MEMENTO MORI

 
(picture from thememoryhole.org)

I'm sure everyone in the blogoverse is all over this story, which is so ubiquitous it was even on the AOL welcome screen early this morning (6:30ish).  it has since been pushed off by the NFL football player-turned-soldier's  (life imitating art?  see the post re Doonesbury cartoon here) death in Afghanistan, but is a headline on the news crawl from CNN. the story, of course, is of the photo of flag covered coffins returning home to Dover AFB from Kuwait.  the photo was taken by a contract worker in Kuwait, Tami Silicio, whose job was helping load the planes.  the photo was first published in a Seattle paper, and i first saw it on the internet on EasyBakeCoven's blog a couple of weeks ago.  she's onto the story there again today.

Tami has since been fired from her job, along with her husband.  imagine that.  however, the amazing internet site thememoryhole has obtained several hundred photos from the Dover AFB mortuary under the Freedom of Information Act.  imagine THAT.   i didn't actually know that Act was still in operation. boy, are they sorry now! no more Freedom of Information Act for us! 

i don't watch much network TV news, so i don't know what's being made of this story there, or if the American public will finally actually witness in their living rooms the evidence that our troops are dying in this war.  the front page of my only local major newspaper, The Wilmington News-Journal, has a picture of flag covered coffins on the front page, and i'm willing to bet so do most major newspapers.   

I'm old enough to remember the constant coverage of war casualties arriving at Dover in the VietNam War, day after day - coverage that helped to turn the tide of public sentiment against that war, instigate large demonstrations of popular opinion clamoring for an end to the carnage.  this new policy of not covering the arrival of the coffins, or even of the wounded, back on American soil was an invention of the first Bush administration during the first Gulf operation.  also the first war where reporters were not allowed to accompany troops to the battle front and send home firsthand information about events taking place there.  the Pentagon's story on this policy is that it is to protect those soldiers loved ones' privacy and feelings - to prevent a "spectacle." 

unfortunately, since i long ago stopped believing a word the Pentagon tells me, i choose to go with Rep. Jim McDermott, who served in the Navy in VietNam, when he says of the return of the dead to Dover from VN:  "As people began to see the reality of it and see the 55,000 people who were killed coming back in body bags, they became more and more upset by the war..."  and about the current policy:   "This is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war."

8:30 p.m. Addendum:  this story is back on the AOL opening screen.  At least on the one I use.