by Bobby Brown

Created on: May 07, 2011   Last Updated: June 11, 2011

  On Friday November 22nd, 1963 Abraham Zapruder, armed with his 8 mm Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD camera (state of the art for that year) shot video footage of what under any circumstance would've been historic: a presidential motorcade. Little did he know that his video would become perhaps the most important in history, depicting (of course) the gruesome assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Truly a picture is worth a thousand words-and even more conspiracy theories.

 
The decision by the Obama administration not to release the Osama bin Laden death photos was probably the best one. First let's all agree that releasing the photos is not going to persuade those people hell-bent on proving that the whole fiasco is rife with conspiracy. Just like the people who continue to believe that Obama was born in Africa despite the fact that his Hawaii certificate of live birth (which would be acceptable identification for everything else) proves otherwise. 
 
Secondly, there exists the real possibility that releasing the photos only increases Osama's level of martyrdom in the minds of many Al-Qaida members as well as other radical islamic groups. In a very real sense by killing Osama the US has kicked the proverbial hornet's nest and must know be prepared for the consequences of such action. In my opinion it would have been preferable to arrest bin Laden, but the choice was not mine (or yours) to make. 

I believe that more important than having concrete proof (which in our 21st Century world of digital photography and Photoshop a picture would not provide anyway) of Osama's death is that the US has decided that it's important that the world believe that Osama is dead. Juxtapose this with the concept that Osama felt it necessary for the world to believe that he was still alive, efforts of the last remaining superpower notwithstanding. (There were not a few people who hypothesized that Osama died early during the conflict from either disease or military action.) Those grainy videos of him post the Afghanistan invasion were more than communication tools. They were part of a clever marketing campaign in which Osama could effectively thumb his nose at Washington under the guise of divine protection-if God is for me, who can be against me, or whatever the equivalent passage in the Koran is.

 Like the supposed image of a crucified Jesus inexplicablely fused into the fabric of the Shroud of Turin, the Osama death photos are really impossible to authenticate; why bother to release them then? Perhaps for some mother, daughter, or friend of a person  that was murdered by the decree of the world's most successful terrorist, releasing the photos will allow them to turn the page on a very  painful past. It is my belief that publishing the photos will actually bring more to harm than healing to the American public at large. 

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