WASHINGTON - KNOWING there would be disbelievers, the US says it used convincing means to confirm Osama bin Laden's identity during and after the firefight that killed him. But the mystique that surrounded the terrorist chieftain in life is persisting in death.
Was it really him? How do we know? Where are the pictures? Already, those questions are spreading in Pakistan and surely beyond. In the absence of photos and with his body given up to the sea, many people do not want to believe that Osama - the Great Emir to some, the fabled escape artist of the Tora Bora mountains to foe and friend alike - is really dead.
US officials are balancing that scepticism with the sensitivities that might be inflamed by showing images they say they have of the dead Al-Qaeda leader and video of his burial at sea. Still, it appeared likely that photographic evidence would be produced.
'We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden,' John Brennan, President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, said on Monday. He said the US will 'share what we can because we want to make sure that not only the American people but the world understand exactly what happened.'
In July 2003, the US took heat but also quieted most conspiracy theorists by releasing graphic photos of the corpses of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's two powerful sons to prove American forces had killed them.
So far, the US has cited evidence that satisfied the Navy Seal force, and at least most of the world, that they had the right man in Abbottabad, Pakistan. -- AP
