How long til we get House hearings on Obama’s cowardly refusal to release the death porn everyone’s clamoring after?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame media outlets for wanting to get their hands on the stuff and release it, that’s the business they’re in. I am stunned by the extent to which the media is ignoring the geopolitical calculation the White House is making, though. I don’t understand this calculation myself, but I am aware that it should be a big factor in the decision here. The White House has bigger fish to fry than pumping up page views for Politico and Kaplan.
Martin
With Issa running the committee, he’ll not only have a hearing on that, but also on why he wasted Government toner to print copies of his long form birth certificate.
kerFuFFler
Journalists are not even allowed to photograph the closed caskets of our fallen service members, but people are expecting to see bin Laden’s corpse? Give me a break.
jwb
Oh come on DougJ, everyone knows that a day of increased page hits for our media is far more important than any diplomatic concern. Clearly, you hate America.
Napoleon
In fairness the Republican house chair of the Intel committee thinks the release would be a bad idea, so I do not see any kind of hearings taking place.
jwb
OT: odd day at the coffee shop. The local wingers are expressing opposition to guns on campuses and wondering whether taking out OBL was a good idea.
JGabriel
From what I’ve read, it sounds like a good portion of Bin Laden’s upper left skull and brain matter were blown away. I think one can understand how some cultures might find the widespread dissemination of such a graphic photograph to be either gloating or otherwise offensive.
.
NonyNony
What?
Why are you “stunned”? The media is all about getting eyeballs to advertisers. Pics of a dead bin Laden will get eyeballs. Therefore they want pics.
The media is not about “geopolitical calculus” – that’s not their job. Their job is to make money, not concern themselves with the consequences of their actions.
Now the fact that we have an entire party who has given up on the idea that we should have a sane foreign policy makes this kind of dangerous. But there’s nothing stunning at all about the media wanting sensational pictures – the media as a group moved away from being “responsible gatekeepers of information” during the 90s and moved into “sell as much advertising as possible”. I’m not sure exactly why that shift happened – I think a lot of it has to do with the sudden growth of the Internet and the inability of the media to truly act as gatekeeper anymore – but it did happen. And when they act like this it really shouldn’t be “stunning” anyone anymore.
Yutsano
@kerFuFFler:
That was a Bush rule. Obama reversed it. Caskets just stopped being sexy and interesting to the Village.
David in NY
Are there any specific Muslim beliefs about the proper treatment of the bodies of the dead? How do they apply to deaths in battle (if that’s the appropriate analogy here)? How might that affect our international relations with Muslim nations now emerging from dictatorships?
Of course, only a liberal would bother to take such things into consideration.
MattF
Aw, stop complaining– they’ve just got to work through that checklist of fascist themes. It’s a job, someone’s got to do it. Viva la muerta, yadda yadda.
MikeJ
Guerilla war struggle is a new entertainment.
PeakVT
I think the WH is right not to release the photos. However, they could shut the American media up by letting reporters view – but not copy or otherwise record – enough photos and video to establish that
Francobin Laden is, in fact, dead.sukabi
there really is no “up side” to releasing the photos… as Obama’s birth certificate has proven, those not wanting to believe it won’t, regardless of the evidence.
Anyone thinking that releasing the bin Laden photos will “soothe” the nutz among us is wrong… there is nothing you could do to prove to them he’s dead… including handing them the body to wank into.
Poopyman
@NonyNony: NonyNony takes a good many words right out of my mouth.
Never assume the media will put morals or taste ahead of promotion and profit.
Villago Delenda Est
You’d think the “serious” people would realize this, but then again, their “seriousness” has to do with their own boundless greed, for both money and attention.
Which is why I have no problem with forcing them, at knifepoint, to stand in the corner for a short period. Say 50 to 100 years.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Is this snark?
Seriously, is this snark?
I didn’t think it was possible for anyone on this blog to over-mis-estimate the childishness of the washington press corp who famously threw a fit last year because there was internet access on air force one.
