America: The Strong Horse (Updated)

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic blogs:

The killing of Bin Laden does many things for America; one of the most obvious is that it restores our deterrent capability — not with the remains of al Qaeda, but with other nefarious players, including and especially those in the Middle East who wish to do us harm. Osama Bin Laden once said that people will bet on the strong horse, not the weak horse. Today, the U.S. is the strong horse.

Meanwhile at Ricochet, Denise Moss asks:

After years of speculating on secret tunnels and impenetrable caves, Bin Laden could actually order take out.  Okay, what does this say about our relationship with Pakistan?  What relationship?

That’s a topic that Richard Fernandez explores at the Belmont Club. And at the Tatler, Roger L. Simon writes that while today is indeed a major achievement in what was once called the Global War on Terror, don’t expect flying on commercial aviation to get much easier — or more relaxing — in the short-term.

Related: CBS News Tweets: “Al-Arabiya correspondent in Islamabad: two of Osama bin Laden’s wives and 4 of his sons captured during the raid.”

And Ace notes, “So, the Guantanamo suspects that some people wanted to release and some people didn’t want to interrogate harshly actually gave up the courier. Four years ago. Ahem.”

Meanwhile Tim Blair reminds us that some things never change at Reuters, which can’t even bring itself to utter the T-word for Osama. I guess one man’s dead terrorist is another news agency’s martyred “freedom” fighter.

And Small Dead Animals declares the fate of a tall dead animal as “a huge setback for civil rights lawyers.”

Heh — Osama bin Laden dead, Ramsey Clark hardest hit.

And presumably we’ll know soon enough if there’s any truth to this recent Wikileaks leak.

Update: Brainless body meets the Aloha Snackbar: today’s New York Post cover added above; The New York Daily News is anything, even more blunt. This Newseum page should have lots more covers added by the time today is out.

Meanwhile, the London Daily Mail has a Drudge-linked article with what they say could be a photo of the OBL after he was sentenced via Rule #303, as Breaker Morant would say. Though Nathan Wurtzel tweets, “Jennifer Griffin [of Fox News] reports senior US officials say any ‘dead bin Laden’ photos you see on Internet at this time are fakes.” Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic tweets, “Alleged photo of dead bin Laden is photoshop job; beard would have grayed considerably as compared to pic, which appears to be 1/2 from 98.”

Whoever it is, it’s a gruesome photo indeed; this is your official content warning before clicking over.

And regarding OBL’s newly-arrived afterlife aquatic, Patterico is brutal: “How long did it take Obama to f*** this up? Not long…I have a feeling this whole burial-at-sea and ‘Islamic law’ thing is going to come as kind of a nasty little surprise.” Read the whole thing.