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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

White House bans news coverage of coffins returning from Iraq

By Bill Vann

23 October 2003

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The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Bush administration has ordered the Pentagon to prevent any news coverage of the bodies of US troops being sent home from Iraq. The blackout on casualties is part of the attempt by the White House to recast the nightmare in Iraq as a “good news” story.

“Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of US soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped coffins,” wrote the Post’s White House reporter Dana Milbank. “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 the post-Vietnam War era, the return of the remains of US military personnel killed overseas was generally treated as a solemn state occasion. The trauma over Vietnam and the deaths of more than 58,000 soldiers had forced a break with the policy that prevailed during that war, in which the phrase “sent home in a body bag” summed up the indifference exhibited by the US government toward the troops in the field.

Thus, President Jimmy Carter attended memorial ceremonies held at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the site of the military’s largest mortuary, when bodies were brought back from the failed hostage rescue attempt in Iran. Reagan pinned medals on the coffins of US Marines killed in El Salvador and attended memorials for the 241 Marines who died in the Beirut barracks bombing. George Bush the elder paid similar homage to soldiers killed in Panama and Lebanon, while elaborate ceremonies were staged to greet returning caskets at Dover, Andrews Air Force Base, Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and elsewhere.

The military command and the US government have never doubted the impact of these images. Army General Henry Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented in 1999 that any US foreign military intervention would have to pass the “Dover test,” meaning the public’s reaction to photographs and news footage of caskets coming off of military transport planes.

The present administration has decided that it will simply not take this test. Instead, it chides the news media for focusing on the killing and maiming of US military personnel in attacks by resistance forces—presently averaging 25 a day—not to mention the killing and wounding of Iraqi civilians. Instead, it insists that the print and broadcast news trumpet supposed accomplishments, like the issuing of a new US-designed currency.

For the most part, the big business media has complied, keeping its coverage of soldiers’ deaths to a minimum and not dwelling on funerals or the suffering of the families left behind.

While using aircraft carriers and massed ranks of soldiers and sailors as backdrops for his photo opportunities, Bush has treated the US soldiers in Iraq with contempt. There has never been an occupant of the White House so obviously indifferent to the deaths of American servicemen and women in combat as George W. Bush. With the Iraq death toll for US troops approaching 350, Bush has yet to attend a single funeral or memorial service.

Having acted on its own propaganda claims that the Iraqi people would greet the US occupiers as “liberators,” the administration failed to properly deploy or equip US forces for what has become an ever more hostile environment. At the same time, US servicemen and women have been subjected to abysmal living conditions, in large part because support services were contracted out to politically connected private firms that failed to deliver once it became clear that Iraq remained a war zone.

The treatment of soldiers who have been wounded or injured in Iraq is scandalous. Those released from military hospitals, in many cases disabled for life, have found to their shock and anger that they were billed for their hospital meals.

At Fort Stewart, Georgia, where Bush staged one of his post-invasion appearances, using returning troops as a prop, approximately 600 wounded and injured reservists are being denied prompt medical care and housed under disgraceful conditions in World War II-era cinderblock barracks that lack running water or air-conditioning. Wounded soldiers are forced to walk 30 yards—in many cases on crutches—to a bug-infested communal latrine. They are obliged to buy their own toilet paper.

After several of the reservists revealed these conditions to the media, some 400 of the wounded men and women were lined up in formation Tuesday morning to be reprimanded by senior officers, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported Wednesday. “They said we’d be doing more cleaning up, more work, and to keep our mouths shut,” Sgt. Dennis Stewart, a Terre Haute, Indiana firefighter told the newspaper.

Who are these soldiers for whom the president and his administration demonstrate such disregard? Overwhelmingly, they are drawn from the working class, in many cases joining the military because they needed a job or money for their education.

Specialist Simeon Hunte, 23, of Orange, New Jersey was shot to death October 1 while on patrol in Al Khadra. He is survived by his wife, a one-and-a-half year old daughter and a newborn son he never saw. “Hunte attended Montclair State University but did not graduate. He joined the Army to get the financial assistance to reach his goal,” according to a press account of his death.

Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez, 21, was born in Monterrey, Mexico, immigrated to the US as a child of seven and was preparing to apply for US citizenship. An Army private, she was killed October 1 when a military convoy in which she was riding was hit by an explosive device and rocket-propelled grenades. She had attended Houston Community College in Texas, but joined the Army so that her parents would not have to sacrifice to pay her tuition. “She was always more worried about us than she was about herself,” her father said.

Sgt. David Travis Friedrich, 26, of Naugatuck, Connecticut was killed in a mortar attack on a US base near Baghdad September 20. His mother said he had enlisted in the reserves to help pay for his graduate courses at the University of New Haven. He also held a full-time job in a factory before he was called up for active duty.

Ryan Carlock, 25, of Colchester, Illinois, was killed in combat north of Baghdad on September 9. He joined the Army three years ago to earn a living to support his wife and two children and to get job training. “He was trying to figure out his next move, stay in or go to college,” his stepfather said.

A common thread runs through the biographies of the great majority of those who have lost their lives in the war and occupation in Iraq, one of struggle and sacrifice in the face of a shrinking job market and spiraling college tuition fees. The gulf between them and the US president is so vast as to defy comparison. Bush’s admission and graduation from Yale University, like his avoidance of military service and the succession of well-paid sinecures that preceded his installation as president, were guaranteed by his family’s wealth and fame.

For Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, as for Halliburton, Bechtel, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, the lives of these young people are eminently expendable, a small down payment in blood on what they hope will be a windfall in profits resulting from the seizure of Iraq’s oil reserves and the looting of the US treasury by means of vastly inflated “reconstruction” contracts.

For American working people, the deaths of these young men and women is a terrible tragedy and waste. These soldiers, like the American people as a whole, were dragged into an illegal war based on lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and Baghdad-terrorist connections that were invented to cover up the Bush administration’s predatory objectives. They have been kept in Iraq nearly seven months after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime under conditions of rising popular hostility to what is plainly an exercise in US colonialism.

The Bush administration is notoriously given to the belief that image is all that matters and that it can carry out any criminal policy so long as it can drape it in the flag and count on a pliant media to conceal the truth. While it may be able to stop the cameras from filming the caskets unloaded at Dover air base, the bodies are still coming home from Iraq for burial in towns and cities from New York to California.

As it becomes clear to ever broader sections of the population that these deaths were unnecessary and the result of what can only be described as a criminal enterprise, the demand will inevitably grow for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and a settling of accounts with those responsible for the needless killing of both Iraqis and Americans.

 



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Afterall their just Grunts it's not like they were real people deserving of honors and respect for having given their all for Big Oil and the Bush Fambly fortune.

Maybe they did it out of respect for the loved one's. Did that ever cross your mind? It would if you had one.

I wish verterans like you had died in service. We'd all be better off.

thanks howdy, we already know how you feel.

Good thing to tell the troops.

"Afterall their just Grunts it's not like they were real people deserving of honors and respect for having given their all for Big Oil and the Bush Fambly fortune."

Somehow I seriously doubt that you are even close to being a vet.

If so, you are an incredibly naive and stupid one.

Those who have died did so to protect this country. Maybe you forgot about 9-11. This war has been long coming and thankfully has arrived.

But I suppose you're one of those "vets" who thinks we should just turn the other cheek huh?

The word "vet" is so easy to type.

Scumbag.

Somebody ran over a fresca.

It's what I'm telling you and people like you who hold the same ridiculous political positions. If you can't hold the right political positions, die.

>If you can't hold the right political positions, die.
the fascist has once again pushed its disease into the light.

It's not fascism. It's called takin' out the trash. Liberals are trash.

Been on various Indymedias too long. I've read too many links to anarchist and left-wing sites. I've seen where you morons want to kill right-wingers or throw them into concentration camps. Take your crap somewhere else.

The right wing nutcakes who spam this site have just shown their twisted nature. Like their dummy president they don't care about soldiers, dead or alive, only about their bizarre notions which link oil guzzling and corporate profits with some twisted sense of freedom and liberty.

