The Osama Story and Photo
May 6, 2011 - by
President Obama probably wishes his PR team worked as smoothly as the SEAL team that killed Osama and the intelligence team that found him.
The White House fuzzed up the triumph by rushing to put out information that later proved to be wrong.
Here’s a guess about why that happened: The White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, is an old Time magazine man, and Time loved the “tick-tock” stories – the minute-by-minute accounts of dramatic events.
Here they should have taken more time, so to speak.
Better to have said: We will withhold details until the military and intelligence people have time to establish what happened.
A little mystery wouldn’t have been a bad thing.
But the President himself made the right call on the big PR issue: Don’t release Osama’s death photo.
It’s not worth endangering the life of one single American – in or out of uniform, here or overseas – just to prove to the “deathers” that he really is dead. There are people in the world today – and in politics – who will deny reality to the point there is no reality that will convince them. Forget them.
Besides, even Al-Qaida says Osama is dead.
And if you feel that you really, really have to see the picture, just wait. In today’s world, it’s only a matter of time before it will be available online.
Posted in Uncategorized
The Osama Story and Photo
May 6, 2011/
President Obama probably wishes his PR team worked as smoothly as the SEAL team that killed Osama and the intelligence team that found him.
The White House fuzzed up the triumph by rushing to put out information that later proved to be wrong.
Here’s a guess about why that happened: The White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, is an old Time magazine man, and Time loved the “tick-tock” stories – the minute-by-minute accounts of dramatic events.
Here they should have taken more time, so to speak.
Better to have said: We will withhold details until the military and intelligence people have time to establish what happened.
A little mystery wouldn’t have been a bad thing.
But the President himself made the right call on the big PR issue: Don’t release Osama’s death photo.
It’s not worth endangering the life of one single American – in or out of uniform, here or overseas – just to prove to the “deathers” that he really is dead. There are people in the world today – and in politics – who will deny reality to the point there is no reality that will convince them. Forget them.
Besides, even Al-Qaida says Osama is dead.
And if you feel that you really, really have to see the picture, just wait. In today’s world, it’s only a matter of time before it will be available online.
Posted in Uncategorized