Photographing the Dead al-Zarqawi

Fox News’ Shepard Smith wondered if showing photographs of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s dead body will hurt public opinion of the U.S. in the region.

Dan Senor, Fox News analyst and former senior advisor to then-Presidential Envoy Paul Bremer, explained it was important to quickly squash the prospect for rumor and convincingly demonstrate to the Iraqi public that al-Zarqawi was in fact dead.

Appearing today on Studio B w/Shepard Smith, Senor said that if authorities had simply said a DNA test proved al-Zarqawi’s death, it would have been unconvincing to many Iraqis.

The same occurred when Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s sons, who were killed in a shootout.  Officials believed so strongly that Iraqis needed to see Uday and Qusay’s dead bodies to convince them that they were dead, plastic surgeons spent hours fixing their bodies and faces before taking photos and video.

Technorati Tags: al-Zarqawi, Iraq, public relations