Was it a hit squad? The Americans’ codename for Osama Bin Laden was Geronimo. Geronimo was the Apache leader who was pursued, captured, became a sideshow attraction and lived out his days on a reservation.
No one wanted bin Laden to become a sideshow. The White House says that they would have captured bin Laden if they could, but that he offered resistance.
Of a choice between capture or kill, kill was always preferable.
The decision to shoot him dead, according to the White House, was taken in the moment, during the raid, and was not pre-ordained.
So why then shoot an unarmed man? And what resistance did he offer?
The White House story is changing. Initially they said he used his wife as a shield. Then, the day after, they clarified, saying that his wife threw herself at one, or possibly two, commandoes as they entered a room within his compound.
The so-far unnamed wife, who was shot in the leg, was also unarmed. The picture seems to be of a hysterical, desperate woman begging for her husband’s life, probably because she believed in him, rather than a woman who offered a serious threat to the Navy SEAL commandoes.
The commando who shot bin Laden - who will now need to go under the military equivalent of lifelong witness protection—was not under fire from bin Laden or his wife, but there was shooting and chaos about the compound at the time.
This is what White House spokesman Jay Carney called the ‘fog of war’, when asked to explain why bin Laden was shot. He would not detail what resistance bin Laden offered.
America does not conduct political assassinations these days, not officially. The idea is to capture and interrogate, but the Guantanamo Bay terror pen is not accepting new prisoners. The CIA also has the option of secret jails to hold high-value targets, but these too have fallen from favour in the Obama era.
Bin Laden, the most valuable target of all, was in one sense of no value to US interrogators at all; at least, not alive.
He would not, presumably, surrender information. And even if he did become a cooperative prisoner, after the Guantanamo debacle there would, doubtless, be perverse demands that bin Laden, if captured alive, be treated with the utmost respect.
Bin Laden, for many reasons, was better off dead.
According to the New York Times version of what occurred in the Pentagon situation room, President Barack Obama and others watched the briefing in real-time, courtesy of a commando’s helmet-cam. It was CIA director Leon Panetta, in his situation room in a different location a few kilometres away, who narrated events for Obama.
“We have a visual on Geronimo”, Mr Panetta said.
Minutes later, Mr Panetta said: “Geronimo EKIA. Enemy killed in action.”
And then President Obama said: “We got him.”
Momentous history began at this point, history that will be debated, analysed, distorted and pored over for centuries. But we are fortunate to be living in times so close to the event: history also knows that what is first reported is so often closest to the correct version.
It was always intended that he die. President Obama more or less said it.
There was no desire to take bin Laden alive. Keeping him in a federal prison would be a logistical disaster. Federal US prisoners are not up for the death penalty, and few Americans would much go for the idea of bin Laden cruising to death by old age on three-meals-a-day.
This would not have gone down well with the American public.
Mr Carney offered his President some protection at a White House briefing yesterday, by saying he was not the hit man. Carney said all decisions were made by the troops on the ground. President Obama was not sitting there saying, “Finish him”.
Now the White House is weighing up whether to release photos of bin Laden’s death face to the world. Colin Powell, the Bush Administration’s secretary of state, said of the photo: “I don’t need to see it. He’s dead. We all know that”.
Powell added that it was a tough call for Obama, because even if he did authorise its release, there would be those who would always maintain it was a fake.
The US has difficult choices in coming days. If the photo was released, what media in the western world would show it anyway? It would become an internet sensation, no doubt, and people could get their fill easily enough if they wished, but would that be a desirable outcome?
Mr Carney said they were weighing up the release but, as the reality sinks in, it seems there is little to be gained.
Even more crucial than the photo is the footage - which most assuredly exists - of bin Laden being dumped into the sea. Vision of the American military conducting Muslim burial rites could cause real problems.
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