| Subject: U.S. govt.-Illegal to view the dead |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 06:45:41 04/24/04 Sat
In reply to:
Tammie
's message, "The War" on 08:12:21 03/22/03 Sat
As Bush's endless crusade to lie, hide the truth, & keep U.S. citizens in the dark. We have a new one. It's now against the law to see those lost in this USELESS, & expensive war or their coffins. You can even get fired for taking pix of them, or displaying & distributing those pix.
Actually this law, was pushed through by the president's father, former president Bush Sr. The reasoning back then was viewing the casualties of war reminded too many people of Vietnam & stirred up too many protests.
Until now though, the law was rarely heard of or enforced. As usual Bush has to twist things around & say the law is to protect families... even though no names or faces were used... just caskets with flags.
Golly, thank god we have someone like Bush protecting my family.
Retired uncle Bob doesn't have a pot to piss in, & we have to give him food to survive. My nephew with 2 science degrees makes about as much money as a pimply-face kid flippin burgers at McDonalds. I had to start working out of town & even out of the country so I wouldn't go bankrupt this winter.
Now the war administration wants to send 20,000 more of our children to Iraq to be mentally scarred for life, physically crippled, or maybe be killed. But that's not enough, now they want to start drafting our kids again so they can have an almost unlimited supply of dead.
No wonder they're afraid coffins may remind us of Vietnam.
Just think how much better life would be today if we never went to war against Iraq.
But at least booosh is concerned about our family's feelings.
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President Bush considers the release of photographs of flag-draped military coffins a reminder of the fallen troops' sacrifice, but he believes family privacy should be respected, the White House said yesterday.
Pentagon officials said the photos, issued last week and posted on an Internet site, should not have been made public under a policy prohibiting media coverage of human remains. Some activists argue that the photos, released last week, underscore the war's human cost.
"America knows full well that our men and women are serving, and serving brilliantly, both in Iraq and around the world.... America is aware this is a war against terrorism," Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said. But, he said, "The message is, the sensitivity and privacy of families of the fallen must be the first priority."
The photographs were released to First Amendment activist Russ Kick, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
Kick posted dozens of photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation's largest military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, prompting the Pentagon on Thursday to bar further release of the photographs to media outlets.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Gary Keck, said release of the 361 photos appeared to be in conflict with policy.
"They're not happy with the release of the photos," said Col. Jon Anderson, a spokesman for the Dover base.
Duffy said he did not know whether Bush had personally weighed in on the Pentagon's move to overturn the base's decision, or whether Bush considered the released photos an affront to the families.
The photos were taken at the Dover base, and most were of flag-draped caskets used by the military to transport remains. But Anderson said yesterday that the photos also included images of the remains of casualties from Afghanistan.
The Inquirer and other media across the country published photos obtained by Kick. Two photos on the front page of yesterday's editions of The Inquirer, and another on Page A11, showed flag-draped coffins containing the remains of military personnel killed in the line of duty.
According to his Web site, Kick, who has not returned phone calls or e-mail from the Associated Press, requested all Dover photos from Feb. 1, 2003, to the present. "He wasn't distinguishing between what he wanted," Anderson said. "He just wanted everything."
At a rally in Dover last month, war protesters criticized 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.
On NBC's Today yesterday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina agreed with the policy banning photos from Dover because "there's no ceremony held; it's a caretaking event."
Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, said photos of caskets coming home from Vietnam had a tremendous impact on the way Americans came to view that war.
"As people began to see the reality of it and see the 55,000 people who were killed coming back in body bags, they became more and more upset by the war," he said. "This is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war."
The Pentagon move came a day after a military contractor fired a cargo worker because her photograph of flag-draped remains was published on the front page of Sunday editions of the Seattle Times.
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