White House Bans News Coverage of Coffins Returning from Ira

Friday, October 24, 2003
White House Bans News Coverage of Coffins Returning from Iraq
World Socialist Web Site
by Bill Vann - 23 Oct 03

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Bush administration has ordered the Pentagon to prevent any news coverage of the bodies of U.S. 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 U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped coffins,' wrote the Post's White House reporter Dana Milbank [see Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins (21 Oct 03)]. '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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.-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.