It's a tricky situation: your political opponent has just ordered the death of the nation's sworn enemy, but you want to try to paint him as a wimp. How do you pull it off? For Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate, Fox News personality and reality TV star, the answer is to accuse Barack Obama of dereliction of duty by not releasing photos of the bloody corpse of Osama bin Laden. Republicans have been painting Democrats as national security wusses for decades--and many liberals, like Peter Beinart, celebrated bin Laden's death as an end to Democrats "wimp factor."  But Palin will have none of that. Less than an hour after reports that Obama had decided not to release the photos, she tweeted:

The Drudge Report seems disappointed:

Michelle Malkin says the president is capitulating to overly-sensitive Muslims overseas. "Dhimmitude and non-disclosure prevail. Back to business as usual, America. Islamic Rage Boy, 1. Obama, 0," Malkin writes. "As I’ve reminded you all many times over the last decade: We didn’t start the fire. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago. You can’t further 'inflame' a global inferno anymore than the deadly inflammation the Koran has inspired for centuries."

Sen. Lindsey Graham was more muted in his response: "I respectfully disagree with President Obama’s decision not to release the photos. It’s a mistake."

Sen. Susan Collins thinks releasing just "a couple photos" would be best. "[W]hat I'm worried about is there will be this mythology that will arise that somehow Osama bin Laden escaped, or isn't really dead or someone else was killed... I think if there's a way to release a couple of the pictures, hopefully ones that aren't as gruesome--they are going to be inherently gruesome because there were shots to his head--that it would help prevent that mythology from arising."

Photo by Reuters.

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Elspeth Reeve