With all due respect to President Obama, he is making a serious mistake by not releasing a photo showing that Osama bin Laden was killed. President Obama is expecting the world to trust his word, America's word, that bin Laden is gone -- but there are many doubts about American credibility in the world today.
Furthermore, bin Laden has been a "phantom" lurking out there, somewhere, perhaps in Afghanistan, perhaps in Pakistan, perhaps in Somalia -- but lurking and virtually no trace of him.
Many American intelligence officials began to think some years ago that he was dead already. A senior FBI agent once asked me, "you don't really believe he is still alive do you?"
If that is what high level Americans in the terror-tracking business thought, what does President Obama think that those through the Arab world will think.
Not releasing a photo of some sort furthers a bad trend of governments -- that the public doesn't have a right to know, that governments are better stewards of the truth and of basic information than the public. It is undemocratic and stiflingly paternalistic.
WikiLeaks was a market reaction to the massive expansion of official secrecy not just in the US but elsewhere in the world.
President Obama's decision to hold back the bin Laden photo(s) only aggravates this trend.
Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons
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Some thoughts to ponder:
Show us the shooter By Pepe Escobar
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME05Ak02.html
Bin Laden’s Crimes, and Ours by Matthew Rothschild
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/03-0
US Knew Where Osama Was Since 2005 By ISRAEL SHAMIR
http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir05042011.html
The child “was the one who confirmed to us that Osama was dead and shot and taken away,” said the official from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
Al Arabiya television went further, suggesting that Bin Laden was first taken prisoner and then shot.
“A source in the Pakistani security quoted the daughter of Bin Laden as saying that the leader of Al-Qaeda was not killed inside his house, but had been arrested and was killed later,” Al Arabiya said.
http://arabnews.com/incoming/article382223.ece
I can see releasing to some official governmental entities or a commission, etc. being an official governenmental body, even if they are foreign entities. To me, it seems too much like the pictures of the beheadings they terrorists have done, which are intended to terrorize. Even though our reason for releasing them would be to "document" or "verify", it would probably not be perceived as such.
We funded that raid, and now we're being denied access. While we have seen dead Muslims for the last ten years ad nauseum, lying on city streets,piled on the back of pick up trucks, NOW this administration wants to shield us from the horrors of war.
It's b.s. Its bogus. He may be dead, and I hope he is, but this whole thing stinks to high heaven. What are we being shielded from?
Divine right has been bestowed upon this president with the revelation of his birth certificate. We're going to have to take him at his word. DNA evidence? Oh, someone tells us they match. So itmust be Bin Laden.
How about this. Interview his daughter and ask if she saw her daddy's head blown apart. We had to stomach the events of 911, we can weather a little more in the way of gory details.
Or do we now operate on good faith. Unquestioned authority leads to tyranny. Even if its supposedly in the name of religious deference.
All those years of work, all that intelligence, all that torture, all the efforts of those elite Navy Seals?
What was the point,Mr. Obama, that we have to take you at your word now that you provided a birth certificate?
You have carte blanche now, do you? It's selective transparency, and its unforgivable. The question will haunt your candidacy for relection. And rightly so.
This country could take the images of 911, because we've had to. But visual proof of your claims you're going to deny us? To protect who exactly? Did you have the right compound?
Maybe it was Bin Laden body double, a decoy. You tell us differently, but we were also told Wall Street and the banking industry needed billions of our dollars which ended up funding vacations for those who ripped off this country in the first place.
We're supposed to take the word of the government why? The price of freedom is eternal vigilence. That doesn't end with the word of Barack Obama.