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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (33082)	8/13/2005 5:36:01 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 361982

Same courier, different story. Was carrying a little birdie with him, what sez a jailbreak is planned for Monday. Keep them cards and letters coming. Cindy America Rocks. So does Helen Thomas. Hardest working old gal in the world. TTR Public Will Get Better View Of Cost Of War Bad News Hurting President's Popularity Helen Thomas, Hearst White House columnist POSTED: 10:04 am EDT August 11, 2005 The American people -- sheltered for the last two years from some photos of the grim reality of the war in Iraq -- are beginning to see more images of the kind that had previously been suppressed. As the result of a freedom of information lawsuit, the Pentagon has now agreed to release "as expeditiously as possible" some photographs of the caskets of American servicemen and women. The successful plaintiff was Ralph Begleiter, a journalism professor at the University of Delaware, who was once a broadcaster on CNN. Backing him up in the litigation was the National Security Archive, a research group affiliated with George Washington University. The public got its first glimpse of flag-draped caskets being flown to Dover Air Force Base, Del., when a batch of photos was "mistakenly released" in April 2004, according to the Pentagon. The Pentagon had issued a ban on all photos showing military caskets in 1991. The ban was apparently prompted by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who wanted to prevent a repetition of split-screen TV pictures like those in 1989 that showed President H.W. Bush laughing and joking about the swift victory in the U.S. attack on Panama at the same time that an Air Force transport plane was unloading caskets at Dover. The White House was furious about the televised contrast. The Pentagon reissued a directive during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that banned news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing" from air bases. The Pentagon claimed it was trying to protect the privacy of military families. This was "a decision that reversed decades of tradition," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. Family members have the option of barring news coverage of burial services of war casualties. Blanton said families of war dead divide about 50-50 over whether they want press coverage at funeral services. The stunning photographs from the Vietnam War are engraved in our memory. Remember a little Vietnamese girl running down the road aflame from a napalm bomb? Or the policeman who put a gun to the head of a Viet Cong captive? In those days, print and television news photographers were on hand and took the indelible photographs that brought the war into the American living rooms. Seeing how cameramen in Iraq today take risks to get photos, I'm reminded of a remark by the famed World War II photographer Robert Capa: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." The Pentagon said 1,836 members of the U.S. military have been killed in the Iraqi war. There are no figures on the Iraqi dead, but unofficial estimates of the Iraqi civilian death toll run from 25,000 to 100,000. Meanwhile, the tragic losses suffered by a group of Marine reservists from Ohio received full-blown treatment by the news media. There is no doubt that some of the bad war news is beginning to rub off on the president's popularity. Public opinion polls show his approval rating for handling the Iraqi war has dropped to 38 percent. U.S. military officials indicate they are hoping for a substantial reduction in American troops in Iraq by next spring. They say that Iraqi forces will be better trained to relieve the American troops by then. Of course, there's also the fact that the American people are getting fed up. There are those mid-term congressional elections next fall, and Republicans are getting worried that more of the administration's "stay the course" policy is getting stale. Public release of the photos depicting the ultimate sacrifice in war is a start in showing the public the cost of this invasion. The Iraqi war will no longer be out of sight and out of mind. (Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).