Osama Bin Laden does not desereve a hero's shrine. As a prisoner and burial he would have been worshipped and remembered. The sharks will have a frenzy on him for a while. His remains will vanish from the Earth forever, excreated as shark dung.

Yeah Philo, there are many Iraqis with family members killed by allied forces who might think the same about some Western leaders.

Bin Laden will still be a martyr body or no body. Fact is terrorism is not just about bin Laden and the road to peace is no closer from his death - Al Qai'da is too fragmented and is not the only Islamic Fundamentalist group.

It would be a positive spin off from his death if some road to reconciliation and peace be found but I fear we are not much closer to realising that goal.

Bin Laden is now just another unarmed fugitive who has been shot by the cops, he didn't go out in a blaze of glory nor was justice served.
Just like the coward and mass murderer Che Guevara, Osama will be remembered not as he was but as an ideal, a fetish for the simpleminded and deluded people of the world.

Was Osama killed?
Have the US released the proof or is it still hearsay?
And when did this alleged killing occur? Was it this wee or some time ago?
Or is this just to get Osama to make another video so that then the US maybe able to locate him?
And why would the US kill one of history's greatest mass murderers, an unarmed man, coralled and clearly outnumbered by elite special forces who chose not to use stun or gas grenades, and then dispose of the alleged body

I seem to recall an adage about the most probably explanation being the truth.

This article jumps all over the place making accusations without addressing any of the more likely points. This paragraph in particular struck me as particularly lazy:

"A shot to the head, execution-style, indicates orders to shoot to kill. Why give up such a cornucopia of information that cannot be obtained in any other way? To shut him up, of course."

Ah. The beauty of the rhetorical self-answered question. What answer could there be, but mine? Why even explore it? The US are always evil, so it must be true, right?

Was the author unable to consider that with Osama taken alive, there'd be a high likelihood of hostages taken, with demands of Osama's release?

Was the author unable to consider the headache this would cause in terms of organizing a trial? Consider the difficulties of trying those in Gitmo. Imagine it on a scale a hundred times greater.

Was the author unable to consider that if taken alive, there would be a significant portion of the world baying for his blood and a significant portion demanding his release? What about the schism this would cause in domestic politics, regarding how he should be tried?

Honestly. The 'secrets' strike me as way down on the list of concerns the US would have had if he'd been taken alive.
I actually think that if Osama had offered to give himself up on the condition that he not be executed, it would have caused more damage to the US than any single bombing. How could they refuse to take the world's most wanted man into custody. How could they then keep him alive while their enemies whip themselves into a frenzy?

Secret-keeping. Pfft. He couldn't be taken alive because it would have caused a political sh!tstorm of epic proportions. Not the secrets, the act itself.

The more I thought about this article, the more silly the premise became.

If Osama had secrets that could damage the US, why wouldn't he have revealed them at the first chance?

If Osama revealed secrets, would discrediting a violent terrorist have been difficult?

Given the number of diabolical secrets that were revealed during the course of the Iraq war (such as ridiculous levels of corruption) which didn't cause too many ripples, would any secrets really seriously damage this comparatively young administration?

Finally, doesn't the difficulty of trying Osama in some kind of court as well as the threat of hostage events seem like a much more credible explanation for the US to want him dead rather than alive?

This analysis reeks of ideologically driven assumptions.