President Obama made the announcement about our specops warriors killing Osama Bin Laden shortly after it took place. Afterwards, it came to light that the operators on the ground sucked the compound dry of paper, electronics, and pocket litter. If our intelligence community had been given time to go through the documents and hard drives, we could even now be wrapping up even more parts of Al Qaeda... but that takes silence and operations security to make it happen.
It takes a lot of time to do the forensics on computers, sift through all the files, translating as you go, looking for the nuggets of data that will allow you to follow the organizational lines of communication and ball up those next in line. We could have done tremendous damage to current, active Al Qaeda operatives given the time, but because it was announced so soon after the fact, everyone in Al Qaeda and other terrorist fecal matter know to scatter and change operating patterns, tactics, techniques, and procedures. I'm sure our intelligence professionals will milk the data pulled in for all its worth, and we'll still do a lot of damage using the gifts Osama left for us--but it could have been worth so much more if only the President had waited to claim the credit for this great op.
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