About That Ban On Showing The Coffins

[theshadow]

We all have heard that Bush banned the showing of returning coffins from Iraq. I grew up during Viet Nam and remember that well on the evening news. Of course, that's what helped the anti-war movement (as well as coverage of American soldiers getting blasted in the jungles). No surprise that Bush and his minions want to block these images like the plague. Obviously, he can do this because he controls the military bases. But how long can he keep this up... forever because no one is yelling about it? Are our journalists too co-opted to question this? Just musing... this really bugs me.

[supernova]

1. I don't know

Is it just that you can't get onto Dover AFB anymore?

I think the coffins should be shown, personally. I didn't want the bodies of the men killed in Falluja all fuzzed out either.

It's the height of intellectual dishonesty to do a nonstop "WAR! WAR! WAR!" chant and then not want to face the consequences of that chant.

[ieoeja]

8. Randi Rhodes took a call from Dover yesterday!

The woman who called gets to see the coffins. She said they are unloaded like another piece of cargo. No flags. No salutes. No honor guard. So being allowed on Dover AFB would still not let you see flag drapped coffins.

[supernova]

10. What?!?

unloaded like another piece of cargo. No flags. No salutes. No honor guard.

:wow: :wow:

That's disgraceful!!!

:wow: :wow:

Those dead soldiers have every right to have that, regardless if no one else is watching or not!!

Thanks for that. I missed listening for a few days b/c my audio was wonky. We need to be raising hell about this!!!

I would think if the families knew how their relatives' bodies were recieved so pitifully that they would be very angry. I certainly would be.

[louis-t]

2. I remember reading the news in 1970

an article about what the VC were doing to dead American soldiers. I asked my dad what castration was. He suggested I look it up. I was 12.

[democracyindanger]

3. The rule

on showing caskets has existed since Clinton, but the difference is under Clinton is was never enforced whereas Bush has made sure it is.

The press finally figured out the loophole, however. They are now showing bodybags in Iraq (see yesterday's NYT).

[stellanoir]

4. So instead. . .

We have photo's of scorched and mutilated corpses hanging over the Tigris, a Marine dutifully carrying a body bag of a commrade, another soldier yanking a wounded soldier out of a tank. Look these things can only be repressed for so long.

Just like the shrouded breasts of Lady Liberty at the Department of Justice, I swear, culminated in a most visible "wardrobe malfunction".

So something very few would have seen culminated into something we could not avoid (even if we wanted to) over the course of time.

I believe the same thing can only happen with the repression at Dover.

[VolcanoJen]

6. Exactly... also, photos like these

Thanks to saigon68, who has been making sure that DUers see these photographs.

You can't wrap fire in paper...


CAPTION: U.S. Marines pray over a fallen comrade at a first aid point after he died from wounds suffered in fighting in Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), Thursday, April 8, 2004. Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been fighting insurgents in several neighborhoods in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah in order to regain control of the city. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)


CAPTION: U.S. soldiers carry a colleague from the scene of an attack on their convoy in Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), in this image made from video Thursday, April 8, 2004. Two marines were wounded in the attack when their vehicle was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade. (AP Photo/US Pool via APTN)

[HornBuckler]

7. You Mean "Transfer Tubes"

:)

Go Blazers!

[Vadem]

5. What we need is an intrepid photographer with a long-range

lens...and no acknowledgment of who took the picture! He (or she) could post it on the net and it would go around the world in five minutes.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. What would keep somebody from stacking up 650 empty

coffins, draped with flags, and taking a picture? With a caption something like,

"If the Bush Administration were not censoring the news, you would have seen this many coffins filled with dead Americans coming home from Iraq."

[VolcanoJen]

11. That's a good protest tactic, too.

650+ protestors drop to the ground, lay still, to illuminate how much America has lost in this horrific, unnecessary, immoral war.

[supernova]

12. I would say that person was smart!!

;-)