"Courageous" is often the flip-side of "reckless":

[howard112211]

If you willingly undertake an act in which the odds of success are smaller than the odds of failure, and the dice fall in your favor, you are "courageous". If they fall in your disfavor, you are "reckless".

Obama has stated himself that from the intelligence that was gathered about the Bin Laden compound, he assessed the probability that it actually was Bin Laden at 45 percent.

Which means nothing less than the following: It was more likely that the end result of this would have been a shoot out with the bodyguards of some unsuspecting wealthy nobody. That this did not happen was sheer luck.

It make me wonder whether these same odds are applied when deciding whether to do a drone strike on a potentially hostile target. Or whether Obama would be willing to do an equal sort of gamble if it were his kids that are potentially at the receiving end of it.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. They're on the same side of the coin.

:shrug:

[eleny]

2. Except that they were following the trail of bin Laden's courier

It seems unlikely to me that they would have had a shootout with "the bodyguards of some unsuspecting wealthy nobody". So, imo, it was more than sheer luck at work here.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Yep. That '45%' chance of it not being bin Laden, means it was

a majority percent chance of it being a lower-ranking AQ figure - another #2 or #3 - not some "unsuspecting wealthy nobody". It could still have been a treasure-trove of AQ intelligence.

But I still think they should have brought him in alive.

[DFab420]

3. Good is often the flip side of bad too...

Just saying.

Success is often the flip side of failure