Martin
@David in NY:
Yes. And the WH indicated that those were followed. Body gets washed, wrapped in plain linens, and interred as quickly as possible since they do not permit embalming. Head pointed toward Mecca if buried on land. Burial at sea is fine if necessary. WH indicated that burial at sea was necessary because it would take too long to get the body to a point of land to bury it in a timely manner. Probably true, but I suspect they had other motives as well.
They’re Muslims, not Klingons.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Watch Rachel Maddow from last night, I think she made a good argument for why they aren’t being released. The gist was:
1. When the photos of Saddam’s sons was released, people in Iraq didn’t believe them.
2. When the cell phone video of Saddam’s execution came out, with the Shia chanting, it increased the tension between the groups in Iraq.
3. See the reaction to Obama releasing his birth certificate.
Poopyman
Also too, “It’s interesting when people die — Give us dirty laundry” is really all that is going on here.
Violet
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Really? Stunned? That’s a joke, right? The media doesn’t give a rat’s behind about geopolitical calculations. They care about ratings. And gossip and the horse race.
If releasing the photos of Bin Laden means more service people die or another terrorist attack happens, that would just increase their ratings. Which in their minds would be a good thing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Poopyman:
If it bleeds, it leads.
“Slow down, I need to see what happened over in the northbound lanes!”
Jay C
Yeah, right: get back to us when you find anyone in the “MSM” who will agree to this statement – in print.
We’ll be swatting crickets in the meantime….
GregB
As a citizen of NH I am proud to say that my Senator Kelly Ayotte has seen the Bin Laden death photo before almost anyone else on the planet. She’s also seen the exclusive photos of Bat Boy and the very alive Elvis Pressley too.
WereBear
@NonyNony: A reporter smuggled in a camera attached to his ankle when Ruth Snyder, murderess, was executed. In the 1920’s.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Napoleon:
I saw this guy (Rogers?) on tv yesterday and he seemed far too normal and decent to be a House Republican. I also saw a Republican with (D) Loretta Sanchez on TV very reasonably talking about the opportunity to wind down the Afghanistan war and focus on surgical strikes like the Navy SEALS performed on OBL’s sorry ass. Is the GOP aware that they have members acting like decent human beings? I’m sure Cantor will put an end to it soon but it was slightly jarring to witness.
Muley Graves
@jwb: The general wingnut reaction to OBL getting the lead poisoning he’s been begging for this last decade proves to me beyond the shadow of any doubt that the only reason they cared about 9/11 at all is that it gave them a tremendous boost that they were willing to milk for all that it was worth.
And they’re pissed that their terrorism cow has been taken to the slaughterhouse, as they can’t milk it for the last drops of political advantage that they were counting on to see them through this decade.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Our news media are so bad they deserve to be tormented, but in a humane way. Making them beg and plead and scream and stamp their little feet for photos they just know would cause an eyeball popping sensation and international scandal, and then not giving them a even a sniff, that’s a form of torment. I heartily approve. They have it coming. Dance little men, dance.
The only thing better would be if Obama rolled the photos up into a bundle and then made them get down on their knees and balance the bundle on their noses like a dog with a Milkbone, while saying “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”.
Joe Beese
If George W. Bush had claimed that he found and destroyed WMDs in Iraq but was suppressing the evidence in support of his claim to avoid inflaming America’s enemies, all of you would be screaming Bullshit. And you would not think of yourselves as “conspiracy nuts” for demanding proof.
You think it’s different now because it’s Obama.
It’s not.
NonyNony
@PeakVT:
I don’t think this is true. Again, this would have been true, oh, say 40 years ago. Some respected journalists would have been allowed to see the evidence, there would have been a discussion about the diplomatic reasons why this evidence can’t be broadcast, and those trusted journalists would have gone out and told their fellow reporters the story. And, except for the conspiracy theorists that would have been the end of it.
That won’t work now because people just don’t trust the media like that anymore. With good reason I’ll admit, but who among the reporters is someone I would trust? Very few people – and are they the same folks my parents would trust? Unlikely. (And that’s even BEFORE I get into the questions of “well, is that reporter an expert on Photoshop fakery? And could they tell if they were being scammed?” and so on).
