Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Well, I just heard today that the Bush administration is denying access > to journalists the funerals and even the return on air bases of bodies > from the war. So, slightly on topic - this news was widely discussed by press photographers. No classic Leica images of grieving families for us to worry about: Pentagon keeps dead out of sight Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war Even body bags are now sanitized as 'transfer tubes' TIM HARPER WASHINGTON BUREAU (excerpt) ... Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga. In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war - the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs - into a far corner of the nation's attic. No television cameras are allowed at Dover (Charles C. Carson mortuary, in Delaware). Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism. ... If stories of wounded soldiers are told, they are told by hometown papers, but there is no national attention given to the recuperating veterans here in the nation's capital. More than 1,700 Americans have been wounded in Iraq since the March invasion. "You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University. "Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country." ... FULL STORY: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A rticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1067728207768&call_pageid=968332188854&col=96 8350060724 OR http://tinyurl.com/td53 And here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55816-2003Oct20.html "Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets. To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases. In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "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, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains... more at link above"ers/unsub.html > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html