Considering how often people who don't respect Godwin's Law have compared OBL to Hitler, it's ironic that the Allies were keen to take Hitler alive and put him on trial for war crimes like his officers. They understood that the best way to diminish your enemies is to treat them as criminals, not warriors: whereas we ennobled OBL by treating him as a warrior when he was only a criminal, because Bush needed a war, not a police action. And now we've completed the error by giving him what his admirers will consider a warrior's death, instead of the humiliation of a trial.
It's hard to imagine that with a team like that and the compound in their hands, they couldn't have taken him alive; and it's hard to imagine that someone as aware of political nuances as Obama couldn't see how much more impressive that would be. I can see where you're going with the idea that they have him alive but hidden, Ian, but I can't see that he would be more valuable hidden than publicly exposed. So the conspiracy theory I'd go for is that the object was indeed to fetch him out, but either he was too fast or someone screwed up, so they had to say "We meant to do that!"