Lieberman: Release Bin Laden Pics

Politico reports:

Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins said the White House should release the photos taken of Osama bin Laden’s body to “quell any doubts” about the terrorist leader’s death.

The senators, top members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, both said they would defer to President Barack Obama on whether to go public with the photos, but leaned toward releasing the shots or other evidence that bin Laden was killed.

The administration is said to be grappling with whether to release the gruesome images and risk the repercussions of publicizing them.

Obama’s counterterrorism chief John Brennan said the White House is still considering whether to release a photograph of bin Laden’s body, or other evidence to convince any skeptics that U.S. force killed bin Laden. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden,” Brennan said.

“That’s a very difficult decision and I’ll leave it up to the administration and the president,” Lieberman (I-Conn.) said. “There is a problem here though. Unless there’s an acknowledgment by people in Al Qaeda that bin Laden is dead, then it may be necessary to release the pictures — as gruesome as they inevitably will be because he’s been shot in the head — to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American government has carried out. So my own instinct is it’s necessary to release those pictures, but I will respect whatever decision the president makes.”