Last night I asked for your opinions on whether or not the President should authorize the release of photos of bin Laden in death. I’ve read many of them and learned a lot. There are so many and so many good ones I don’t know where to start in reprinting any, though I may come back to it later today. I’d say on balance, though I haven’t done a formal count, they lean against release. But there’s a tremendous diversity of opinion.

I also read this piece in The New Yorker by Philip Gourevitch, arguing against the release. His argument is basically moral and aesthetic: let’s leave the visual memory of bin Laden’s killing as that already classic photo from the White House Situation Room or the celebrations after the announcement rather than a gruesome death photo.

I can’t say I’m any more sure what the right answer is but I’ve gone from believing it’s a gruesome necessity to thinking it may be a bad idea, at least so soon.

The wheels were already in motion for the raid that would take out Osama bin Laden when Washington gathered Saturday for its glitziest event of the year: