When details emerged about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, news reports played up the drama of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed as the force was landing, portraying it as a catastrophic anomaly that nearly derailed the mission. While it was certainly not part of the plan, such a divergence was also not unexpected: the sheer tactical complexity of special operations almost guarantees that at least one critical variable will come loose between planning and execution. Almost none of the hundreds of raids the team had conducted together had proceeded exactly as expected, and mechanical
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