Reality is so unpatriotic

Cargo worker Tami Silicio lost her cargo job for making a photo of flag-draped coffins available to the press. (seattletimes.newsource.com) While we may be amazed at the number of soldiers dying in Iraq, we're not actually supposed to see the symbols associated with their deaths. That might allow us to know that the war is REAL. This was one of the (few?) lessons the US government learned from Vietnam: if people see what's happening, they get mad. So mention it between celebrity news and stock quotes, and it will be just as removed from reality as the abstractions of fame and virtual wealth.

The Pentagon's decades old policy of forbidding the publishing of images of caskets made news activist Russ Kick doubtful that his request through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for such images would be productive. Kick was surprised when the Pentagon supplied 281 images of the caskets of soldiers killed in the Iraq war, along with some from the delivery of the Columbia Astronauts' remains, after some internal debate. (sfgate.com) The images are now at his site, thememoryhole.org (along with disturbing photos of Americans intentionally humiliating naked Iraqi captives, which are beginning to cause a stir in the national news, which hasn't published a fraction of them).

Reality continues to cause scandal, now in the mainstream media: Nightline's tribute to fallen soldiers is being criticized as anti-war for listing the names of the war dead. (sfgate.com)

What are we learning from this? Soldiers only exist when it is politically convenient - when "supporting" them is synonymous with the ruling party's goals. Soldiers do not exist for their own sake, or need decent pay or benefits or medical care. Their opinions matter when they support the ruling party, and do not when they object to their orders or fail to accept their mission. And they certainly don't exist once they are dead, because that generates bad press.