John Hieger is right about the Pentagon's policy regarding images of coffins, even though he's incorrect to call it a "law." Someday, if John Ashcroft sticks around long enough, this definition may become accurate. Jon will then be correct, I'll be wrong, and we'll all have much bigger problems to deal with.
It's obvious who this policy is looking out for, and it isn't military families. When people get fired for taking pictures of coffins -- not bodies, but flag-draped coffins -- that's not a decision driven by the need for national security, or a desire to ease the pain among families of dead soldiers. It's a public relations move.
Sadly, in the context of our current administration, this isn't even a particularly egregious case of political P.R. taking precedence over that pesky little thing called the truth.
Just in the past couple of weeks, we've had the casket flap. We've had the Pentagon delete parts of public transcripts that are, shall we say, inconvenient for the Secretary of Defense and his boss. (Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld is on a covert mission to make satire obsolete. Whatever the reason, he sure keeps upping the ante.)
We've had the U.S. Treasury Dept. -- which is funded, incidentally, by every citizen who pays taxes -- reprinting talking points from the Republican National Committee, under the guise of "April 15th tax day reminders." And, since John's irony detector is in fine working order, we've even witnessed the Dark Pot himself, Dick Cheney, calling the kettle black.
There's a patten at work here, and it goes well beyond partisan politics. We obviously have a cadre of decision-makers (mostly men) who consider "protecting America" and "covering my own wretched, ideologically-driven posterior" to be the exact same exercise. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they happen to be working in the highest levels of our government.
Whether or not they actually believe the hollow claims behind their own wretched excess, or have instead just become terminally cynical, is academic. Either way, those are still facts being removed from the public record. That's still political propaganda being pasted into government documents. And those are still bodies being shipped home -- within the coffins, under the American flag.
Written by Nate Puckett of NEXT
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