[EdGreene]

But the administration, fully aware of what the daily parade of coffins in Dover during the Vietnam War did to help stop the war, refuses to let Americans see them and has mugged our so-called "free press", preventing them from publishing photos of the coffins.
The woman who [published the one photo and her husband get fired, while at the same time, a man, using the Freedom Of Information act, got and is publishing the 300 photos sent him by the U.S.Air Force on his web site.

Are we babies, needing to be sheltered from the truth by the administration?

[angelize56]

I saw the photo...it was very sad....but not worth someone losing their job over. I didn't realize such photos were a problem for the government. And yes we should see the photos to remind us of the casualties of this war. The photo was poignant. Take care. angel

[combsdon]

well Angel....believe it or not.....there are some folks in the gov't that don't want us to see what's happening.....

[angelize56]

Hi Don: I know that! Did you see the pictures? Take care. angel

[angelize56]

This from '93:

Pentagon Manages War Coverage By Limiting Coffin Pictures
by Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON -- One of the lessons the U.S. government apparently learned from the Vietnam War is this: Don't let the American public see coffins arriving home with U.S. casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coffin images during the Vietnam era -- along with photos and video of body bags in the field and military officials talking constantly about "body counts" -- had a tremendous impact in prompting antiwar sentiment at home.

In a move by the Bush administration to suppress distressing images of war, the Defense Department issued a directive last March on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that declared:

"There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein (Germany) airbase or Dover (Del.) base, (and) to include interim stops."

There have always been some media restrictions at Dover Air Force Base -- the site of the largest Defense Department mortuary for the remains of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. But the new rule expands the blackout to all military bases.

Under the Pentagon clamp down, American fatalities will be reduced to statistics and the public will see little of the human side of the war.

Some in the Pentagon still blame the news media for the loss of South Vietnam. In a never-again mood after that war, the U.S. military planners designed the blueprint for future wars to limit media access -- as we saw later in Grenada and the first Gulf War.

Lt. Col. Cynthia Colin, a Defense Department spokeswoman, says the ban on media coverage stems from a compassion for the families, "to protect their wishes and privacy during the time of greatest loss and grief."

During Desert Storm in 1991, the first Persian Gulf war, several media organizations sued the Defense Department to gain access to Dover, arguing that the First Amendment barred the restrictions that the military imposed on the media.

But a U.S. District Court judge denied their claim, saying that the media did not have the right to view the return of coffins at Dover.

That ruling was upheld in 1996 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which agreed that the government's policy reduced hardships on families and protects their privacy.

Individual graveside ceremonies can be covered by the press with the permission of the relatives.

It is a deeply emotional experience for a president to attend a memorial service for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the country.

Of all the decisions a president has to make, the question of war has got to be the most wrenching. That's why it should not be left to one person. I hope Congress someday will reassert its constitutional right to declare war. That right hasn't been invoked since World War II and the congressional default gives U.S. presidents power that the founding fathers never intended them to have.

President Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for the Iraqi war dead but he has met with some of their families. On Memorial Day, he spoke of their sacrifices.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan attended heartbreaking services at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for the 241 service members killed in Beirut when a car bomb demolished the Marine barracks there.

He also was on hand at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987 to eulogize the men killed aboard the USS Stark.

I'll never forget the child who cried out during one of the memorial services: "I want my daddy."

I can understand why the White House and the Pentagon want to shut down coffin coverage on the nightly news.

The photos would be disturbing to anyone and -- if the war goes on much longer -- politically damaging to the president. But the families of the fallen Americans should not have to grieve alone. We can only share by knowing.

[angelize56]

And what Ed is talking about:

Pentagon Angered By Release Of War-Dead Casket Photos

POSTED: 8:26 a.m. EDT April 23, 2004

DOVER, Del. -- Photographs of flag-draped coffins bearing American casualties from Iraq should not have been made public under a Pentagon policy prohibiting media coverage of human remains, officials said.

"Quite frankly, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified," said John Molino, a deputy undersecretary of defense.

A Web site published dozens of photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation's largest military mortuary, prompting the Pentagon to order an information clampdown Thursday. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Keck said release of the photos appears to be in conflict with policy.

The photographs were released last week to First Amendment activist Russ Kick, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to receive the images. Air Force officials initially denied the request but decided to release the photos after Kick appealed their decision.

After Kick posted more than 350 photographs on his Web site, the Defense Department barred the further release of the photographs to media outlets.

"They're not happy with the release of the photos," Dover Air Force base spokesman Col. Jon Anderson said.

The photos were taken at the Dover base - home to the mortuary - and most of the images are of flag-draped coffins.

At a rally in Dover last month, war protesters criticized President Bush for continuing the practice of previous administrations of not allowing the public or media to witness the arrival of remains at the base.

"We need to stop hiding the deaths of our young; we need to be open about their deaths," said Jane Bright of West Hills, Calif., whose 24-year-old son, Evan Ashcraft, was killed in combat in July.

Telephone and e-mail messages to Kick were not immediately returned Thursday.

The Pentagon move came a day after a cargo worker was fired by a military contractor after her photograph of flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of U.S. soldiers was published on the front page of Sunday editions of The Seattle Times.

Tami Silicio, 50, was fired by Maytag Aircraft Corp. on Wednesday after military officials raised concerns about the photograph taken in Kuwait, said William L. Silva, Maytag president.

Silicio took the photograph in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait International Airport earlier this month. She sent the photo to a stateside friend who provided it to the newspaper, which then obtained permission from Silicio to publish it.

In a telephone interview from Kuwait, Silicio said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that she agreed to the photo's publication because family members of casualties should see that the remains are treated carefully and with respect.

"I think if the administration were more sympathetic, they would see that this is a positive thing," she said. Family members "want to see how our loved ones, how our heroes are being taking care of and how they get home."

[slickoe]

What would be more devastating would be pictures of the wounded. Because of improvements in flak jackets, MANY more GI's that would have otherwise been killed are surviving, but with horrific wounds. Loss of limbs, loss of sight, truly gruesome and life shattering injuries that in some cases death would be preferable to.

[CyBerAliEn]

It may be of note that this has not been allowed since the first Gulf War. This was not something that was started just for Afghanistan and the second Iraq war. Though as the article above states, 'coverage' of all bases and situations is now barred, where as before it must have been just a few bases.

[WarC]

It's common sense, really, if you think about, why the government would censor such things. I mean, if your trying to get people to support a war, and they see their dead brothers and sisters in coffins, it would be that much easier to give up or lose hope, even for a cause that could be as good as you can imagine (out of context with the current conflict and your personal opinion on it, basically...Make up a super-justifible war). Human emotion comes into play here, and government, politics and global war has very very little in the way of human emotion. (atleast in this way)

That said, I think they should show the damn things. But thats only because I know by seeing them it will only strengthen my resolve to "see it through", if you will. But it would be just as easy if not easier for someone somewhere else to come up with an abrupt conclusion about the conflict based solely on their own emotional response to said pictures.

Hopefully its clear where I was going there. Its hard for me to put my thoughts into words sometimes. Well, most of the time.

[jackal969k]

Just came across this.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Several dozen photographs of coffins recently identified by news organizations as remains of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq are really images from the space shuttle Columbia explosion last year, U.S. space officials said Friday.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said up to 73 images posted on a Web site, www.thememoryhole.org, that media organizations used were mistakenly identified as photos of casualties from Iraq.

"Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the space shuttle Columbia's crew as those of war casualties from Iraq," NASA said.

Earlier this month the U.S. Air Force released more than 300 photographs on the Internet site showing the remains of U.S. service members arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The decision to release the images, which depict coffins draped with American flags, were in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

A NASA spokesman, Bob Jacobs, said newspapers, news channels and wire services have mistakenly identified the photographs.

"Editors are being asked to confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb. 1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy," NASA said.

[ComputerFix]

On the one hand, why try to hide the reality (and as Angel noted, this is not a knew thing)


On the other, do not use the casket of my family/friend/any other soldier as a "prop" for either your support or anti- article/story/writing. They are not publicity material, no matter the stance.

As I understand it, none of these were the case (this time), was just to show "how it is done", but argumentation about "this administration" doesn't surprise me.

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by ComputerFix

On the one hand, why try to hide the reality (and as Angel noted, this is not a knew thing)


On the other, do not use the casket of my family/friend/any other soldier as a "prop" for either your support or anti- article/story/writing. They are not publicity material, no matter the stance.

As I understand it, none of these were the case (this time), was just to show "how it is done", but argumentation about "this administration" doesn't surprise me.

