told about the compound and informed that it might be housing valuable targets in the war on terror—the courier and his family, as well as the family of the courier's brother. In addition, "There was a mysterious third family living there," a U.S. official said. "There was an adult male they couldn't see but knew he was there. There was also a female, potentially a wife and children, whose family matched Osama bin Laden's potential family." Members of the third family never left.
In December, the CIA considered the intelligence compelling enough to act. Panetta had to go through the farce of calling a secret meeting with lawmakers to seek tens of millions of dollars to fund a program aimed at an even more intensive collection of intelligence about the property.
Clearly, the walled compound in Abbottabad was built to shelter someone who didn't want to be seen. Most of its 22 residents were relatives of one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, a close confidant responsible for shuttling messages among al Qaeda leaders and friends world-wide.
Intelligence officials couldn't catch a glimpse of the other adult male. He never stepped in to view. U.S. officials said, “There was no other plausible explanation than that it was Osama Bin Laden. The other possibility was al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.”
The Obama administration wanted to use a drone bombing raid. That approach would prevent any risk to American troops. It would also have destroyed any proof bin Laden was there and all intelligence information and so on April 19, Obama gave provisional approval for the commando-style helicopter assault operation. On Sunday, May 1st Obama gave the mission a final go.
Such excessive caution made it very risky that intelligence about the compound or the intended mission would leak to our enemies. Particularly as Obama is so politically motivated and since he will not risk the negative political fallout of even a handful of deaths of U.S. armed forces, it is a disastrous dynamic that he is Commander-in-Chief.