This country deserves to see the full effects of war. Our men and women or giving their lives for this country and the government wants to push it aside. This shows a lack of respect for those soldiers. They died for their beliefs. This is no way to honor them.

I still don't see how a picture of an anonymous box interferes with anyone's privacy.

Kudos to McCain, again.

What are they so scared of?...These brave men and women gave their fucking lives....why can't we show them some recognition of their sacrifice?

MORE LIES... death is part of war why do they try and pasturize and sterilize the results of this war. What rights will our Government take away next from the American people? What power will the government give themselves? Now we don't even show respect to our dead soldiers who fought for nothing to DIE.
Pre-emptive war? LIE
Weapons of mass destruction? LIE
Iraq a threat to the USA? LIE

no,it is honoring their families by not splashing their loved ones casket on the front page....Most right-minded people in this country understand the "full" effects of war...there is no need to put a coffin on the 11 o'clock news to get a point across...

this has been covered before in a previous thread....

I think we should see everything. If a soldier is blown in half, we need to see it. For us to ignore the reality of what we pay for is absurd and dangerous.

Raising a glass to McCain, which does not happen often.

What audio link?

Let's say for the sake of argument that you're right. Is it really the job of the state to enforce this? We have a (mostly) free press in this country. The media do a lot of obnoxious things on a fairly regular basis, but I for one don't think there ought to be a law against it. Not every bad thing should be made an illegal thing.

There shouldn't be a law against it. For the record, I was against the Seattle Times doing what they did, as I thought it was exploitive and senseless. But I don't think it should be outlawed.


By the way, no offense meant, but the news item submitted could have been a lot clearer.

For example, no mention is made of whether this amendment was for or against showing coffins. It actually sounds like they were voting to ban the photography of them.

Assumptions that it was an amendment to not ban photogaphy have to be made based on the language of the rest of the comments.

The sad part is that if you don't include pictures like that, then the public has a tendency to gloss over war as a good VS evil battle whereno one gets hurt. I can remember growing up when the first Gulf War took place an truely not understanding that any Americans had died. It seemed (from the coverage) that we came, we saw, we kicked ass. End of story.

I only found out later that, while the body count was "low" for a war, there were those who gave their lives.

We don't need to see the funerals. We don't need to see individual names attatched to each coffin. That is for the privacy of the families. The coffin pictures that were shown a couple of months ago where it was just a large group, covered in American flags, being loaded onto planes expresses the loss and cost of war in a respectful way.

There were D-Day specials all over the place a few weeks back and what was the main image shown in ALL of them beyond the beach invasion?

Row upon row of headstones.

What the heck is the difference between shooting row upon row of flag draped coffins? Not much at all.

I can understand not showing the bodies and gore of war, but the coffins? Who are they trying to kid.

Is there a G.I. Joe flag draped coffin set out there? I think that would be a great art project response to this nonsense. Show people in small scale what the D.O.D. is avoiding in full scale.

If the casualties of war are never seen, they don't exist as far as the average American is concerned. Saying that X-number of soldiers were killed today doesn't carry quite the weight that a picture of fifty coffins does. In fact, I think we should see a mutilated corpse on the front page of every publication in the country with the headline "THIS IS WHAT YOUR LYING PIECE-OF-SHIT GOVERNMENT IS DOING TO YOUR BROTHERS, SISTERS, HUSBANDS, WIVES, PARENTS, AND CHILDREN FOR ITS OWN SELFISH GAIN." (You can blur out what is left of a face if you are concerned for the family's privacy.) I want every person in this country to puke their fucking guts out when they are confronted with the atrocities that are being commited in their names.

The time for respectful dialogue has passed. This administration has shown NO respect for those who have died, nor have they shown any respect for the rest of us. They have insulted us with a torrent of lies on a daily basis for far too long. It is time for them to be exposed for the lying pieces of shit that they are.

Furthermore, whether or not the press can show images of coffins draped in flags is NO FUCKING BUSINESS OF OUR GOVERNMENT! This administration's policy exists for the sole purpose of keeping Americans in the dark about what is actually going on in Iraq. All of these fuckers should be tried for war crimes.

Once again, Senator McCain is one of the few politicians I have any amount of respect for (but that ain't sayin' much).

I'm not sure what happened to it, it was under Sen. Lautenberg's name. I'm not sure which part of this story shocked/upset me more: that the Senate endorsed the ban or that the debate was so, well nonexistant.

Something just doesn't strike me right about this news item.

From reading the NY Times article, it appears that Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) proposed an amendment that would allow the media to access military bases to take "respectful" photographs of the coffins returning from war zones.

It appears that this amendment was defeated along party lines, with the maverick Senator McCain voting with the Democrats and expressing concern that Sen. Lautenberg's amendment was defeated.

In your quote it looks like you are attributing some sort of relief that the amendment was defeated to Sen. Lautenberg:

Is this quote really attributed to him? It sounds like it should be attributed to the Chair or another Republican.

*Edited for spelling*



[Edited on Jun 23, 2004 12:40PM]