Why Bin Laden had to die

Initial reports of military actions are like the first receipt the Safeway cashier gives you, inflated. Fog of war and all that, but the second reports never make the US military look better, any more than the “mistakes” made by Safeway cashiers are somehow never in your favor.

(Guess where I just came from and guess who tried to over-charge me $5?)

Anyway, I’m assuming until proven otherwise that the reason we’re not seeing the Bin Laden pictures is that he was shot at extreme close range and was wearing Winnie the Pooh pajamas.

Not that it matters. Bin Laden was always going to be shot dead after making a threatening gesture. In the same way that Clinton executed brain-damaged Ricky Rector to prevent him becoming another Willie Horton, and would likely have lost the 1992 election had he not done so, so Obama had to kill Bin Laden to prevent him becoming another Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If shooting Bin Laden dead sealed his re-election, taking him alive would very likely have led to endless demagoguery over where he was held and whether he was tried and by whom and when and where he’d be executed, and whatever Obama did would be wrong and he might very well have lost the 2012 election. Capturing Bin Laden alive would just have been dumb electoral politics.