Bin Laden: How not to flush a turd

Sigh. That's not how it's done, guys. Beautiful op, as one would expect from ST 6, although I imagine the pilot who stalled the Blackhawk must wish he had died.

But, dear God. Did you learn nothing from your Argentine chums back in the late 70s and early 80s when they dismantled the most serious insurgency in Latin America in their own country, and then came up to Central America at your invitation for an encore?

You DISAPPEAR the mother-fucker. Whether he's killed or captured alive, you leave his followers to panic that you've got him and are introducing him to the old telephone hand-crank and the wet or dry submarine. 

Everybody scurries to new hide-outs, tested comms procedures are abandoned, people shed good false identities and scramble to create new cover. And you watch them run, record their conversations and follow the ones you can.

That way you not only maximise the disruption to the terrorist organization, but you can scoop up a whole bunch more people for meaningful chats and seize a lot of electronic and written documentation because people running and looking over their shoulders for helicopters coming for them tend not to cover their tracks too well.

But hey - what's all that compared to getting thousands of yahoos to chant YOU ESS AY and wave the good ol' stars and stripes? 

Maybe the US administration figured they could not possibly keep it a secret for long, but they should at least have tried to maximise the operational as opposed to PR value of the coup.