This is one of two stories involving photos of flag-draped coffins. In this one, Russ Kick used the Freedom of Information Act (created after Watergate and which Bush does everything he can to shut down) to obtain photos taken by the Department of Defense.mjh

Air Force adds to controversy with its own coffin photos By Hal Bernton and Ray Rivera, Seattle Times

The week before Kuwait cargo worker Tami Silicio lost her job for releasing a photograph of soldiers’ coffins, the Air Force made its own release of several hundred photographs of flag-draped coffins to the operator of an Internet site.

The Air Force photos were shot by personnel at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and released — reluctantly — in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by a 34-year-old First Amendment activist [Russ Kick].

Release of the more than 360 photographs further erodes a 13-year-old ban on the media taking photos of the transport of coffins from overseas battle zones to Dover, site of the military’s largest mortuary. …

In coming days, there could be more coffin images circulating as Kick’s Web site offers “high-resolution” Dover photos.

Some of the Dover pictures, already posted online, depict rows of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers killed in Iraq being unloaded from Air Force cargo planes. Some show soldiers kneeling to adjust flags on coffins.

In an interview, Kick said he believes the public has a right to see the pictures, and that they are respectful to grieving families.

“I would make the argument that trying to hide the photos of these people who gave everything for their country is actually dishonoring them,” Kick said. “They went over there in all of our names and died, and then when they come back home, they’re hidden behind a curtain. I think that’s wrong.”

Kick, of Tucson, Ariz., initially filed his Freedom of Information Act request in March 2003. The Air Force denied that request. But after he filed an appeal, “to my amazement” the ruling was reversed, he wrote on his Internet site [mjh: www.thememoryhole.org — off-line as I write this].

And on April 14, he received a CD with the 361 images.

Bush: Military should respect family privacy on photos of flag-draped coffins by RANDALL CHASE, CBC News

Democratic Representative Jim McDermott of Washington, who served in the navy during the Vietnam War, said photos of caskets coming home from Vietnam had a tremendous impact on the way Americans came to view that war.

”As people began to see the reality of it and see the 55,000 people who were killed coming back in body bags, they became more and more upset by the war,” he said. ”This is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war.”

An unrelated story in Wired about other Russ Kick activities. mjh

Wired News: Traveling Down the Memory Hole

As the Sept. 11 commission conducts hearings in Washington to investigate the government’s response to the terrorist attacks, a controversial video of President Bush is making the rounds on the Internet.

The video, which shows Bush sitting in a Florida classroom watching children read for more than five minutes after being told the United States was under siege, has become a popular Internet download. It’s posted on The Memory Hole [owned by Russ Kick], a website dedicated to publishing official data that is hard to find, censored or in danger of being lost.

Google Search: Russ Kick

This is the second of two stories involving photos of flag-draped coffins. In this one, Tami Silicio took some photos in Kuwait and sent at least one home to Seattle. Someone there asked the Seattle Times to publish the photo(s), which it did along with a story. mjh

U.S. contractor fired for military coffin photo By Sue Pleming, Reuters

A U.S. contractor and her husband have been fired after her photograph of 20 flag-draped coffins of American troops going home from Iraq was published in violation of military rules.

”I lost my job and they let my husband go as well,” Tami Silicio, who loaded U.S. military cargo at Kuwait International Airport for a U.S. company, told Reuters in an e-mail response to questions.

The Pentagon tightly restricts publication of photographs of coffins with the remains of U.S. troops and has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the first stop for the bodies of troops being sent home. …

Since the start of the war in March 2003, more than 700 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, with more than 100 killed this month, the Pentagon said.

The Seattle Times: Local News: What readers are saying

We asked readers to share their thoughts on this photograph that was published in The Seattle Times and the issues surrounding its publication.
Here’s a representative sample of the more than 175 comments submitted. [read them]

A rightwing news blog cites the intrepid research of a talk-radio journalist. mjh

GI Casket Photog Sued Cheney in 2000 NewsMax.com

[I]t turns out that four years ago the duo, Tami Silicio and Amy Katz, sued Halliburton, then run by Vice President Dick Cheney, naming Cheney in the suit. …

[KTTH Seattle radio host Mike] Siegel said on Friday that the Katz-Silicio lawsuit against Cheney raises questions about the politics behind the casket photo story, saying the two women likely had an axe to grind against the Bush administration.

