CNN.Com: Obama won’t release photos

I saw in the news story that 56% of the people in the CNN Opinion poll want the death photos released.

Ummm… no.

(By the way, the death photo that was on the cover of newspapers around the world is a fake.)

There is the question of what the release of the death photos would solve. The answer: nothing really at all. The U.S. has already identified him in a number of ways (DNA, biometrics, etc.) and the photos were taken for the purpose of proving all this to those who are in control (i.e. the President, Secretary of State, military officials). Releasing them isn’t going to bring back any one of the 9/11 victims, those killed in the bombings of the embassies, those killed the bombing of the barracks in Saudi Arabia, or any of the thousands whose blood is on the hands of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives.

Conspiracy theorists aren’t going to believe them and would probably demand to see his body (which is at the bottom of the Arabian Sea) and releasing them would only serve to fan the flames of the anger of the jihadists who believe that America is the Great Satan. Do we really want to do this?

An added reason: the pictures of bin Laden are apparently pretty gruesome and not fit for publication in a newspaper. If the photos were released, who’s to say that someone wouldn’t plaster them on the front page of a paper?

I believe that we need to let this go. Osama is dead. He isn’t coming back and God willing, the documents and computers recovered at his compound are going to help the authorities stop Al Qaeda from doing anything else dastardly in the world.