No sooner is bin Laden shot dead than a photograph of his bullet ridden face goes viral. The photo below (right) is all over the web. Only one problem: it's an obvious fake, as Russell Boyce reports on the Reuters blog.
I suspect this image will have a long afterlife on the internet. Who knows where it originated? Perhaps it was simply a portrait left out too long in the rain? (Update 9:43 AM. Photo origin revealed)
Meanwhile we're still awaiting real photographs. The corpse has already been buried at sea, so the window for photographing it was quite limited. Nevertheless I feel pretty sure that some photos must be out there. I think their release will probably be very carefully controlled to keep from inflaming an already tense situation. But I suspect that eventually, perhaps soon, they will find their way into the public sphere.
Many strange currents at play here. The (out-dated?) reliance on photography as irrefutable documentation. The rush to fill the 24/7 news cycle. The head-on-a-spike mentality. And immortal internet ghosts...