Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

If he was "moved" by them, maybe they'll turn up on one of his campaign commercials.

I mean, he's already used a shot of that 9-11 casket...

A couple of MoveOn ads.

1. show bush doing his oval office thing on
where are those weapons of mass destruction.

Switch to a flag draped coffin with a voice over
of: Why don't you ask them Mr President,
they died looking for them.

2. Show Bush doing has comment that it did not matter that we found no WMD.

Show the coffins with the comment tell them it did not matter Mr. President.

Show Bush carrying his made-for-TV turkey past the American servicemen body bags stacked up in that Baghdad hangar. Which he did, sad to say.

You think Bush was 'moved' because he saw flag-draped coffins for the first time? Or have I missed the news that he actually attended a military funeral.

Now that he's 'moved', does Silicio get her job back?

This is a test of everyone's maturity. I was unendingly sad when I looked at those pictures, as I am when I look at the pictures of all of the US soldiers who have died in Iraq. I was proud to see the respect that their bodies were given by their comrades. It is a duty for all in the US to look at these pictures.

ANYONE who tries to use them pictures for any advantage will reap the whirlwind. The Vietnam Memorial, and the memorials all over Europe to the dead of WWI gain their power in a similar way. It is independent of whether one supports a particular war or not.

There is a story on Space.com that the photo released by the Air Force was the astronauts that died in the space flight re-entry.
Not servicemen and women from Iraq.

Russ Kick of memoryhole.org issued a correction
that the pics he obtained through FOIA contained the astronautss. 73 were Columbia astronauts and the rest (288) were those of the war dead.
He gave a detailed explanation for how they were mislabeled. Short version: DoD didn't tell him and he didn't know.

Interesting item from Joanathan Alter in the new Newsweek. (Note particularly the second paragraph.)

"But 'privacy' and 'respect for the families' are fig leaves. The caskets had no names on them, so no one's privacy could possibly have been invaded. If broader national security ('America is at war') is the excuse, how long does that last? The war on terror could go on for a generation.

"It's true that many (though hardly all) families of the dead—being on the military side of the great military/media cultural divide—support the policy. But this would carry more weight if accommodating families were truly the Pentagon's aim. It isn't. For a year now, according to the Army Times, the military has put every obstacle possible in the way of family members who want to go to Dover to receive their loved ones. One family specifically asked for media coverage of a burial at Arlington. Request denied.

"The bottom line is that this government doesn't trust the people. It didn't trust them with the real reasons for going to war or the price tag. It doesn't want to fight an image war at home when the United States is already losing that fight in the Arab world. But it's patronizing to assume that Americans won't bear the cost of war if the cause is just. They are bearing that cost so far, as President Bush's healthy poll numbers amid a week of bad news attests. The same folks who, often rightly, accuse liberals of fostering a 'nanny state' that treats the public like helpless children are now doing the same. They think 'Joe Public,' as Bush calls him in Bob Woodward's new book, can't handle the truth."

I notice the article doesn't say just what part or aspect of Bush was "moved." Given that he seems to think rarely, and feels little but spite, hate, and hunger, what part of him was "moved"? His hand? Foot? His intestines?

How oh how does someone whose barely literate get tenure?

The ban was enacted 10 years ago, well before Bush.

Anyway, if you like seeing dead americans - why not pop down to your local morgue and have a good gloat, puff your chest up and feel like a brave proud patriotic democrat, a man who can look someone elses death in the face and smell political advantage.

As Alter points out, it was enacted by Cheney personally, under Bush Senior, because he didn't think allowing returning returning coffins to be shown would do much for the popularity of the Gulf War. And as for "looking someone else's death in the face and smelling political advantage": it's the Bushites who are doing that. See Alter's second paragraph again on how they deliberately ignore the families' own wishes whenever it works AGAINST the Administration's political popularity.

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Licentia poetica - Poetic licence. (Seneca)

Non omnia possumus omnes - Not all of us are able to do all things (We can't all do everything.) (Virgil)

Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire - I came, I saw, I want to go home

Semper fi, Semper fidelis

Id tibi praebet speciem lepidissimam! - It looks great on you!