Why they did what they did:

[jrittenhouse]

WIRED magazine on why Special Forces had to land in person and not nail with a unmanned drone aircraft or just bomb the site from a distance.  The site is surrounded by all sorts of high-level Pakistani government / military sites, including their military academy, and drones or sloppy bombing could end up with worse problems than going in with a

Comments

[bemused_leftist]

I thought about that. Pakistan military keeping Bin Laden under house arrest for some reason.

But if so, one result was to keep US forces looking for him, mostly in Afganistan; so I don't know if that computes.

And why high walls, which attracted attention but were no help against a helicopter attack, the US' obvious move?

Osama dead or alive

[bigbumble]

That Obama stated Bin Laden was killed after a fire fight, rather than during a fire fight, tells me that "dead" was the operative word.

[robin_june]

The running of the sequencing machine only takes a few hours. Delays stem from how many other samples are sitting in line ahead of yours, and how many additional responsibilities (i.e., distractions) are assigned to the people who have to keep the machine fed with buffers and primers and reagents and the next samples sitting in line.

The machine that processed Bin Laden's DNA, it's a safe assumption, lacked for no attention from its attendants, and that sample was first in line once it was collected and prepped.