America got hardly any respite between people calling for President Obama to show his birth certificate and people calling for the photographic evidence of Osama bin Laden's death. On Wednesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart discussed the media's take on the photos of the dead terrorist and made his own case for why they should be shown.
Even though bin Laden's widow identified his body, there are still people doubting that he was really killed. Now that the White House has officially decided not to release the pictures, the media is asking, why not show them to put skeptics to rest? The most obvious reason would be the gore factor, and we're not talking about the former V.P.
Stewart argued that what some call pictures of gaping head wounds and splattered brain matter, America calls "primetime." He insisted that there's more gore in the opening scene of an episode of "CSI" or "Bones" than could possibly be in the bin Laden photos (and even did his best David Caruso impression.)
Aside from the graphic nature of the images, other pundits argued that releasing the photo could provoke the Muslim world to retaliate. Stewart immediately threw this out the window:
"The extremists over there already hate us, and I don't know if you know this, but the Muslim world sees pretty graphic images of people we kill on purpose or accidentally all the time."
Stewart even suggested that the White House let journalists and reporters see the photos and vouch for them in order to validate the kill. And while they're at they can turn it into a haunted house!
But all kidding aside, Stewart made a poignant argument at the end of the segment. He made the case that having zero photo evidence of the tens of thousands of Iraqis as well as U.S. soldiers who have died in the Middle East conflicts prevents us from truly understanding war.
"Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians... We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is."
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