And secondly, it wouldn’t serve the ultimate purpose of these calls for photos. This isn’t some drive to get at “the truth” in some movie-reporter fashion – I’d bet most of these reporters who aren’t Fox News zombies don’t have any reason to believe that the administration is lying about this. This is for “the scoop” – the ability to post those photos on their website and draw hits for that sweet, sweet advertising money. Letting reporters see the evidence without actually letting them reproduce it would defeat the whole point.
Gin & Tonic
@NonyNony: I can’t imagine how anyone at all familiar with the role of newspapers in 19th or 20th century US history could imagine them as “responsible gatekeepers.” William Randolph Hearst, anyone?
David
Why do these things have to be done immediately these days?
Bin Laden is dead. Proof, photos, and details will follow in due time.
kdaug
Obama said basically the same thing last week.
Bulworth
Fixed.
NonyNony
@Joe Beese:
No we wouldn’t. Because those WMDs were used as an excuse to kill hundreds of thousands of people, and if they HAD existed and a strutting peacock like Commander Codpiece Bush had said “oh, we had them, but we had to destroy them secretly for your own good” it would have been an obvious lie.
Here not releasing the photos is just typically what is done in a state killing – we don’t expect to see the photos of executed murderers, and we don’t expect to see the corpses of enemy combatants paraded around on pikes. And, if this was all faked and bin Laden really wasn’t killed we’ll find out in a few weeks when bin Laden releases a new tape to al Jazeera.
Really Beese, you continue to prove yourself to be a pathetic and obsessed little individual. I really hope you’re a college kid or a Republican ratfucker because otherwise… sheesh.
piratedan
@Joe Beese: c’mon now Joe, since when has Shrub suppressed anything other than personal rights and human freedoms? The rat bastard stood on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with a big ass banner stating that the war was over. He’s about as subtle as a flying mallet (apologies to Dave Edmunds).
sukabi
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: add in several swats on the nose with the “news papers / publications” they publish and you’ve got yourself a fine training tool*.
* I look forward to seeing those who publish via the internet being pummeled with a desktop box.
chopper
@JGabriel:
look, here’s a grody picture of a pile of meat that used to be a head. wow, i can totally tell that it’s bin laden.
and i’m still waiting on the release of the video. i know that it’s SOP for the us government to make public videos of covert ops.
Bill H.
Eugene Robinson on Hardball last night was the most ridiculous exhibition of stupidity and nonsense that I think I have ever seen in my entire life. The man is usually idiotic, but even for him that clownishness was beyond the pale. “Putting an end to the myth…” Forsooth.
And then David Corn, I think he was on Last Word, with his “If they’re going to show the pictures to legislators, they should show them to journalists.” Does that moron equate himself to elected officials? Really.
This whole OBL killing has driven journalism to new lows.
Poopyman
@Joe Beese: No. It’s different because Obama didn’t use snuffing bin Laden as an excuse to drag a couple hundred thousand US troops to the Middle East to have their asses shot at.
Go fuck yerself.
NonyNony
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh I agree – it’s the SELF-PERCEPTION of the media that is important here. And between WWII and the Reagan era, the media really did see themselves as the “responsible gatekeepers” of information released to the public at large. That was what made the reporting on Vietnam in the 70s so powerful – the media really did keep it under wraps until they decided that the public needed to know what was really going on.
That self-perception died in the 90s – a few old guard still think of themselves as gatekeepers but that’s about it. Everyone else is grubbing for scoops – just like they did prior to WWII. I personally think that the death of the Fairness Doctrine ended the ability of the media to act as gatekeeper at all, and the Internet accelerated the shift in attitude.
(The media of the 50s – 80s was an aberration – something atypical for US culture. And yet that’s the “ideal” that people keep wanting to impose on our media environment. Our media environment now has much more in common with what the media has been like in this country over the course of the last 200 years than the media for the 30 year span of 1950 to 1980 did.)
