There are a lot of puzzled expressions
on people’s faces when it comes to the subject of the late Osama Bin
Laden and why the White House has not authorized the release of any
pictures of the body.
Photographs and video were released of
Saddam Hussein’s hanging, as well as post-mortem pictures of his
criminal sons, Uday and Qusay, after Delta Force took them out. Why not
release a few pictures of Public Enemy #1 to prove that he is dead and
show the world what happens when you take on the US of A?
Matt Bissonnette, one of the SEAL Team
Six operators on the raid, partially outs the reason in his book, No
Easy Day. The book reads, “In his death throes, he was still twitching
and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest
and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body
into the floor until he was motionless” (No Easy Day, Chapter 15).
But this is perhaps the most measured
and polite description that one could give of how operator after
operator took turns dumping magazines-worth of ammunition into Bin
Laden’s body, two confidential sources within the community have told
us. When all was said and done, UBL had over a hundred bullets in him,
by the most conservative estimate.
But was it illegal? Under the Laws of
Land Warfare, a soldier is fully authorized to put a few insurance
rounds into his target after he goes down. Provided the enemy is not
surrendering, it is morally, legally, and ethically appropriate to shoot
the body a few times to ensure that he is really dead and no longer a
threat. However, what happened on the Bin Laden raid is beyond
excessive. The level of excess shown was not about making sure that Bin
Laden was no longer a threat. The excess was pure self-indulgence.
You may not care if Bin Laden got some
extra holes punched in him, few of us do, but what should concern you is
a trend within certain special operations units to engage in this type
of self-indulgent, and ultimately criminal, behavior. Gone unchecked,
these actions get worse over time.
The real issue is not that Bin Laden was
turned into Swiss cheese, but rather that this type of behavior has
become a Standard Operating Procedure in this unit. Of course, these
attitudes and behaviors do not come out of nowhere.
Endless back-to-back combat deployments, PTSD, broken families, and war
itself all plays into it.
Now you know the real reason why the
Obama administration has not released pictures of Osama Bin Laden’s
corpse. To do so would show the world a body filled with a ridiculous
number of gunshot wounds. The picture itself would likely cause an
international scandal, and investigations would be conducted which could
uncover other operations, activities which many will do anything to
keep buried.
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