I see it a little differently. Having him alive, on trial, being interrogated, now that would not be discreet and would very likely inflame his followers. And while I agree this should have come years earlier it is better late than never.
I think it was handled in a very smart way. Get in, pop him, and get out quick. Dump the body, no photos, treated as a non-entity really. While he will always have the notoriety as the 9-11 mastermind he will soon disappear from the news cycle to be brought out maybe once a year on the 9-11 anniversary. The dustbin of history and in the end an unimportant individual. After a few weeks I don't think this President or future ones should utter his name again. With the changes coming in the Middle East he will fade once out of the media spotlight.
The other option would be getting him alive and having a trial. It would be Osama 24/7 on the news cycle for months and maybe years. Constant media attention to inflame his followers. I am sure this was thought out and there was never any intention of taking him alive. This would far outweigh any intelligence value he would provide. He was after all the inspirational leader. Better to get the lower level nuts and bolts guys who do the actually "work" like KSM and Ramzi bin Alsheed for interrogation. Any info he could provide was probably gained in all the gear they swept up.
In the end Osama played his proper part, standing in front of a bullet for the symbolic victory that this country and the democratic forces in the Middle East needed to move on.
I understand what you're saying mate, but my "discrete" comment didn't actually infer that he'd ever see the inside of a US court house. If the Seals had been able to snatch him (without leaving a wrecked blackhawk behind to tip off his pals) and whisk him away to a secret facility, they could have extracted all the information that they needed to identify the names and locations of key Al Queda members and then quietly disposed of him, or put him on ice for future use, maybe closer to the next election.
Al Queda would have erred on the side of caution and assumed that he'd been grabbed, but wouldn't advertise it, as they wouldn't want to publicly admit that their internal security had been compromised, or that the spiritual leader of their Jihad had been iced. All the while they'd be looking over their shoulders wondering when that red dot was gonna appear on their own foreheads.
Of course, they'd be wondering who inside their organisation ratted them out, (which is probably what really happened) so they'd be spending a lot of time conducting some pretty savage internal investigations, and wouldn't be willing to plan any major, expensive terrorist attacks until they'd convinced themselves that their "mission security" was back at a safe level.
As it stands now, it could be assumed that the President was prepared to compromise any tactical advantage he might have had as a result of blowing away Osama so that he could jump on TV and brag to the world that he'd brought the world's biggest boogeyman to justice. Nice temporary distraction from the state of the economy I suppose, but it was a wasted opportunity, in my humble opinion. Cheers, Terry.
