Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Elevating Muslim sensitivities over history and transparency, President Obama in an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s CBS 60 Minutes, says he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama Bin Laden taken to prove his death.
Video of the comments will appear on the CBS Evening News on Wednesday.
With illogical reasoning, Mr. Obama said:
“Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaida killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet. Osama bin Laden is not a trophy – he is dead and let’s now focus on continuing the fight until Al Qaida has been eliminated.”
What this nitwit president forgets is, Osama bin Laden is responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people on September. 11, 2001. The worst, single act of terrorism ever committed on U.S. soil. The American people, as well as the rest of the world, deserves the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to view the images of bin Laden’s corpse.
Skeptics and conspiracy theorists alike, have called on the U.S. to release photos of bin Laden to forever quell any doubt that the al-Qaeda mastermind is dead.
With this single decision, President Obama has foolishly added a new chapter to the Warren Commission’s findings on who shot President John F. Kennedy.
From the Left 
And to think? I was just starting to like the guy again?
You’re absolutely correct. Muslim sensitivities are more important than history and the rights of the American pubic to see these photos. If they even exist.
I lived through 9/11. I was still living in New York City on that day and hadn’t moved to California. I lost two friends who worked in the World Trade Center. I WANT to see this pictures of Bin Laden’s face shot out. I DESERVE this much from our passive-aggressive president and his constant tipping of the hand to Islam.
This decision may play well in Saudi Arabia but it won’t play well in the USA.
At the end of the day, this is the Navy SEAL’s victory and not Obama’s victory. He will be just as unpopular with the voters in 6 months of being spent into bankruptcy from having to pay $5 a gallon gas to get to work. I still believe Obama won’t serve another term. He’s going to be defeated.
I can tell you what else would not “play well” in the USA: An honest and open mainstream accounting of just why it was bin Laden attacked the United States in the first place (and no, it was not a simple matter of him “hating” the West). Frankly, I find the gloating going on about his death all-the-more repulsive in the absence of any real discussion about his motives and just who it was that turned him into the sworn enemy of the nation in the first place.
Make no mistake, I do not grieve for bin Laden: the man was evil and a scourge to many people around the globe. However, I do struggle with the chronic one-sidedness of the facts when it comes to his death…facts and hindsight that if left unexplored and unrecognized, may only leave the country vulnerable to further, needless attacks.
OK. I have to respectfully disagree. It would have served no advantage, could have possible accelerated further violence. There is a scene in the Godfather where Hyman Roth is talking to Michael Corleone,
“So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business! ”
I know it is out of context… but it was unfinished business, it was dealt with like business. If another terrorist of bin Laden’s ilk shows up… treat him like business. Clean and quick. Bush fucked around with it for years
“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
– G.W. Bush, 9/13/01
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
– G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
Getting Osama was business. Clear, simple. Getting caught up in a sideshow with the body isn’t business. I feel it would have just produced more ill effects than it was worth.
Chris, I know you are not an Obama fan…. but in this case… it was business… and America has a lot more to do. I just feel, unlike cowboy-posturing Bush, Obama is putting notice…. that he wants to take care of business. It was a pragmatic decision.
just saying, is all.
Personally, I think the black ops guys killed OBL on Sunday.
But at the sametime, at very least, the friends and families who lost people on those four airliners and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon deserve the chance to see the corpse of their loved one’s killer.
Obama has kicked the living victims to the curb and tossed a bone to the crowd who are invested in the conspiracy angle to OBL’s death. Now, instead of a period at the end of the sentence, there’s a question mark.
Obama’s argument for not releasing the photos are worse than laughable. They’re just plain stupid. The American people aren’t children and Obama isn’t our father. What’s next? Will this president try to pull and bury the Zapruder film in some archive in the bowels of the White House?
Former Cosmo nudie model Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is running around telling people he has seen the photos and says “Osama bin Laden is very much dead.”
So what Obama is saying is, members of the US Congress are more important than the American people? They get to see the pictures but not us? WTF? Michelle Bachmann, Darryl Issa, and John Boehner are more important than you and me?
Sorry but, this decision is a slap in the face to transparency. No wonder there has been 11% fewer Freedom of Information Requests under the Obama administration than the Bush administration.
vicodaniel1987@yahoo.com
Muslim sensitivities from our Muslim president. After this, can there be any reasonable doubt that Barack Hussein Obama is a MUSLIM IN GOOD STANDING?
