text: I think this is the right call, actually, but not for the usual reasons. 
   
   Besides, O surely realizes that they’ll leak sooner rather than later. 
   
   In an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” President Obama says he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden taken to prove his death… Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Wednesday that the Obama administration should not release the gruesome post-mortem images, saying it could complicate the job for American troops overseas. Rogers told CBS News he has seen a post-mortem photo… “Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the internet,” Rogers continued. “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.” 
   
   I can think of four arguments for releasing the photos. One: It’ll prove that he’s dead. Except, of course, that it won’t. Conspiracy cranks will screech about the pic being doctored or the victim being an impostor (“those aren’t his eyebrows!”) within five minutes of it being posted. There’s no such thing as “proof” anymore; the Internet age is proof-proof. If anything, the more evidence you provide, the more pretexts you create for kooks to pose moronic challenges to it. If the White House wants to reassure people that the photos exist, they can show them to Republican leaders, to members of the press, and maybe to 9/11 families for their satisfaction. (Scott Brown apparently has already seen them.) 
   
   Two: It’ll warn the jihadis of the world of what awaits if they mess with America. Didn’t the Zarqawi death photos already warn them of that, though? How about killing scores of Al Qaeda commanders with drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere? The fact that Bin Laden and Zawahiri were in hiding for 10 years is pretty solid evidence that they know what happens when you mess with Uncle Sam. 
   
   Three: Turnabout is fair play. If we had to endure photos of U.S. troops doing wrong at Abu Ghraib, let’s celebrate the photos of U.S. troops doing right by taking down a monster. I think that’s a better argument for why the Abu Ghraib photos shouldn’t have been released, though, than for why the Bin Laden photos should be. And in fact, Obama agrees: Remember when he broke his promise to the left to release photos of detainee abuse and filed suit to keep them suppressed in the name of national security? Also, Abu Ghraib was a case of exposing government malfeasance, which the public has a right to know about. They may not have a right to the photos, given the propaganda value of those photos to the enemy, but it’s not an apples and apples comparison with a national high-five like killing Bin Laden. 
   
   Four: It’s a trophy. People want to see dead Osama’s face because they want to revel in it. They’d put it on t-shirts and coffee mugs even though, according to one of CBS’s sources, it’s beyond gruesome (the “bullet opened his skull, exposing the brain, and it also blew out his eye”). After watching Americans forced to choose between burning alive or jumping to their deaths on 9/11, the thinking goes, we deserve to plaster images of Bin Laden’s cortex on billboards. Fair enough, but I have to say, just knowing how the raid went down and that his skull ended up being popped like a balloon is already … deeply satisfying. I keep thinking of him in his bedroom, listening to the SEALs banging around downstairs and hyperventilating at the thought of what would happen when they opened the door. I don’t need an extra scoop of sugar on that hot fudge sundae. It’s already tastier than I could have hoped for. 
   
   So those are the arguments in favor. The obvious argument against releasing the photo, per Bob Gates and Hillary, is that it’ll “inflame anti-American sentiment” and put troops in the field at greater risk. Didn’t we already cross that bridge, though, by … killing Osama Bin Laden? And haven’t we heard that same argument used before by our political leaders to pressure people like Terry Jones on free speech? The argument the administration could/should have made is that sometimes we have to accept a greater operational risk in the interest of protecting core values like the First Amendment — and that this isn’t one of those times, since there’s really no core value that would be served by releasing a “suck it, jihadis” Bin Laden death photo. It would feel great, but as I said above, it already feels great. And the “suck it” message has, I take it, already been received by all the important people via the fact that Osama now literally sleeps with the fishes. 
   
   The reason I think this is a good call is that I like the idea of Bin Laden being reduced to an afterthought, even in death. He had already reduced himself to that status after 10 years of hiding like a rat and churning out the occasional audio message that no one paid much attention to. Then, on Sunday, in the span of 12 hours, he went from quietly doing whatever he was still doing for Al Qaeda to quietly having a chunk of his head blown off to quietly being kicked off the deck of a U.S. carrier into the sea. Just like that, gone from the face of the Earth; I’ll bet the carrier crew didn’t even hear the splash. That’s a sweet ending for a messianic fanatic. Release the photo and you undo some of that, though, by treating him like a big enough deal that the world should gawk at his fate. Why give his followers that satisfaction? He wasn’t a big deal. He was to us because we had unfinished business with him, but nearly everyone else — possibly even Al Qaeda — had moved on. And now we get to move on too. Next. 
   
   Update: Ah, looks like Scott Brown only saw one of the fake photos circulating online. I’m sure the GOP leadership can view the real thing if it asks Obama to make them available. Although Boehner says he doesn’t need to: 
   
   “That’s a decision for the administration to make,” Boehner said when asked if it was necessary to release any of the bin Laden photos, which U.S. officials have described as carrying the gory imprint of a gunshot wound to the head. “They have to decide what to do. I’m convinced. I have no doubts.” 
   
