There is a lot of handwringing going on over whether releasing images of Osama bin Laden's corpse would be too inflammatory. Apparently, confirmation that he's dead could cause "certain elements" of the Muslim world to react negatively. One the one hand, I can see this. After all, if a cartoon can be used to incite riots and murder, certainly a picture of an actual event could be used for that same purpose.On the other hand, here are a list of things that invoked no handwringing:
Pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib
Pictures of the coffins of American soldiers
Reports of Korans being flushed down toilets (though this apparently never actually happened)
Allowing a government with which we were at war to censor news reports by American journalists in exchange for "access" (Bing 'Eason Jordan' if you've forgotten)
Witholding pictures of a dead bin Laden isn't going to calm anybody down.
(Crossposted at Say Anything)
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