Bush & Company

President Obama is a cautious risk-taker, a patient, reflective, methodical strategist and tactician, a modest man, a leader.

Refocusing attention on seizing Osama bin Laden after President Bush had ceased the chase, tiring of the failure to take him "dead or alive," President Obama concluded the dangerous and complex mission, many months in preparation, in the military town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 1, 2011.

When President Bush said in March 2002, "I don't spend that much time on it. . .I really am not that concerned about him" he sealed his fate for many as not being an effectual or focused decision-maker and when Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks refused to send additional troops to Afghanistan, even though Osama's approximate location had been established, they were later seen as stubbornly shortsighted.

Obama's choice of Navy Seals (Sea, Earth and Land commandos) and the Army Delta Force, using helicopters over bombs and planes to avert certain sacrifice of life and documentation, was risky, but right. Attempted retaliation by enraged radicals, foreign and domestic, must nonetheless be expected as an unintended consequence.

Some conservatives credit George W. Bush with laying the groundwork for the successful raid. They also claim that enhanced interrogation techniques were greatly responsible, but those methods tend, insist experts, to extract false information; many sources and many components led to Osama's whereabouts in a large safe house with high walls and a cache of computer hard drives, tapes and other invaluable data.

The belief that al Qaeda's founder, whose primary goal was to bankrupt the United States, is
not really dead is rampant among the few.

Rejoicing in a killing or an assassination is at the same time vaguely disturbing and unsatisfying, unsettling to one's moral sense and human sensibility.

That the demonic and misguided mastermind of 9/11 was barely roused from sleep and unarmed when fatally shot is a discussion that is being avoided here ( although such substantial public figures as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore have expressed concerns) while abroad, widely criticized. One wonders why he wasn't instead captured and taken into custody. Though lacking in the same impact and immediacy, it would have led, via the proper channels, to his ultimate execution.

At last the wicked Laden's dead,
By Navy Seals shot in the head,
But there are those who have to pout
In envy mode while others shout

That he's not dead, it's just a sham---
A patently Obama scam---
Osama's really on the lam.
In order to dispel all doubt,

Though buried in the Arabian Sea,
It may be necessary he,
To prove he's dead forevermore,
Be washed up on the Jersey Shore.