To the soldiers who may be reading this the only escape for you is to go AWOL. Don't take that return flight back to death and destruction, to endless health problems and the nurturing of international hatred. Stay here. Join with us and help us take back America. Say enough is enough to the freakish demand of your life so the corporate clown squad can consoldate their death grip on American culture. Your life is worth more than a token increase of share prices for the wolves of Wall Street.

Escape with your life and dignity intact. Escape the lies of the rich and their zombie like propagandists. I, for one, would welcome you with arms open. And I hope it would be alive. I cannot welcome coffins with dead young adults...nor can any caring human. For that there is only mourning and sadness about what you might have contributed to the world if you chose the path of freedom over mercenary faux patriotism.

"To the soldiers who may be reading this...."

Great EV!

I know just what to post to get you wingnuts going.

I may start doing that, just posting the most outlandish crap just to get you morons to quack up.

Dance. Dance. Dance.

"I've seen where you morons want to kill right-wingers or throw them into concentration camps."

this is good, because, if you mean making them stop leaching off the theft and usery and producing something of lasting value, I guess you're right. It could be hell.

No, I mean physically kill right-wingers. Gas them. Shoot them. You people are murderers.

That the Shills are busy avoiding the article that started the thread?

They could care less about the young men and women dying in Iraq. Their job is try and make you not notice the dead and dying.

They are the Carrion Crows.

Dear Author:

FIrs tof all I apreciate you writing this article. I think well all are better off being informed of the fact that our government is banning the press from covering the body bags coming home. But one problem I have with many of you left-wingers and socialists is that you just can't see the obvious fact that most American don't care and don't give a damn about anyone getting killed or wounded in IRaq, whether if it's our own servicemen, or Iraq people, they don't care, and as long as the serivce men dying or getting wounded are not memebrs of their own immediate family, they will not care, but even in that case, it still specualtion becase most americans don't get along withmemebrs of their family anymore, or they think thier child died for god's cause.

Are you socialists and left-wingers forggeting the fact that this country has 120 million armed to the teeth and growing evangelists. Adn one final thing is, the american people did not care, do not and won't care what Bush said where his reasons for going to war with Iraq, they just liked what he was doing, because he was out hier kicking a bunch f muslim asses or "camel jokeis" as the average american would reffer to them, or "sand f_____ers".

At this point the american people want nothing more than see bush dropp nukes on all muslim countries that have all musims in this world wiped out, they hate muslims, they hate arabs, they hate blacks, they hate hispanics, they hate for a living, they only have sympathy anbd compassion for Jews and Israelis, that's it.

You can't forget the fact that the american people liked what took place, and will like what will take place in syuria, iran, lebanon, indonesia, heck even the holy city of mecca, and non they don't care that Bush is lying, they like that he islying, and no they don't care if this war is baout oil, they like that it's about oil because they want to drive the new Humvees and be like Arnold.

Wake Up

P.S.: I know where i speak of I have heard way to many people speak everywhere, at work, at school , at bars, on the street, and I must say, you lefties and socialists are ina serious dillusional state of denail taht you can't admit this fundamental culutral fact that exists in our country today.

Dear Author:

FIrs tof all I apreciate you writing this article. I think well all are better off being informed of the fact that our government is banning the press from covering the body bags coming home. But one problem I have with many of you left-wingers and socialists is that you just can't see the obvious fact that most American don't care and don't give a damn about anyone getting killed or wounded in IRaq, whether if it's our own servicemen, or Iraq people, they don't care, and as long as the serivce men dying or getting wounded are not memebrs of their own immediate family, they will not care, but even in that case, it still specualtion becase most americans don't get along withmemebrs of their family anymore, or they think thier child died for god's cause.

Are you socialists and left-wingers forggeting the fact that this country has 120 million armed to the teeth and growing evangelists. Adn one final thing is, the american people did not care, do not and won't care what Bush said where his reasons for going to war with Iraq, they just liked what he was doing, because he was out hier kicking a bunch f muslim asses or "camel jokeis" as the average american would reffer to them, or "sand f_____ers".

At this point the american people want nothing more than see bush dropp nukes on all muslim countries that have all musims in this world wiped out, they hate muslims, they hate arabs, they hate blacks, they hate hispanics, they hate for a living, they only have sympathy anbd compassion for Jews and Israelis, that's it.