JCT
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This is basically what Obama is doing and this is why they are crying so piteously. Didn’t their mommies ever say “no” to them?
My favorite part of this whole thing is that if a Republican admin had pulled this off and if a *single* Democratic politician had hinted at one tenth of the shit they are slinging the Republicans and their operatives would have been screaming “look at the pussies” from every rooftop.
Alice and the looking glass time.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@sukabi:
Meh.
bin Laden’s photo is already all over the internet.
http://tinyurl.com/42ep3ax
Villago Delenda Est
Beese, you seem to not understand that there’s a fundamental difference between Bush and Obama.
One is an unmitigated shitstain.
The other is a ni*CLANG*.
Bnad
If anyone wants to see death porn of Osama, they’re free to get a massive head wound pic from those places on the Web that specialize in them and photoshop Osama’s face onto it. In fact, I propose a whole army of expert photoshoppers producing so much realistic fake Osama death porn that any real photo ends up being anticlimactic.
I think I’ve just found the feature story that will get me a byline in Time Magazine. “Here are 33 different ways it might have looked.”
cmorenc
@PeakVT:
They would need to do this (if at all) by permitting only a small handful (a half dozen to dozen) carefully selected reporters do the actual viewing, not the general media. By “carefully selected” I mean not necessarily confined to administration-friendly sources; it would actually be constructive to permit Fox to have a representative if it was say, someone like Chris Wallace rather than the more common run of hacks they have over there, but not someone like Mark Halprin (not all the hacks reside at Fox). People like Christine Amanpour are quintessentially the sort who should be sought out to be among the handful of nominees.
chopper
@Joe Beese:
of course i’d be calling bullshit, that makes no fuckin sense. why would showing evidence of WMDs inflame our enemies? our enemies fuckin hated saddam.
BudP
Show ’em some random clips from SAW IV, that should temporarily slake the bloodthirst.
Joe Beese
@Villago Delenda Est:
One calls himself a Democrat. The other calls himself a Republican.
You are more impressed by this distinction than I am.
Napoleon
@Martin:
Hysterical.
David
Go4 — nice!
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
Yes because showing pictures of nuclear weapons and a picture of a dead man is EXACTLY the same thing.
Benjamin Cisco
@PeakVT:
I object; this premise requires that said reporters be smarter than the 27%ers they’re playing to AND the GOPers they fluff constantly. Assumes facts NOT in evidence.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JCT:
Yeah but I want it to be more literal. I want to see David Gregory or Chuck Todd kneeling on the floor of the WH press room with a bundle of papers balanced on his nose and his tongue hanging out, waiting for the signal, like a well trained Golden Retriever. If he was wearing a choke collar and a leash that would be nice too, but that’s optional.
I want to see pictures of that.
See, news guys, this is how it works. Everybody has their own picture fetish; mine is just a hell of lot funnier than yours is.
Brachiator
@PeakVT:
But as Doug Harlan J notes, this is just death porn. It’s not really the job of reporters to establish that bin Laden is dead. The press are not coroners or magistrates.
Also note that apparently, someone (a guard, a cop in Pakistan?) sold photos of the dead bodies of some of bin Laden’s protectors.
Morbid curiosity must be satisfied.
AliceBlue
I fully expect the House to hold hearings on whether or not the whole thing was “legal.” I’ve already heard wingnuts around here saying that that killing OBL was a bad idea.
Benjamin Cisco
@Martin:
I approve of this post.
WereBear
Fine, be that way. You must have been living on some other planet than the one I’ve been on; THIS planet saw me driven into financial ruin, struggling to keep my chronically ill husband alive. I got handed anvils from the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has improved our lives in concrete ways.
So do sit on a cactus with your false equivalency bullshit, and I hope it’s not too heavy.
