Saturday, April 24, 2004

Coffinphiles Against the War

I cannot help but wonder about the fascination some have with pictures of flag-draped coffins arriving from Iraq. There is no secret as to how many men we are losing in this conflict, the media gives each casualty maximum coverage. While I think that much of this coverage is overly negative, I do think that people have every right to know the human cost of the war.

According to this story, in the rush to publish these pictures, many photos of the Columbia Astronauts and casualties from Afghanistan were published as those of soldiers killed in Iraq. It would appear that, consumed with the goulish lust to publish pictures of the dead, these First Amendment zealots did not even bother to check the origin of the photographs.

The publishing of these "coffin pictures" is just a (not so) thinly veiled attempt to inflame the public and skew the debate against the war. It's not a question of secrecy or the First Amendment, it's a matter of taste.

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