VP Biden says about the raid to get Osama bin Laden:
You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.
As others have noted, the Navy SEAL team was pretty awesome, and no doubt, the plan carried some substantial risks, not just to the soldiers, but also to the Administration.
But the most audacious plan in 500 years???
I know Operation Eagle Claw (aka the Iran hostage rescue mission) ended in a fiasco, but if you read the account in Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah, you can't help but appreciate the scope and scale of that mission. The goal was even more complicated -- not killing a determined foe, but rescuing alive nearly 50 hostages held in different locations in a foreign metropolis teeming with enemies. I'm sure there are other missions that rate as audacious, or maybe more, but Eagle Claw is way up there. And the risks from Eagle Claw weren't just to the participating soldiers, or to the Carter Administration (which did pay the price), but potentially also to the hostages. . . .
I mean, Eagle Claw was so audacious, the Delta Force had to be created for the mission!
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