Bill Murray
@Martin:
My understanding was that he was killed on land, so how could this be true, unless there is some specification that burial be in a particular place? and weren’t they saying they buried him at sea to forestall having his grave be a rallying point? or was that only the media and bloggers
Chris- The Fold
Honestly, why can’t we give Reagan a majority of the credit for killing bin Laden??? If he hadn’t armed, funded and supplied intelligence to his jihad we wouldn’t have had an enemy to kill.
http://www.thefoldblog.com/2011/05/give-them-all-credit.html
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Yes, and it’s beyond the death photo issue, there’s a broad campaign across the ideological spectrum that essentially says, “what the hell is the matter with you, Pakistan!” This point of view is stupid for a number of reasons, and I’m disappointed that even the few lefties on TV seem to be flogging it. After all, even marginally engaged pundits are aware that Pakistan is this close to becoming an Islamist state with nuclear weapons, so you’d think they’d check their moronic gut reactions at the door and at least attempt to think through the potential consequences.
wcdude
Al Jazeera had a quite dead pic of Osama. at least I’m assuming, it sure looks like him but it could be someone else. Been on their site since the day after. That’s the Arabic language site ,not the English one.
sukabi
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!): wasn’t talking about the photos, was talking about HOW and WHERE our “journalists” publish their dribble, and seeing them smacked with the method of viewing / reading their crap…
J.W. Hamner
What I find curious is that it seems like whenever liberals want similar information released/declassified the administration response is “National Security!” or “Compromise ongoing operations!” or “Muslim opinion!”… and the press just meekly accepts it… but when conservatives want death pr0n, they can barely be held back from Obama’s jugular?
Personally I’d rather see it out there, and don’t buy the arguments against… so I’m not really against this new charge… but it does strike me as a wee bit hypocritical.
Roger Moore
@Joe Beese:
No, I think it’s different because a live human being is different from a non-existent WMD. The case of discovered and secretly destroyed WMD is indistinguishable from that of non-existent WMD. In either case, there’s no evidence.
OTOH, the case of a dead Osama bin Laden is very different from that of a live Osama bin Laden. If Obama were lying about the whole thing, you can bet that bin Laden already would have put out a video tape mocking him for lying. The non-existence of such a tape is strong evidence that bin Laden really is dead.
Jazz Superluminar
@Joe Beese
people here may laugh, and think you in some way “stupid”, but actually you are totally right. Really all the politicians play for the same team, and you have to be unbelievably naive to think they don’t. But then such is the lot of the balloonbagger, to ignore constantly what is in front of one’s face, to buy-in to the same old shit.
eemom
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I cannot thank you enough for this splendiforous image.
danimal
The pix will come out, by either an (un)official leak or a FOIA request. Delaying the release is probably smart diplomacy, but I support the eventual release.
We paid for the damn pix, we should be able to view them if desired. Government secrets don’t form a strong basis of trust.
Cynicor
If there is a god, the GOP will try to impeach Obama over his conduct as he took care of bin Laden.
fasteddie9318
Doesn’t the White House understand? Ace of Spades, Gateway Pundit, and Confederate Yankee are tired of masturbating to that Saddam hanging video over and over again. They need something new to spice things up. Won’t anybody think of the greater good here?
scav
@eemom: Seconded!
Bobby Thomson
@Martin:
Someone posted an interesting snippet that sea burial is also advised if there is a danger that someone might dig up the body to mutilate it.
Which seems rather more than apropos here. The skull of the real Geronimo is in a room at Yale University.
fasteddie9318
@Bobby Thomson: Burial at sea is pretty much an inevitability if you want your conquering military to have a navy. There is actually some Sunni jurisprudence that argues that the body should be floated, not weighted, so that it might wash up on land and be properly buried, but that’s a minority view.
Aneece
d@danimal: How are these photos “state secrets”? We know what they are, that they exist, and what they show. They only “secret” is the satisfaction of our prurient interest.
What’s next, a demand for smell samples of Obama’s stool? Because…you know, the people have a right to know!
PeakVT
Yeah, maybe I’m being too naive. But I think that either WH needs to show them to some of the media (on computers with Pshop, no less) or they will get leaked before everyone forgets about it.
