Public Says No To Release Of Osama Pictures

The cartoon above is just a joke to most Americans. It plays off the conspiracy theory nuts in this country who won't accept anything the president does or says without "proof". But I suspect that it is more about racism (they just can't accept an African-American president) than really wanting proof (like the refusal to accept the official birth certificate from the state of Hawaii for the last two years).

The newest of these conspiracy theories now questions whether Osama bin Laden is really dead (even though the military has DNA evidence and al-Queda admits Osama was killed). These "deathers" are demanding proof of his death and say they won't believe it until they see the pictures of his dead body. Of course this is just silly, since the DNA evidence is much better proof than any picture and our military has no reason to lie about it. Even if the pictures were released to the public, these "deathers" would probably just claim they had been faked.

So our president has decided that the pictures of a dead Osama will not be released. This is the appropriate decision. Releasing the pictures would prove nothing, would only serve as a kind of "blood porn", and might even further enrage some terrorists to attack us. We generally like to pride ourselves as being a decent people, and the decent thing in this case is to not release the pictures. We've probably celebrated a little too much anyway.

So what do the people think of President Obama's decision? Thankfully, about two-thirds of them agree with the president's decision. A recent NBC Poll (taken May 5th through May 7th of 800 adults with a 3.5 point margin of error) shows that 64% agree with the decision not to release the pictures. Here are the numbers:

SHOULD NOT RELEASE...............64%
Definitely not...............52%
Probably not...............12%

SHOULD RELEASE...............29%
Definitely should...............24%
Probably should...............5%

I'm glad that most people aren't willing to go along with the bloodlust or the conspiracy nuts. Osama is dead. It's over. Let's move on. We have an economy to fix, and that's a lot more important than arguing about some pictures.