The latest portraits of U.S. soldiers' sacrifices
By BARRY SAUNDERS, Staff Writer
Wow, what a pair of great guys. If President Bush, and his father before him, were any more sensitive, I don't think America could survive them.
So concerned are they for the sensibilities of Americans that they want to protect us from seeing caskets bearing fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, after they've been killed in Iraq and are being returned to the United States.
It's for our own good and for the good of the slain soldiers' survivors, they tell us.
If you believe that, you'll also believe I've got the location of a station where you can buy $1 gas.
The reason the Pentagon instituted its policy of forbidding pictures of the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 (in the first Bush's presidency), and is still enforcing it now, has nothing to do with protecting the sensibilities of survivors of Americans killed in Iraq. To buy the White House rationale, you'd have to believe that survivors would not be able to accept the sight of row upon row of flag-draped coffins being readied for homecoming ceremonies.
The real fallout feared by the White House, during the presidencies of both Bushes (and in the intervening Clinton years), is political.
It's instructive that Fox News Channel, which has become the journalistic equivalent of a Bush administration public relations firm, has neither shown the photos nor, as far as I know, reported on the flap surrounding them. To do so would make the war and its deadly effects even more tangible for millions of Americans. That would not redound to the political glory of Fox's favorite president.
Nothing makes a war more real, or amplifies the senselessness of this particular war, than the sight of scores of caskets being readied for shipment to local funeral homes. Those quiet, stark images, even more so than the bloody pictures we routinely see on television, speak eloquently of the war's savagery and loss.
During Vietnam, the first "television" war brought directly into our homes, bombings, death and mayhem were nightly staples of both television and print journalism.
The one image that remains, though, is a quiet one. and also the most powerful. A national weekly magazine published, with no text, individual pictures of scores of U.S. servicemen. They apparently had nothing in common except the uniforms they wore. Only elsewhere in the magazine did readers discover that these were the soldiers who'd been killed during a week in Vietnam.
That was as poignant as the solemn pictures that appeared in newspapers and on TV this week of rows of flag-covered cases used by the military to transport remains, after many such photos were made available through the Freedom of Information Act.
Fox News does not think the sight of U.S. dead in coffins is newsworthy. Nor has the network given much attention to the woman who photographed flag-draped coffins in a separate instance -- she said she wanted Americans to appreciate the dignity and care with which the remains were treated -- and was subsequently fired by the contractor who employed her.
Wanna bet that Fox would find it mighty newsworthy if she'd been fired for, say, posting on the Internet a picture of Bill Clinton with an intern?
A picture, the old saying goes, is worth a thousand words, but when it comes to protecting this president and a war that Fox has boosted, a picture isn't worth a single word.
If President Bush was really concerned about the sensibilities of survivors, he would have made sure there were fewer families touched by death in Iraq, by not rushing into a war based on faulty intelligence.
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