President Obama preferred to capture Osama bin Laden and put him on trial, not assassinate him, according to The Finish, a new book by journalist Mark Bowden. Obama indicated that he would have hoped for a trial if bin Laden had surrendered, but that he expected him to die fighting. In an interview with Bowden, Obama said, “Frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”
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