CF, you took the words from my mouth. There is a really fine line here, and CF just defined it. These are photos of someones loved ones. Why is my "right" to see the photo, outweigh the family's right to privacy? Why should these photos be used to sell more newspapers? Are we really that dumb to assume that no one has died? That the governemnt ios sheltering us or using it for their gain. Some people want to see problems and conspiracies everywhere, but in this case, has anyone maybe just concluded that it is none of our business to see these caskets. Once that soldier has died, it is a personal matter with their families and loved ones, and I will be eternally grateful that they gave their lives for a greater cause, but anything else is crass and exploitative.
I think the following column, one I happened across yesterday on a flight, illustrates CF's point exactly:



Bombing took her daughter, not her heart
Posted: April 24, 2004
Sometimes, my sister forgets his name, the man who murdered her daughter.

It was nine years ago last Monday that the man did the unimaginable. When Barbara, my sister, was younger, that kind of horror was beyond her belief; the anniversary of her change in thinking was last Monday, too.

She was visiting us when the clock struck nine years, and we talked about it, how she has coped, how any victim of terrorists could cope in a world of terrorists. She has come a million miles since April 19, 1995, although sometimes she feels she's back at the square numbered one.

Recently, she said, she took a break at work in Oklahoma City, picked up a copy of the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, and started flipping through it. Barbara stopped suddenly, as if in a grip. When she sees her dead daughter's name, it still startles her, still catches her in the throat.

The first two paragraphs of the story said:

"When Robbin Huff went to work at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19, 1995, she had a companion - her unborn daughter, Amber Denise Huff. They died together when (a) bomb destroyed the building.

"Yet the name of Amber Denise Huff does not appear on the official list of 168 victims killed in that horrendous crime."

A leader of the National Right to Life Committee had written the story, using Amber's death before birth so he could promote his own views and the views of the National Right to Life Committee.

Barbara wasn't contacted about the story, nor was Robbin's husband, Ron; Barbara and Ron just picked up newspapers, and there, again, was Robbin's name, nine years after she'd been murdered.

Robbin was seven months pregnant with her first child when she was killed. However, Robbin keeps dying, every time Barbara and Ron see her name in print or see pictures of the building shortly after the bomb went off.

"When they show the bombed-out building, Robbin is still in that building," Barbara said.

Yet, Barbara has had to forgive the murderer, for her sake and for the sake of her family.

"I didn't want to become bitter," she said. "So, to live, I had to forgive him, and now sometimes I can't even remember his name."

If she had returned the man's hatred and bitterness, she would have been chained to him. So she has tossed him aside, a nameless man who did something she can never forget, but she can forgive.

The trial of an associate of the murderer is going on now in Oklahoma City. The State of Oklahoma wants him dead. This time he is charged with Amber's death, which was not part of the federal trial.

And one of the most famous scenes of the 20th century - the steaming rubble - keeps returning on television and in newspapers during the long trial, and Barbara always sees her daughter in the ruins.

For all the families that had daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends die in the blast, the photograph hurts. The building is a giant tombstone.

"Our family just wants it over," Barbara said.

Since the bombing, her husband, Richard, has died. When the bomb exploded in the Murrah Building, he was in his office about a block away. The bomb blew in the back wall of his office and blew out the front window.

He had served twice, as a combat sergeant, in the Vietnam War, was wounded, and was awarded medals for crawling under fire to help his men. Then, in his own land, a former soldier killed his daughter, his unborn granddaughter, and nearly killed him, a career soldier, who had served so long and so well in his beloved U.S. Army.

Within a few years of Robbin's death, Barbara's husband died and our mother, who lived with Barbara, died, too. No one has to tell Barbara the way to the cemetery.

Still, Barbara has triumphed, showing tremendous courage, something alien to this man, like all of these men who are trying to destroy America.

If we haven't already, we should all follow what my sister has done. We should all do something to the terrorist that he would have hated the most.

Forget his name.

[angelize56]

*Wiping the tears from my eyes*

The son who came home for the Fourth of July

03 July 2004

The photographs of Patrick McCaffrey laid out on the table at the front of the reception hall were the record of a life cut short. There were pictures of Patrick as a young boy, a head of curly brown hair, posing in his judo outfit. There was one of him dressed to play American football and another, taken a few years later, of Patrick wearing a tuxedo and probably heading out to the high school prom. There was one of him with his family - a wife, a little girl and a son so proud that his father was a member of the California National Guard that he had asked for his own set of dog-tags.

