Rich Lowry asks the question:

In an ideal world, the Navy SEALs would have been given the order to take bin Laden alive, if possible. He would have been taken to a secret location for interrogation and waterboarded if necessary to break him quickly. Every possible lead would have been wrung from him and hunted down. When he was no longer of use, he’d have been put before a military commission and executed.

In other words, he should have been handled in the same way the Bush administration planned to treat detainees in the first urgent days of the War on Terror. Of course, the Obama administration deems coercive interrogation un-American, and the military commissions — partly because of the administration’s hostility — are a shambles. There remained only one good option for bin Laden: a bullet in the eye.

Perhaps killing bin Laden, a potent symbol, was the best outcome regardless. The suddenness and finality of it may prove a devastating blow to al-Qaeda’s morale and prestige. But targeted killing shouldn’t be the only tool in our arsenal.

I find it bizarre that the same administration that thinks that illegal combatants should be mirandized has no compunction about extrajudicial assassination of them, whether with drones or SEALs.

[Update a while later]

“The SEALs had to kill bin Laden to keep him out of the hands of Eric Holder.”

As a reminder, here’s the Hall of Shame — Republicans who voted to confirm him:

Alexander (R-TN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Chambliss (R-Ga)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Sessions (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

…in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, the man in the White House is no Gary Cooper.