BFD.
From a purely military standpoint, had a helicopter crashed, good soldiers might've died. This happens all the time in military operations--unfortunate, but that's what soldiers do.
From an intelligence, diplomatic, and public relations' standpoint, if they got to the compound and bin Laden wasn't there, so what? What have they lost? It had been 10+ years, and we had not captured the head of Al Qaeda, what would we be losing? And so we flew into a middle-eastern country and conducted covert operations--that's never happened before, has it? I'm sure there were plenty of people between Obama and the operation, so had it gone south, those people--from the scene commander right up to Leon Panetta--could've taken the fall.
The bottom line was, this operation offered a heavy reward, with a light risk. It would've been supremely foolish NOT to take that risk. Obama knows he got lucky with this...with the military infrastructure and intelligence made available to him through the orders of George Bush, Osama bin Laden was offered on a silver platter.
Agreed.