Think about the huge risk involved with the decision to carry out the mission of killing Bin Laden: Invade Pakistans airspace, raid the compound, kill the world's most notorious terrorist, and get your troops out alive—all on the 50% to 80% chance Osama bin Laden was even there to begin with.

After President Obama set the call to raid the compound, all he could do was sit helplessly and literally watch as US soldiers a half a world away tried to carry out his orders.  "So when word came that a helicopter had been grounded," Michael Scherer writes in Time, "a sign that the plan was already off course, the tension increased."

But minutes later the radio crackled: "We've ID'd Geronimo," bin Laden's code name. Next came "For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo," reports MSNBC, confirming bin Laden's death. But "Only when the last helicopter lifted off some minutes later did the president know that his forces had sustained no casualties," writes Scherer.

Heck of a risk but sure glad it was done successfully!