   Update: A Pakistani security official showed up at the compound shortly after the raid ended and snapped a few pics, which he then sold to Reuters. If you want to see what happens to jihadis when they come face to face with SEALs, brace yourself and click here. ||||| Elsewhere in Slate, William Saletan explains why the human-shield myth was a bad idea, Dave Weigel talks about how Osama's death proved everyone right, John Dickerson looks at Obama's secret meetings, Dahlia Lithwick says it's time to end the war on terror, Chris Beam explains the mood in Pakistan, Heather Murphycompiles a slideshow of the elite Navy SEALS, and Maura O'Connor looks at how the war still continues in Afghanistan. For the most up-to-date-coverage, visit theSlatest. Slate's complete coverage is rounded up here. 
   
   In a world where every form of splatter, dismemberment, and slaughter has found a home on the Web—a place in which tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions have watched blood bubble out of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan's face and pool on the asphalt beneath her head—it seems nuts that President Barack Obama has decided not to release the photos of Osama Bin Laden's bullet-dented cranium.* 
   
   In a 60 Minutes interview to be aired Sunday, Obama said he thought it important that "very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool." 
   
   White House Press Secretary Jay Carney spoke yesterday about the "sensitivities involved" in releasing the "gruesome" and potentially "inflammatory" photos, and mused about whether allowing their publication would "serve or in any way harm our interests" at home and abroad. Today, he said the administration didn't want the photos to become "icons" that would help rally support against the United States. 
   
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   Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence panel, opposes making the photos public for similar reasons, saying he doesn't want the images to "make the job of our troops serving in places like Iraq and Afghanistan any harder than it already is. The risks of release outweigh the benefits." 
   
   Obama and Rogers' idea that news should be calibrated by the government to ease the job of the U.S. military makes for a First Amendment loophole you could drive a motorized regiment through. If al-Qaida and its supporters are more irate with the United States this week than they were last week, it's because U.S. commandos killed Bin Laden. Obama should never have marked him for death if tending the "sensitivities" of al-Qaida and its allies was U.S. policy. 
   
   It's hard to imagine that a death photo of Bin Laden would elevate al-Qaida and its supporters to some fury that his killing didn't. Or, as @knifework tweeted this afternoon, "Who hasn't shot someone in the face, fed their corpse to the sharks, and then fretted over how their followers would feel about the photo?" 
   
   I don't advocate the photos' release because I think it will convince the unconvincible that Bin Laden is dead or because I desire a "trophy" or a football "spiked," as Obama puts it in his 60 Minutes interview. I'm for the publication of the pictures because they're an essential part of the war on al-Qaida. Withholding the photos and couching their suppression in the name of national security misjudges what makes al-Qaida tick and infantilizes the nation. It also sets a precedent for "news that's too gruesome to reveal." 
   
   Here's how CBS News reporter David Martin describes the photos, based on a description provided to him: 
   
   It does sound very gruesome. Remember, bin Laden was shot twice at close range, once in the chest and once in the head, right above his left eye, and that bullet opened his skull, exposing the brain, and it also blew out his eye. So these are not going to be pictures for the squeamish. 
   
   Barbie Zelizer, author of the recent book About To Die: How News Images Move the Public, finds it paradoxical that the administration would recoil from releasing the photos but gladly provides verbal descriptions of the spectacular raid and Bin Laden's killing. 
   
   "You can't have it both ways," Zelizer told me in an interview. 
   
   The Bin Laden photos, Zelizer says, are "part of the record, part of the news event" and locking them away ascribes "magical powers" to the photos that wouldn't otherwise exist. If we conceal them from public view, we board a slippery slope that flows toward ignorance, timidity, doubt, and conspiracy-mongering. 
   
   
   
   Part of the ambivalence about releasing the photos, Zelizer says, is that a universally accepted narrative for Bin Laden's killing has yet to emerge. As I wrote the day after the raid, the press and the government had huge trouble agreeing exactly how the operation unfolded. Did Bin Laden make a human shield of his wife? Was she killed? Did he shoot at the SEALs? Or did the SEALs summarily execute an unarmed man? 
   
   If such an accepted narrative existed, it might be easier for the administration to predict how the photos would be received at home and overseas. But it's not the White House's business to control and manage news for the good of the nation based on some imagined worst-case reaction to events. That's Soviet thinking. 
   
   If a nation can be trusted to view the horrors of 9/11 in real time, flip through the Abu Ghraib picture book, witness the made-for-video murder of Daniel Pearl, see images of dead Uday and Qusay on the evening news, and gaze upon pictures of dead soldiers coming home as air freight (photos that President Bush, incidentally, tried to ban in the name of managing the news), then it can be trusted to stomach the last photos of Osama Bin Laden—and whatever turmoil those photos might cause. Why? Because that's what sort of country the United States is. 
   
