hypocrisy and lies

[winterbadger]

Contrast this BBC news article: Pentagon fury at war dead photos

with this

UK MOD website on Operation Telic casualties

including this photo

Apparently US casualties are a shame that needs to be hidden, instead of honoured warriors returning home after making the supreme sacrifice.

Comments

[silent-ic-river.livejournal.com]

As much as it boggles my brain, there is popular support for the war, currently. Once the photos of our war dead begin being published the tide will likely turn. Bush and the current administration cannot afford that, it will cost them the election. That's why people like us, the 'educated elite' are being slammed as reactionary liberals with no moral fiber.
The armed forces aren't hiding the coffins in shame, they are hiding them in fear. The push for reinstating the draft will never get any farther once the photos of the dead are published (at least I hope so). And to be clear, I agree that hiding our fallen is shameful.

[winterbadger]

I'm amused that the current bill (at least the one I'm aware of) for reinstating the draft (with no exemptions for college or CO status) was introduced by Charles Rangel and another fairly liberal legislator, with the intent of pointing up the fact that we're at war and men and women are dying, but our leaders, despite talking up their "war president" status and so on, are not askign the coutnry as a whole to take this seriously. The *nation* is not being asked to make sacrifices (they're even trying to delay asking for the funds--needed to pay troops who are being held over--until after the election). This is one of the few ways in which I think the war *is* like Vietnam (an analogy that doesn't always bear up in other ways): the president is trying to do it on the cheap, without mobilizing the nation and making it a national committment. Tax cuts, business as usual, no pictures of caskets. I doubt that he is doing what LBJ forced himself to do, and sign every letter going to relatives of those killed.