The Raid To Kill Bin Laden

The New Yorker has an excellent piece covering the preparations for the raid, and the raid itself (h/t Ritholtz).  As a person who likes Joe Biden, I enjoyed this section:

In the Situation Room, Obama said, “I’m not going to be happy until those guys get out safe.” After thirty-eight minutes inside the compound, the two SEAL teams had to make the long flight back to Afghanistan. The Black Hawk was low on gas, and needed to rendezvous with the Chinook at the refuelling point that was near the Afghan border—but still inside Pakistan. Filling the gas tank took twenty-five minutes. At one point, Biden, who had been fingering a rosary, turned to Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman. “We should all go to Mass tonight,” he said.

It took a lot of guts for the President some call a black Jimmy Carter to go ahead with a special forces raid so reminiscent of the failed Iran rescue.  When that helicopter crashed, Robert Gates must have been getting a sense of deja vu.