Finally there was a photograph of Patrick with his unit in Iraq. It had been taken shortly before the ambush in which Patrick was killed. In the picture he is laughing with his friends. He was 34-years-old and - according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website - the 848th American soldier to die in Iraq.

"He was the life-saver in the unit," said Joyce Kilzono, one of several hundred friends attending the memorial reception, as she pointed at the photograph. "He looked after the others. That man there is my brother-in-law. He had been dehydrated and Patrick had been looking after him. He was caring for people right up until the end." Mrs Kilzono lowered her voice, turned and added: "There are a lot of us Americans who do not agree with what is going on over there."

There was nothing especially unusual about the death of Patrick McCaffrey - nothing about the attack on 22 June that killed him and a colleague to make the incident stand out from the hundreds of others in which young men from across the US have died amid the chaos in Iraq over the past 16 months.

Except, that is, that Patrick's mother, Nadia, is adamant her son's death shall not have been worthless. Her insistence that people be made aware of the situation in Iraq and the continuing stream of Iraqi and American casualties, this week placed her on a fast-track collision path with an administration that would rather the public only saw certain images from President George Bush's so-called war on terror.

When her son's body was flown to Sacramento international airport, she allowed - but did not invite, she insists - the media to attend. "I'm just hurt that my son's life is gone and they should stop what they're doing," she told the reporters, banned by Mr Bush from covering the return of military coffins to US Air Force bases. She said she planned to set up a group for the mothers of dead soldiers opposed to the war. And in recent days, when it came time to remember Patrick publicly, Mrs McCaffrey again wanted to share with people stories about her wonderful son.

She wanted to tell everyone about his infectious smile and his humour, his kindness to strangers and his devotion to his family. "My goal is to pass on Patrick's message, why and how he died," she told her hometown paper, the Tracy Press. "Try to talk about this and stop it. Enough war."

"He was overwhelmed by the hatred there for Americans and Europeans," she told another reporter. "He was so ashamed by the prisoner abuse scandal. He even sent me an e-mail to tell me that not all the soldiers were like that. He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there. Even so, he wanted to be a good soldier."

On a bright, sunny Thursday morning, at a memorial chapel in the small, neat town of Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, around 350 of Patrick's friends and relatives, many of them in uniform, came together to pay their respects and to remember him. Mrs McCaffrey invited The Independent to attend.

It was a day for two different narratives. For the military it was a chance to remember Patrick with full military honours, for a three-gun salute, to posthumously award him the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. It was an opportunity to sour the air with the regimental bagpipes and to insist - whatever his mother may have felt - that his death had not been in vain.

"What Patrick was doing was good and right and noble," said Paul Harris, chaplain of the 579th Engineer Battalion, of which Patrick was a member. "The good deeds he was doing will far outlive him. There are thousands, no, millions, of Iraqis who are grateful for his sacrifice."

Major General Thomas Eres, a tall, grey-haired adjutant general of California, had been sent by the Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to tell Patrick's family that his death in Iraq had come while fighting for a noble cause. There was no shame in that, he said, turning to Patrick's young widow, Silvia. "You can be very proud of him."

Governor Schwarzenegger sent his condolences, said the general, apparently unaware of the irony that the man who had spent most of his Hollywood career posing as an action hero was now the commander of America's largest National Guard unit and was sending messages of sympathy to those who had died in action rather than just on screen. There were hymns and prayers and brief eulogies from Patrick's friends from Alpha Company, who were resplendent in their green ceremonial uniforms, all with closely-cropped hair, many fighting back tears. Sergeant Michael Sundita, a thick-set young man, could barely get his words out. "Patrick had it all," he said.

It was announced that by order of the President of the United States, Patrick was to be posthumously promoted to sergeant and he would receive the Bronze Star for valour and the Purple Heart for wounds received in battle. It was the only reference all day to Mr Bush. He has not attended the funerals of any of the 860 or more US soldiers who have now been killed in Iraq.

And then Patrick was remembered with a three-gun salute, the honour guard standing in the doorway of the chapel. Everyone was asked to stand and either salute or else place their hand on their hearts.

Whose heart did not jump as the first volley was fired - echoing around the chapel? As the honour guard reloaded, one could hear the empty cartridge shells fall to the floor and roll. A baby started screaming. People wept as the second and third shots were fired. A prayer was read and then everyone filed outside into the sunshine, hugging Patrick's mother and father, Robert - the couple divorced but very much together on this morning.

