They've Got to Release the Photos

Photos please:

THE United States may have to release photographs of Osama Bin Laden's corpse to smother any claims he survived the special forces raid on his compound in Pakistan.
US Homeland Security chairman Joseph Lieberman said that unless al-Qaeda chiefs acknowlegde that their leader is dead, some may deny that DNA testing proved the US had killed the right man.

"It may be necessary to release the pictures - as gruesome as they undoubtedly will be, because he's been shot in the head - to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American government has carried out," Senator Lieberman said.

Senator Susan Collins, one of the Republican party's senior security experts, agreed that many hardline Islamists "will try to generate this myth that he's alive, and that we missed him somehow, and in order to put that to rest it may be necessary to release some of the pictures".

I'm not sure why Obama has not yet released the death photos of Osama bin Laden. They're undoubtedly gruesome and could be quite disturbing to some people, but until they're out there both the jihadis and the conspiracy theorists will continue to propogate all kinds of wacky stuff.

There was a photo circulating within minutes of the breaking news and I knew immediately it had to be a fake.  A lot of people who normally don't fall for that stuff were posting it to Facebook and Twitter...and all of them were retracting it later.

I think once the real photos come out we can put a lot of nonsense to rest.

UPDATE:  From Drudge:

President Obama decided Tuesday morning to release at least one photo showing Osama Bin Laden's death, a top source claims.

The images, being described as 'graphic', are bound to stir emotions in the east and the west, and will likely become the most viewed photographs in modern history.

One image shows a bullet wound to his head above his left eye.

Will it remove all doubt about the death?

The exact timing on the release is being debated.