The Coffin Controversy

Apparently some group filed a Freedom of Information Act request for pictures of the coffins of US servicemen and women killed in Iraq and elsewhere.

It seems that this, from WhyWeHateBush.com, is typical of the argument presented:

In an extraordinary violation of the First Amendment, Bush has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the first stop for the bodies of troops being sent home. He knew that these images in part contributed to the rising anger against the Vietnam war. He doesn't want to see a repeat of democracy undermining his profitable war in Iraq.

This is simply ridiculous. First, there is no First Amendment violation: people know that servicemen and women are being killed in war. Further, the US Government releases the names of those who died and number that have been killed.

The images of coffins are not necessary: they do not further inform the public in any significant way.

But the second sentence is instructive as to why the President has correctly forbidden such images: the bodies of dead soldiers should not be used politically, which is clearly what the anti-war crowd, and the anti-Bush crowd, are attempting to do.

There is simply no other motivation for showing these pictures and that motivation is wrong.

Now we learn that some of the flag-draped coffins actually contained astronauts, not soldiers.

Did those who wanted these pictures published now switch to denouncing the Space program as a result?

Noooooo.

Wrong political agenda, sorry.

To say that these images will not be used for political purposes is absurd.

And it is absurd to think the President will allow them to be used in such a demeaning way. Because no matter how you feel about the war in Iraq, or war in general, these young men and women did their duty and paid the ultimate price for their conviction.

Simply put, they are heros.

And heros do not deserve to be used for further the agendas of partisans.