The pictures the White House doesn't want you to see:

Fearful of public reaction, the Pentagon last March banned media coverage of US servicemembers' coffins returning from Iraq.

Now, due to a Freedom of Information Act request, The Memory Hole has obtained 361 photos showing US military dead arriving at Dover AFB. (The original FOIA request was -- not surprisingly -- denied, but later overturned on appeal. I'd love to see some of the back-and-forth that went into that.)

As citizens and taxpayers, we owe it to ourselves to see the very real human effects of this war we're paying for.

Comments

[Chico]

And now the woman who took the shots, as well as her husband, has been fired for taking the pictures.

[Vidiot]

Actually, she didn't take these shots -- she took a picture in Kuwait and it made its way to the Seattle Times, where it accompanied this story on the front page. (Here's an interesting article detailing the editors' decision to run the picture.)

Then, a few days later, the DOD apparently granted The Memory Hole's FOIA request. I'm pretty sure that those 361 photos were official Defense Dept. photos, taken by military photographers. (Which, incidentally, makes them public domain if I'm not mistaken.)

It still sucks that she got fired, though. She was doing a public service by allowing the Seattle Times to use her picture.