All the big players were there -- Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Robert Gates and many others. The U.S. Navy Seals had just landed at bin Laden's compound - and for 40 minutes or more -- our nation's elite were glued to a live feed in the situation room. Soliders with helmet cams recorded the drama and a stream of images were relayed instantly back to Washington.
Credit: The New Yorker
Transfixed by the drama unfolding before them, the decisions that would follow the raid would turn out to be as important as those decisions made before hand. Beyond the revelry after the mission's success, the nation would demand answers. Politicians soon to sharpened their tongues mounting pressure on the administration to release the images of bin Laden's death.
On the Internet, a fake picture circulated of what was reportedly bin Laden's mutilated face. Some mainstream media were caught off guard. One newspaper, the Grants Pass, Ore., Courier, actually ran the fictious image without checking its source.
By mid-week, pressure to release the images was coming mostly from Obama dissenters and lawmakers. People want proof. People demand to know if the bad guy is really dead. But Obama held out and has remained firm in his conviction not to release the photos. At a press conference on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "It is not in our national security interest ... to allow these images to become icons to rally opinion against the United States." John Brennan, Obama's counterterrorism expert contends, “This needs to be done thoughtfully.”
Right.
In our hyper-super saturated media culture there is the perception that the faster the news gets out the more informed people will be and the more valuable it is.
In politics, as in the news business, timing means everything. The reasons some politicians want the images released is not because they want people to become more informed, it's because they can capitalize on the sensational nature of the pictures for their own gain. For some, pictures are the equivalents of visual sound bites. Pictorial punctation marks.
More than anything else, however, is the fact that releasing the pictures would, proposedly, help bring closure to an era of political perseveration, consternation, and incompetence.
There is a lot riding on the release of the images at the moment, but they will emerge in time -- there will be a leak. Not right now, today, but maybe next week, month -- soon. It's inevitable given the speed and access to technology.
During the day, Obama told CBS News, "That's not who we are. We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. The fact of the matter is that this is someone who is deserving of the justice he received. ... We don't need to spike the football."
On the world stage, the release of the bin Laden photos would play out poorly. We are looking at a possible global backlash that would not serve anyone's objective. It's like, to use Obama's football analogy, the equivalent of a third quarter touchdown pass when your team is losing by 50 points.