Osama photo: Why US is worried
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Four days after a bunch of highly-trained, armed men gunned down the world's most wanted terrorist, conspiracy theorists, and the al-Qaeda are demanding to see evidence that Osama Bin Laden is really dead, and buried.
So, for the United States and Barack Obama's wisest, it means releasing a single, 'gruesome' photograph of Osama - shot under the left eye and according to several, White House sources - the brain's visible.
The latest angle on the decision is Central Intelligence agency's boss Leon Panetta telling reporters that the photograph will be published.
"The bottom line is that, you know, we got bin Laden and I think we have to reveal to the rest of the world the fact that we were able to get him and kill him," Panetta told NBC News.
"The government obviously has been talking about how best to do this, but I don't think there's any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public," he said.
That would seem to convince al-Qaeda who are also demanding to see photographs of the sea-burial, in which bin Laden's body was weighed down and dropped into the Arabian Sea from the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier.
All in all, the United States claims there are three sets of photographs - one from the raid, a shot head and the sea-burial.
The Obama administration says releasing the 'gruesome' photographs would amount to insulting the dead and more importantly, could trigger a terror backlash worldwide. It must be pointed out that America has, previously, released graphic evidence of Saddam Hussein's corpse and even those of his sons. The world even witnessed an American soldier checking Saddam for lice and other infection - just hours after he was captured.
Releasing a photograph of bin Laden is, of course, a much bigger deal. But America hopes the evidence will destroy conspiracy theories that are now all over the Web.
There's one that even claims the 9/11 mastermind died of kidney failure and that there were no US Navy SEALS around when Osama breathed his last. Another angle to the story is that Osama was captured alive, taken to an unknown location and is currently being interrogated by the CIA.
There are so many more. And the only person with the 'silence please' sign seems to be the President of the United States who, after all, must convince the world that American helicopters, flew under the cover of darkness, into Pakistan, dropped off a team of soldiers who then shot and killed the 'world's most dangerous man' - a 40-minute climax to a ten-year manhunt.
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