   ****** 
   
   What about the helmet-cam video of the operation? Yeah, I'm for its release, too, although I can see the case for why it should be edited to withhold secret operational details that led to the mission's success. Make the case for the release of the unexpurgated video in email to . Expurgate my Twitter feed. (Email may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.) 
   
   Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For email notification of errors in this specific column, type Dead Laden in the subject head of an email message, and send it to . 
   
   Correction, May 5, 2011: This article originally misspelled the last name of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. (Return to the corrected sentence.) 
   
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   Like This Story Follow Slate's Press Box ||||| The president's decision to withhold photographs of the dead Osama bin Laden is only the last in a series of terrible mistakes in the handling of his body. Although there should be no doubt that bin Laden is actually dead, there are grave doubts as to the circumstances surrounding his death. Was he shot in cold blood? Was he shot in the back or in the front? Were his hands raised in surrender? Was he actively resisting? 
   
   Many of these doubts could have been resolved if bin Laden's body had been subjected to the usual investigatory techniques routinely employed in homicide cases. His body should have been subjected to an autopsy, to forensic testing by an experienced medical examiner, to extensive photographing of entrance and exit wounds, to paraffin testing for gun-powder residue, and to other such forensic examination. 
   
   Editorial Board Member Matt Kaminski on the bin Laden photos. 
   
   Burying his body at sea constituted the willful destruction of relevant evidence, which naturally gives rise to suspicions that there was something to hide. I fully credit the administration's explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer. But many reasonable people around the world will wonder whether the decision may also have been based on a desire to suppress the whole truth. 
   
   In my nearly half-century of representing defendants charged with homicide, I have come to know that the best evidence of how a person died comes from the body of the deceased. Dead bodies often talk more loudly, clearly and unambiguously than live witnesses. Bin Laden's body should have been preserved as long as necessary to gather all relevant evidence, notwithstanding the requirements of Shariah Law. 
   
   When a Muslim or a Jew is the victim of a homicide in the United States, religious considerations do not trump civil requirements. Their bodies are generally sent to the medical examiner for thorough examination. Notwithstanding religious prohibitions, autopsies are performed and organs removed for testing. No special exception should have been made for bin Laden's body. 
   
   View Full Image Getty Images Inside Osama Bin Laden's compound, where he was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces 
   
   The president's decision to suppress the remaining photographic evidence is disturbing on many levels. First, it is wrong on its merits. The public is used to seeing visual portrayals of dead bodies on television and in movies. Anyone who has served as a juror or a courtroom observer in a homicide case has seen bodies riddled with bullets or afflicted with stab wounds. We are mature enough to endure viewing such visual evidence if we choose to. Nor is there any real risk that these photographs will inflame Muslim or Arab sensibilities any more than the photographs of Saddam Hussein did. 
   
   In a democracy, doubts must always be resolved in favor of disclosure, particularly in a matter of such great public interest and controversy. Surely Congress has at least equal authority to decide what to do with the photographs. Moreover, the press may have the right to obtain and publish these highly relevant items of evidence as part of its duty to inform the public. Some media will surely challenge the president's decision—and if they do I hope they win. 
   
   The great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis taught us nearly a century ago that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." The remaining evidence of how bin Laden was killed—the photographs and the results of any forensic tests that may have been hastily performed—should be exposed to the sunlight of publication. 
   
   Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is "Trials of Zion" (Grand Central Publishing, 2010).
target: – Reactions to President Obama's decision not to release the Osama bin Laden death photos are rolling in—and most seem to disagree with the prez: "While gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others," writes Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. "A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden," which the photos would soundly refute. "The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved." But, writing on Hot Air, Allahpundit disagrees with Robinson. The Zarqawi death photos, not to mention the numbers of al-Qaeda commanders killed by drone strikes, already warned jihadists "of what awaits if they mess with America." Releasing the photos means treating bin Laden "like a big enough deal that the world should gawk at his fate." By not releasing them, he is "reduced to an afterthought." Many have argued that releasing the photos would put American troops in greater danger from al-Qaeda, but the "idea that news should be calibrated by the government to ease the job of the US military makes for a First Amendment loophole you could drive a motorized regiment through," writes Jack Shafer on Slate. "It's hard to imagine that a death photo of bin Laden would elevate al-Qaeda and its supporters to some fury that his killing didn't." In the Wall Street Journal, Alan Dershowitz calls the decision not to release the photos "only the last in a series of terrible mistakes" in handling bin Laden's body. He's more aghast that the corpse was not subjected to routine forensic techniques, which could have answered many of the lingering questions: "Was he shot in cold blood? Was he shot in the back or in the front? Were his hands raised in surrender? Was he actively resisting?" Burying bin Laden at sea "naturally gives rise to suspicions that there was something to hide."