Anyone know when the next shiny object is due to arrive?
Martin
Yeah, that seems prudent. The only other alternative I could think of would be to bury him somewhere that would have US military protection. Stick him in Area 51 or Gitmo or some damn thing.
Joel
The wingnuts are just grasping at straws. They’re pathetic and we might as well mock them relentlessly.
Martin
@Bill Murray:
I think some officials have mentioned that, but more as a ‘residual benefit’ than the reason for doing it. Personally, I suspect that the administration didn’t exactly go out of their way to find a place to bury him because they wanted that residual benefit, but I believe the official justification was timeliness.
Doug Harlan J
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!):
You’re right, I was stupid to be surprised.
Elie
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
You got that right, and yes, its amazing. Apparently having any thought out, balanced perspective is out of the question. There could have been all kinds of help from Pakistan… they actually may have helped by letting OBL think that he was hiding in plain sight, but all that was happening was that they were guaranteeing that he was actually accessible for exactly this kind of action. The world of covert action in the international arena is complex and we will never know (nor should we necessarily), all that went down and why and who or what country facilitated it in whatever way.
We are all to be knee jerk retributionists — never appreciating that there are truly things that we must be mindful of in a complex world. We are all black and white all the time and we supposedly have smart people in the media who should know this. Not.
Elie
@Bobby Thomson:
This code name for OBL (Geronimo) was a mistake that clearly was not well thought out by whoever assigned it. Had to be a white dude that came up with that. The code name should have been Dick for Dick Cheney the face shooter and champion of torture.
MikeJ
@Elie: Except it wasn’t the code name for bin Laden, it was the code name for the operation. bin Laden was Jackpot. The National Congress of American Indians had a statement that seemed to be alright with ti, as long as people kept that straight.
chopper
@Aneece:
it was part of a covert op. i would think the whole thing is secret until classified otherwise.
you think the us government routinely makes public documentation of DEVGRU’s operations?
parenthetical
Watch new blood on the 18 inch screen.
Isn’t it funny that when Gang of Four wrote that song an 18-inch screen was considered big?
Aneece
@chopper: My point wasn’t that they aren’t technically classified, only that the cry for the “release of state secrets” only makes sense when motivated by the desire to learn something. You could justify the release of even the most heinous Abu Ghraib photos because they indicated illegal activity, and perhaps told us something we didn’t know about U.S. policy. What will we learn from these photos? The consistency of OBL’s brains. The blood splatter patterns from the kill shot? Prurient, prurient, prurient. Only, only, only.
Elie
@MikeJ:
Ok, thanks. Thought that I heard that but wasnt sure.
I still like the name Dick for Dick Cheney, though.
Valdivia
He had to be buried at sea because NO ONE would take his body. The Saudis said no and so did other countries. Only the fishes would take him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: It is my understanding that “Geronimo” was not the code word for Osama, but rather the code word for success, as in Osama was captured or killed. If this is the case, I think it puts the word in a different context.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think Geronimo is going to care either way.
Origuy
Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome. Maybe whoever came up with the name was thinking of this guy.
NamelessGenXer
@Joel:
OK, how’s this?
wing-nut – n. putrid white trash of lesser intelligence whose only goals are to make sure they can continue to fuck their fat ugly women in their rusty, roach-infested bible belt trailers, cowering in their churches with their warmongering Jesus and their assault rifles and their vile racist hatreds, and stuffing their moronic offspring with red meat and corn syrup while teaching them that Hate is The American Way.
sneezy
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The TV network “newspeople” should consider that, because I, at least, would pay to watch.
Interrobang
They’d better release at least something. The whole narrative so far stinks on ice. It’s like “I have here in my hand a
listphotograph of onehundred card-carrying Communistsdead terrorist inthe State DepartmentPakistan…”I’m personally not entirely convinced the US government isn’t lying its face off, since it’s lied its face off about everything else since I was born, practically, so you’ll excuse me for being skeptical at official “assurances” that bin Laden is dead.