However, I would like clarification? Today Jay Carney said: “Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He he was a mass murderer. A mass murderer of people around the world, including Muslims.”
If Osama bin Laden isn’t a Muslim, why did the United States military go to such lengths to give him a TRADITIONAL MUSLIM FUNERAL AT SEA? All that was missing was a roasted goat and 40 virgins.
So which is it? WAS Osama bin Laden a Muslim or NOT?
So Obama is worried about inflaming Muslim sensitivities if the pictures of the dead bin Laden are made public but he has no concerns about soldiers and predator drones invading and attacking Muslim nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What am I missing?
As a tax paying American citizen who is being forced to fund these endless Middle East wars, I am outraged that Obama gets to decide what I need to know and get to see.
Think about it this way.
It’s difficult to show pictures that do not exist; of a man who isn’t dead; killed in an invasion that exists only in fiction.
Did anybody seriously think the Obama administration would release the photos?
See my friends, if Barack Obama had the been the publisher of the Washington Post and he was in possession of the Pentagon Papers and faced with the crucial decision to publish them, Mr. Obama would’ve erred on the side of caution and burned them, thus not risk any harm coming to the corrupt Nixon administration.
The concept of “the right to know” is alien to someone as traditional and deferential to power as our president. You see, Barack Obama is almost a Victorian.
If Obama’s poll numbers keep falling as we get close to the next general election, you can be certain a big, gruesome 8×11 picture of Osama bin Laden’s bullet ridden head will mysteriously appear online.
The Obama White House will feign outrage over how such a thing could happen but the picture will work to remind voters of what a great leader Obama is, and voters will rally behind the president and flock to the polls in record numbers to reelect the man who captured and killed Osama bin Laden.
These voters aren’t awake and they aren’t rational but they can vote. Obama needs to keep those pictures under wraps. They’re too valuable to give away for free when they can be used constructively 18 months before the election.
We saw the film of President John Kennedy get shot in the head and his wife grab his brains and try to put his head back together.
We saw angry mobs beat and kill U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu.
We saw the airplanes crash into the World Trade Center Towers, workers jump to the deaths, and the towers collapse.
We saw the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
American are tough. We’re resilient. Even if Obama believes otherwise. Release the damned pictures. I demand to see them.
Herminio Sanchez – Ka-Ching! I think you hot the nail on the head. The pics of bin Laden’s dead body are the political currency and the political pathway to reelection for Obama. I bet he’s keeping in his nightside table, ready to leak them if he can’t turn around gas prices and jobs.
I guess this is another example of Obama acting all decisive and shit?
Pictures, pictures and more pictures. Three dead men lying in pools of blood but nowhere do we see Osama bin Laden.
Maybe he’s a vampire? Vampires don’t show up on film. 🙂
http://www.calgarysun.com/2011/05/04/photos-show-three-dead-men-at-bin-laden-raid-house
We Brits saw this interview years ago with Benazir Bhutto in which she said Osama bin Laden had been murdered in 2003.
I thought then this interview is the reason she was assassinated. Of course, former Pakistani President Musharraf says it was al Qaeda or the Taliban, not his own intelligence service. But there are many people in the MI5 & MI6 as well as in Interpol who hold Benazir Bhutto was killed by covert U.S. forces to silence her.
Just think. If President Obama released the photo(s) of Osama bin Laden’s dead body, we could answer many unanswered questions surrounding his death. Was Benazir Bhutto correct or, did Osama bin Laden die just last Sunday?
The concept of “the right to know” is alien to someone as traditional and deferential to power as our president. You see, Barack Obama is almost a Victorian.
Well said, Stephen. Well said.
This is a huge error in judgement on Obama’s part. Already, Freedom of Information requests have been filed requesting the images. I think Osama is dead but I still want to see the pictures. I want to relish looking at his bullet-ridden head. Is that wrong? Too bad. He’s this generation’s Hitler and I offer no apology.
President Obama is 100% wrong on this one. 100% wrong.
Everyone from Alan Dershowitz to Sen. Lindsey Graham, to the Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson to the NYFD Union say release the photos. I agree with them. We have the right to see for ourselves what we’ve been fighting for the past decade. I am offended by President Obama’s arrogance here. He thinks he is better suited to decide for the nation and the world, what is appropriate and what isn’t appropriate.
Release the photos. Just do it.