The UL and bin Laden's Death Photo-a cheap shot

The UL today published an editorial demanding the immediate release of bin Laden’s death photo.  President Obama has declined to do so for the present and we should support his decision.  The purpose of the editorial is to take a pot shot at the President, to diminish his decision making with respect to the  bin Laden raid.  The UL’s position is like criticizing one of the Navy Seals for not having spit shined his boots for the mission and is unworthy of the statewide paper.  There is no reason to encourage those who will view bin Laden as a martyr by the release of the photo.   Conspirators who doubt the mission won’t be appeased by the release of a photo in the days of Photoshop.

Further, the editorial makes a false equivalence between the Birthers who question the legitimacy of Mr. Obama’s presidency and the Democrats who questioned President Bush’s failure to act on intelligence that preceded 9/11.  The editorial cites a 2006 Ohio University/Scripps poll to claim that half the Democrats at the time thought President Bush complicit in 9/11.  The Ohio U/Scripps Poll actually found that “Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."  http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll.   Half of the 36% or 18% of those surveyed with one of these opinions were apparently self-reported as Democrats.  The poll was completed shortly after the disclosure of a Summer 2001 security memo that asserted bin Laden was determined to strike the US.  For whatever reason, the Bush White House and security apparatus did not act on the security memo.

While it is hard to believe any president complicit in an act as terrible as 9/11, there is a big difference between a false movement whipped up by certain media outlets to challenge the very legitimacy of the President's right to hold office and the reaction of those who had received legitimate news of an authentic report that presaged the 9/11 attack, yet resulted in no apparent action by the administration in office at the time.

The UL can do much better than this and NH deserves better.