5 Years Too Late

I'm not saying I'm into death photos, but I do think it's disrespectful to bar images of soldiers coming home. Not the cute ones with husbands meeting wives and kids on the tarmac. I'm talking the ones that made the ultimate sacrifice. Seems Bush and Rumsfeld had a bias against dead soldiers. "Make them go away" so we can sell our fake war without the moral and human destruction creeping into their fairy tale.

A new bill has been introduced to change that:

The Secretary of Defense shall grant access to accredited members of the media at military commemoration ceremonies and memorial services conducted by the Armed Forces for members of the Armed Forces who have died on active duty and when the remains of members of the Armed Forces arrive at military installations in the United States.

The current Defense policy, which was updated in 2003, states that there shall be no “media coverage of” the returning war dead. In the five years of the Iraq war, during which more than 4,100 U.S. troops have died, photos of military caskets have leaked out on at least three occasions. Military officials have defended the rule by saying it is in place out of respect to service members and their loved ones.

Who made that decision? The families?

Photographs of returning military dead were permitted during Vietnam. Those images reminded us how horrible war is. Bush's 40 year coke/booze bender helped him escape that fact. Too bad for the 4000+ dead.