Later that day, 20 miles west across the sun-scorched Californian hills, Patrick was again remembered by his friends. This occasion was less formal, a reception where people sat at tables, eating salad and corn and cold meat from plastic plates while young children not old enough to understand ran playfully around the tables - young, uninhibited life among the grief. At one point Patrick's nine-year-old son walked past, the silver dog-tag bouncing on his chest.

At this reception, where photographs of Patrick were laid on a table at the front of the reception hall next to his newly awarded medals, there was no talk of noble causes and of grateful Iraqis, of widows who should content themselves with the stiffly-folded Stars and Stripes flag that had covered the coffin. Indeed, not only was there no sign of Mr Bush but neither of the two-star general, who could have come straight from the stanzas of a Wilfred Owen poem.

Instead it was up to Patrick's friends, his work colleagues, the mothers of his friends, to remember the young man who had lost his life thousands of miles from his home. Patrick had never planned on going to Iraq, they said. He had been eager to join the National Guard in the aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001 and was happy enough to do the training. He had hoped the extra money would pay for his children, Patrick Jnr and Janessa, to have the university education on which he had missed out.

But he had also thought about the Iraqi children, said his friends. When he left for Iraq in March he took with him a specially-made T-shirt with a picture of his children on the front and of Iraqi children on the back. "I'm going for my children and for these children as well," it read. *More tears*

Marlene Cather, the manager of the car body repair shop in Palo Alto where Patrick had worked for 10 years, picked up a microphone placed at the front of the hall and remembered a young man with the best people skills in the shop. "That is why we put him at the 'meet and greet desk' near the door," she said.

Betty Bussell, mother of Patrick's schoolfriend Jim, remembered him and the other boys coming round to her house to watch sport on television. "He used to call me Mrs Bus," she laughed. She said she always thought of Patrick when she remembered that name. A woman called Grace who walked with a stick said she was certain that Patrick was present. "We have lost a young man but we have a special angel up in heaven," she said.

The afternoon wore on, plates were cleared from tables, and then Patrick's mother got up from her seat and walked to the front of the hall.

Nadia McCaffrey knew a thing or two about death. By her own reckoning she had almost died on three occasions - the first when she was a seven-year-old child in her native France and was bitten by a poisonous snake and the most recent just five years ago, when she had a fever that raged and raged and would not pass. Her near-death experiences, as she called them, helped her in her non-profit work with local hospices and people suffering from terminal illnesses. But nothing had readied Mrs McCaffrey for the death of her only child in Iraq.

She picked up the microphone, paused, looked around at the people in front of her, holding their gaze. "I'm looking at you all now and I cannot believe it. It's going to take a very long time," she said. "The last time I saw Patrick was on Father's Day. They had set up a web camera on the internet and I could see Patrick. I had to move away because I did not want him to see me crying. I knew at that instant that I would not see Patrick again." She continued: "Patrick was glowing that day. Watching him was overwhelming. The joy that was radiating from him - his face had an aura." Mrs McCaffrey said she had been given another picture of Patrick taken just an hour before he was ambushed in the city of Balad , 85 miles north of Baghdad. He died when his body armour failed to stop the volley of bullets that struck him in the chest.

In that picture, his mother said, Patrick is standing in his humvee, holding in his hand a bunch of wild flowers that had been given to him by some Iraqi children.

"He had the same smile on this face. That was one of the very last pictures. It was taken a very short time before his death," she said. "Patrick was at peace. Patrick was at total peace."

The memorial to Patrick McCaffrey was nearly complete. To conclude the day - prior to his burial on Friday morning near his wife's family's home in Oceanside - friends and family were asked to step outside for a toast.

For the adults there were shots of whiskey, Patrick's favourite drink and a reference to his Irish heritage, while the children were given yellow balloons, filled with helium. The toast was made, the whiskey hit the backs of their throats and the children let go of the balloons. They quickly rose into the sky, dozens of soaring bright flashes of colour caught by the breeze.

Within moments they were gone.

[Rep]

And Angel....we have a President that has yet to honor our fallen by standing at graveside. He would honor all, if he would only honor one.

[angelize56]

You're right Rep! You don't think he'd ever do that around election time do you?

How was your visit with Baklava.....John?