Woman loses her job over dead GI coffins photo

Yes, I read that today. I'm rarely proud of the Seattle Times, but I was when they published her photo. I was waiting for the announcement that she was fired. Didn't take long...

D'Artagnan
D'Artagnan, I got so pissed when I read what happened to that wonderful photographer. Tami Silicio may turn out to be the "Rosa Parks" of the anti-censorship -movement.

Damn! Wouldn't it be great if all the newspapers started publishing the banned photos? What would the Bushies do about it? Shut them all down. What a wonderful, worthwhile national protest that would be. Sometimes all it takes is one little spark.

BBB

Here's her photo and her own picture:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001909527_coffin22m.html

See more photos
See more photos

http://www.drudgereport.com/dover.htm

She broke the rules and that makes you proud of her?

<shakes head in wonderment>

Corrie ten boom broke the rules....

Craven's Corrie ten Boom
Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983)

As commendable as The Hiding Place (1971) was, it created the impression Corrie was a middle-aged spinster suddenly thrust from a sheltered life into World War II. In fact Corrie was a risk-taker and a superb organizer. The first thing the Nazis did after invading Holland was to shut down her large organization of girls' clubs so that it could not be used by the Dutch underground. From 1923 to 1940 Corrie had built it from a simple diversion for girls after church to her network of well-rounded, spiritually-grounded Triangle Clubs. Her girls wore uniforms, learned crafts, studied the Bible, even camped. Each year they rented a concert hall to perform for friends and relatives. In the middle of the show Corrie, a fearless public speaker, gave a peppy talk with a title like 'God's telephone is never busy!'.

But her weekly meetings with the girls were the joy of her life. The clubs had various classes, one of which offered physical exercises. This class voted on a slogan. Corrie was high-hipped with pigeon toes, but shorts required for the class revealed another feature: knock knees. One girl, gawking at Corrie's legs, suggested the slogan: WE MAKE STRAIGHT WHAT IS CROOKED! Corrie laughed louder than anyone. She knew teasing was one way some girls expressed friendship. She was not too proud to take a joke either, even though her girls often pushed her to the limit. Every summer they camped out. On the last evening of their campout Corrie would sneak into the woods after lights-out and sing a warm good-bye song. One year a horrible din drowned out her song. She was sure she battled the devil himself. But she didn't stop singing. Next morning her girls insisted she never sang more beautifully. 'Noise?' they asked in mock surprise, 'What noise?'

Dealing with her 40 or so club leaders took patience too. One leader was so bizarre she was a legend. The girls nicknamed her 'Kipslang', Dutch for 'chicken-snake', because she told them the snake in the Garden of Eden had legs like a chicken. One of her meetings broke up with girls hurling chairs at each other. Corrie had ten clubs that had formed from girls who were first attracted to Kipslang's outrageous club, then fled it! But feisty Kipslang stayed. Corrie was too kind to ask any leader to quit.

Over nearly 20 years many of her thousands of girls had to deal with death in their families. Corrie consoled in every way she could. Occasionally death took one of the girls. One day Corrie had to rush to the hospital. Pietje - a petite girl with severe physical problems - was dying! The tiny face grimaced from pain. Corrie said, "It is such a comfort to know Jesus will be our Judge. Oh, how he loves you, Pietje!" Corrie stroked her forehead. She prayed aloud for the Good Shepherd to take his lamb to his Father's house with many mansions. Pietje's face relaxed. She smiled as if she was seeing Jesus. As Corrie said, "Amen," Pietje died.

[sources: In My Father's House by Corrie ten Boom with Carole C. Carlson, 1976, and Corrie ten Boom: Her Life, Her Faith by Carole C. Carlson, 1983]

Martin Luther King broke the rules, too. So did Gandhi. So did the American revolutionaries...

Do you really want to compare Tami Silicio with MLK, Ghandhi, and American revolutionaries?!

I can't believe you guys.

Saddam Hussein broke the rules as well. So did Timothy McVeigh and John Wilkes Booth. Do you guys praise them equally? Do you hold them in the same esteem?

Nope, the point is that "breaking the rules" in and of itself is no measure of how a person should be considered and that the rules should also be considered in that judgement.

It's the intent. What was her intent on taking those pictures? She knkew the rules, she broke them and now she is facing the consequences. There is no need for sainthood for this woman.

The intent might have been to remind the American public that there is a human cost to the war in Iraq. That photo speaks more eloquently than a statistic on casualties.

maybe this is dull of me but uhm...why's it against the law, banned as it were, to photograph fallen soldier's caskets being transported back to U.S. soil?

I don't think it's against the law, it's against military rules.

The reason is to avoid war weariness.

Here's a look at the rules...
In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."

President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them politically -- I'm outraged."

Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.

One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.

A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.

Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.

President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.

But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.

"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it very clear it applies to everyone."

Woman loses her job over pictures of coffins
I'm proud of her. It's weird, but all of the pictures I took in Vietnam came back completely over exposed, even the one's of temples, monks and children. I don't have any pictures of my tour, except those of others that were sent to me 36 years later. Guess it depends on your job and the attitudes of the people in charge.

There are a lot of ex-special warfare people like myself that aren't even able to see their military records. Funny what the government considers to be in the "interest of national security."

McGentrix
McGentrix, actually it was Bush 1 who initiated the no photos policy at the start of the first Gulf War. Bush 2 reinstituted Poppy's policy with strict enforcement. Clinton ignored it and didn't enforce the policy.

Research shows there has been a lot of reporting and web discussion
about President Bush's management of the news regarding casualties in
Iraq. One item that has stirred a lot of interest was the banning of
the media from viewing returning coffins at military bases and
mortuaries. It is not clear what was the triggering event for this
flurry of interest. One possibility is the opening of the new military
mortuary at Dover Air Force Base.

Is there is a difference between what President Bush is doing regarding honoring those killed in action and his four predecessors - Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton.

President George W. Bush's behavior regarding honoring the military services (including those killed in action) is somewhat different than that of prior presidents.

Since the President's meetings and official schedule are part of the
public record, it should be possible to locate information about what recent presidents have done and said about military casualties and ceremonies to honor the fallen. Such records are available, but there is no single repository for all of this information. Various government
agencies have responsibilities for keeping the records, organizing
them and making them available to the public.

The current discussions focus on the question of "coffins at Dover"
and the implied management of the news. Presidents have always been
determined to show that they are concerned about the loss of life and
the grief of the survivors. They also like to participate in events
celebrating the troops or in memorial ceremonies commemorating
Memorial Day, Veterans Day and various other symbolically significant
events.

There isn't much difference in the record as far as customary
observations and ceremonies. As far as more emotional and personal
encounters go, Presidents Reagan and Clinton were more involved with making direct contact with the survivors of military casualties. Bush 2 has not chosen to do that publically.

BBB

What I REALLY don't like is how they've made Tami Silicio the scapegoat. The "fault" (if you can call it that) lies with the Seattle newspaper that decided to publish the photo. I'll be anxious to read the follow-ups, if there are any, about what action is taken by the government against the paper. This is a first amendment issue.