Comments for First Pentagon War Dead Photos Made Public After 18 Year Ban »
Posted By epiphannyy 8 months, 3 weeks ago in NewsDOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. (April 6) — The Pentagon's 18-year ban on media coverage of fallen U.S. service members returning home ended quietly, with only an officer's sharp order to salute accompanying a single flag-covered casket being unloaded from a cargo plane.
After receiving permission from family members, the military opened Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to the media Sunday night for the return of the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Va.
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epiphannyy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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It's about time. As long as the images are not exploited, they need to be seen. It's too easy for people to dismiss the loss as not that huge as long as the actual images are buried in secrecy. The cost of war is great. It's about time the American public who is so quick to send our soldiers into battle be exposed to the full magnitude of it.
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epiphannyy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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The only ones "using" the war dead as a political bargaining chip are the republicans who have fought to keep the images of these fallen heroes in the dark.
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The families of the fallen make the choice whether to allow the images to be broadcast. If they choose to allow it, then the nation can share in honoring these soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. If they choose not to allow the images to be broadcast then they are respected in that decision. There is no exploitation taking place. What it ensures, in fact, is that the dead are honored the way they should be instead of shipped home in a refrigerator crate, without escort or even a flag or any recognition at all like the soldier son of a Vietnam war vet in Texas was soon after the war began. His father was so upset at the lack of respect shown his son who laid down his life for his country only to be shipped back home as "freight" and with no more compassion than you'd give a kitchen appliance that he went to the press and vented about it. By showing these men and women coming home, at least THAT shouldn't happen again. Talk about actions deserving shame...I think that qualifies. -
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Natureboy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Using them as political tools is what got them dead in the first place. Soldier = tool. Funny how you flat earthers spout off about distrusting the government but glorify the poor credulous bastards who got conned into being the government's hit men abroad.
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Actually Americans should be told a lot more about the disasters the Pentagon is causing in other countries for our military imperialism. This hasn't changed with the Obama administration.
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The secrets of Obama's surge in Afghanistan
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. ...
The Afghanistan-Pakistan war has got to be 2009's prime theater of the absurd. It took the New York Times and the usual "American officials" something like 13 years to "discover" that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - a Central Intelligence Agency twin - helps the Taliban. And this while the CIA, alongside their ISI pals, is compiling a mega hit list in the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan. Maybe this is what US Central Command supremo General David "I'm always positioning myself for 2012" Petraeus means by a "trilateral" love affair, as he told CNN's State of the Union. ...
Obama is selling the surge basically as nation building, based on trust. A hard sell if there ever was one - as Washington cannot trust the ISI or the Pakistani government, while the Pakistani masses don't trust Washington.
Insistent rumors in Washington point to a troika - Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton - finally being able to convince Obama that the surge should be just the first step towards long-range nation building. Anyone with minimal familiarity with Afghanistan knows this is an impossible strategic target. ...
Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to AfPak, finally let it slip on CNN: the "people we are fighting in Afghanistan" are essentially ... Pashtuns. This was followed by a stark admission: "In the informational side ... we don't have a strong enough counter-informational program to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda."
So this amounts to the State Department admitting that the Pentagon/Petraeus "humint" (human intelligence) component of counter-insurgency in AfPak, hailed as a gift from the Messiah all across US corporate media, is essentially useless. This also means there's no way of winning local hearts and minds.-
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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In the absence of "humint", what prevails is inevitably The Salvador option, performed by a Dick Cheney-supervised-style "executive assassination wing", as investigative icon Seymour Hersh first revealed in a talk at the University of Minnesota on March 10, "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving"...
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...Did Obama's "strategic reviewers" read this Carnegie Endowment report (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-str... Apparently not. It states flatly "the mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban".
So the question Americans must ask themselves is this: Would you buy a used car - sorry - war from people like Mullen, Petraeus, McKiernan? Well, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who's seen them all since John F Kennedy, wouldn't. For him, "they resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the time have been called, not without reason, 'a sewer of deceit'." ...
.... So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama’s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/05/the-secr...
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canadianrancher578 months, 3 weeks ago
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I believe that it is a good idea to show the returning of those who have been killed in military conflict and also agree that it should be at the families choice. What I hope does not happen is that some of those who oppose a conflict use the names and pictures of the fallen to promote their agenda. I know that you all believe in freedom of speach but there is a time for everything and if someone uses the name or image of a fallen member of the services without the permission of the family they should have their azzes tacked to the wall if not by the public then maybe by the legal system.
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Natureboy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Der Bush said-
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"These brave men and women gave their lives for a cause that is just and necessary for the security of our country," he said. "And now we honor their sacrifice by completing their mission.""
I don't think it is any worse to use the fallen to oppose a conflict than it is to use the fallen to SUPPORT a conflict, which is far more common.-
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canadianrancher578 months, 3 weeks ago
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I might agree with you if there was a draft to fight a conflict , but these people chose to join the different branches of the military, in doing so they accepted the risks that went along with their choice. I should also add that even in the case of the draft I feel it would only be proper to ask for the families permission. Every time that we lose a person in a war it is a loss to the country but the loss to the family is far greater in the terms of sorrow , and even with all the rights that are given to the people of your country under the constitution I do not think that anyone has the right to inflict pain and suffering on the famiies of those who have lost members of their families in the service of their country.
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epiphannyy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Personally, I don't think it is appropriate to "use" the fallen at all......for or against conflict. They should be honored and recognized, but to USE them as a prop in an argument or debate that is for or against the conflict that took their lives is wrong, in my opinion. There are things in this world that should be off limits for such a distinction (to be used as a political prop to support or negate government/military propaganda) and, in my opinion, the fallen soldiers fall under that umbrella. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think to use them at all is beyond distasteful.
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