Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ah, found it

From the VIllage Voice blogs: Osama Bin Laden Story Changes: No Weapon, Wife Human Shield? Death Photo Coming Soon

White House officials can't get their story straight about what happened in the Pakistani compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed. Though officials have clarified that he was shot twice -- in the head and in the chest -- reports from Monday that Bin Laden was using a woman, probably his wife, as a human shield so he could fire back at U.S. troops are now being backpedaled on, horrifying and villainous as they are. "He was firing behind her," an anonymous official said Monday morning. Later on Monday, an official told Politico, "I'm not aware of him having a weapon." Another official gave conflicting information that, "A different guy's wife was killed, while Bin Laden's wife was "injured but not killed." A separate official said no woman was used as a human shield.

"Two women were shot here. It sounds like their fates were mixed up," an anonymous official explained. "This is hours old and the full facts are still being ascertained as those involved are debriefed."

Bin Laden's son Khalid was said to have been killed in the raid, but maybe it was Hamza, according to an official transcript. Based on what Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan has said, it seems that the important people watched a live feed of the raid and then read reports afterward to flesh out what they saw, though confirmation about the existence of a video feed has been hard to come by, too.

From the White House's point of view, what should probably happen is that officials should shut their mouths about what happened if they're going to conflict one another because rumors are spreading like crazy in this case. That said, as journalists, getting anyone and everyone who knows anything to talk, even if they're contradicting one another, is a victory because the only way we'll ever settle on a truth is if those with doubts and eyes and ears for detail keep asking questions and comparing answers.

As far as basic confirmation of what happened in that house, ABC's Jake Tapper reports that President Obama and the White House are considering releasing a "bloody and gruesome" photograph today of Bin Laden's corpse, "with a bullet wound to his head above his left eye," in order to "put to rest any skepticism about the death of this nation's public enemy number one."

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