Maybe Obama really did want to alert them.
Remember his face in that situation-room photo? Absolutely grim-faced, and it looked to me like he did NOT want this to be happening, as if he were more concerned about his brother-in-faith Osama Bin Laden and the welfare of the Umma.
Look at it again. Does his face look like he's the concerned captain-in-chief of our military? Or an ideologue getting bad news about a brother-in-arms? He looks like he's watching Rodney King reruns, actually.
He looked exactly the same way when he made the announcement on Sunday night. In fact he looked pissed as hell he even had to make that announcement.