You can't forget the fact that the american people liked what took place, and will like what will take place in syuria, iran, lebanon, indonesia, heck even the holy city of mecca, and non they don't care that Bush is lying, they like that he islying, and no they don't care if this war is baout oil, they like that it's about oil because they want to drive the new Humvees and be like Arnold.

Wake Up

P.S.: I know where i speak of I have heard way to many people speak everywhere, at work, at school , at bars, on the street, and I must say, you lefties and socialists are ina serious dillusional state of denail taht you can't admit this fundamental culutral fact that exists in our country today.

Dear Author:

FIrs tof all I apreciate you writing this article. I think well all are better off being informed of the fact that our government is banning the press from covering the body bags coming home. But one problem I have with many of you left-wingers and socialists is that you just can't see the obvious fact that most American don't care and don't give a damn about anyone getting killed or wounded in IRaq, whether if it's our own servicemen, or Iraq people, they don't care, and as long as the serivce men dying or getting wounded are not memebrs of their own immediate family, they will not care, but even in that case, it still specualtion becase most americans don't get along withmemebrs of their family anymore, or they think thier child died for god's cause.

Are you socialists and left-wingers forggeting the fact that this country has 120 million armed to the teeth and growing evangelists. Adn one final thing is, the american people did not care, do not and won't care what Bush said where his reasons for going to war with Iraq, they just liked what he was doing, because he was out hier kicking a bunch f muslim asses or "camel jokeis" as the average american would reffer to them, or "sand f_____ers".

At this point the american people want nothing more than see bush dropp nukes on all muslim countries that have all musims in this world wiped out, they hate muslims, they hate arabs, they hate blacks, they hate hispanics, they hate for a living, they only have sympathy anbd compassion for Jews and Israelis, that's it.

You can't forget the fact that the american people liked what took place, and will like what will take place in syuria, iran, lebanon, indonesia, heck even the holy city of mecca, and non they don't care that Bush is lying, they like that he islying, and no they don't care if this war is baout oil, they like that it's about oil because they want to drive the new Humvees and be like Arnold.

Wake Up

P.S.: I know where i speak of I have heard way to many people speak everywhere, at work, at school , at bars, on the street, and I must say, you lefties and socialists are ina serious dillusional state of denail taht you can't admit this fundamental culutral fact that exists in our country today.

Dear Author:

First of all I appreciate you writing this article. I think well all are better off being informed of the fact that our government is banning the press from covering the body bags coming home. But one problem I have with many of you left-wingers and socialists is that you just can't see the obvious fact that most American don't care and don't give a damn about anyone getting killed or wounded in Iraq, whether if it's our own servicemen, or Iraq people, they don't care, and as long as the servicemen dying or getting wounded are not members of their own immediate family, they will not care, but even in that case, it still speculation because most Americans don't get along with members of their family anymore, or they think their child died for god's cause.

Are you socialists and left-wingers forgetting the fact that this country has 120 million armed to the teeth and growing evangelists. And one final thing is, the American people did not care, do not and won't care what Bush said where his reasons for going to war with Iraq, they just liked what he was doing, because he was out their kicking a bunch f Muslim asses or "camel jockies" as the average American would refer to them, or "sand f_____ers".

At this point the american people want nothing more than see bush dropp nukes on all muslim countries that have all musims in this world wiped out, they hate muslims, they hate arabs, they hate blacks, they hate hispanics, they hate for a living, they only have sympathy and compassion for Jews and Israelis, that's it.

You can't forget the fact that the american people liked what took place, and will like what will take place in syria, iran, lebanon, indonesia, heck even the holy city of mecca, and non they don't care that Bush is lying, they like that he is lying, and no they don't care if this war is about oil, they like that it's about oil because they want to drive the new Humvees and be like Arnold.

Wake Up

P.S.: I know where I speak of I have heard way to many people speak everywhere, at work, at school , at bars, on the street, and I must say, you lefties and socialists are in a serious dillusional state of denail that you can't admit this fundamental cultural fact that exists in our country today.