He also chastised the press for not noting the Katz-Silicio lawsuit, saying, ”What does that say about the Seattle Times, which printed the photo without doing any investigation.”

Google Search: Tami Silicio

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Bush Draws Terrorism Law Into Campaign By ADAM NAGOURNEY, NYTimes

”Those who criticize the Patriot Act must listen to those folks on the front line of defending America,” Mr. Bush said with a glance at the police chief from the nearby town of Amherst, sitting crisply in his uniform two stools away. ”The Patriot Act defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States.” [mjh: Lies Are Truth, War Is Peace!]

This was the third time in just four days that Mr. Bush had publicly invoked the USA Patriot Act. And it reflected what aides said would be systematic references to it in his speeches and television advertisements through Election Day, as this signature statute of his administration becomes a crucial part of his campaign strategy. …

There are even reservations within Mr. Bush’s own party about some provisions, which, conservatives maintain, invite government abuse. …

Not coincidentally, Mr. Bush has wrapped himself in the Patriot Act at the very time that his own credentials as a terrorism-fighter have been under challenge….

Politics and the Patriot Act, NYTimes Editorial

President Bush campaigned in Buffalo yesterday, wrapping himself in the Patriot Act and urging Congress to extend parts of the law that do not expire until the end of next year. The Patriot Act has always been a tempting bit of election-year politics, an easy way to seem tough on terrorism. But it also is bad law, and the president should be heeding calls from conservatives and liberals to remove provisions that trample on civil liberties.

The Patriot Act sailed through Congress just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, in a climate, and bearing a name, that made it difficult to raise questions. Instead of conducting a serious investigation of the law enforcement flaws that made the nation vulnerable, its drafters came up with a rushed checklist of increased police powers, many of dubious value in fighting terrorism.

Among the most troubling provisions is Section 215, which allows the F.B.I. to order libraries, hospitals and others with personal records to hand over such information about individuals. People like librarians can be jailed if they refuse, or if they notify the targets. Another authorizes ”sneak and peek” searches, in which the government can secretly search people’s homes and delay telling them about the intrusions. As troubling as specific provisions like these is the ”mission creep” that has inevitably occurred. Mr. Bush’s own Justice Department told Congress last fall that the act’s loosened restrictions on government surveillance were regularly being used in nonterrorism cases, like drug trafficking and white-collar crime. …

It is not hard to see the attraction of making a political issue out of the Patriot Act, with an independent commission raising questions about the administration’s vigilance before 9/11. But Mr. Bush’s sweeping praise for the act sidesteps the real debate. Members of Congress from both parties, including conservatives like Senator Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican, and Congressman Don Young, the Alaska Republican, have expressed concern about features of the act, like the expanded search powers, that could harm civil liberties.

With more than a year and a half before central provisions of the act are due to expire, even its supporters do not need to rush to reauthorize it. It would be more productive for Mr. Bush and Congress to spend the time finding ways to fight terrorism that do not take away important liberties.

The Patriot Act was thrown together in a rush without any congressional review. It is very suspicious how quickly it was put together and passed, as if large pieces had been sitting on the shelf for months or years before. Now, long before parts of the act expire (a provision used to persuade a few doubters to pass it), Bush is making it a campaign issue and doing everything to discourage discussion or consideration. mjh

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. — James Madison
[Thanks, NewMexiKen!]

Administration ignored inconvenient facts about post-war Iraq By Trudy Rubin

How, then, to explain White House failure to act on information about what was likely to happen in Iraq?

Those dangers were not unimaginable. The CIA, the State Department, legislators, a plethora of Iraq experts foresaw the chaos that could follow The Day After. But no one at the White House seems to have listened.

Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki famously warned that several hundred thousand troops would be required to ensure postwar Iraq security. He was sharply rebuked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

The State Department’s Future of Iraq project detailed how to reconstitute the Iraqi army to provide ready security. But the project was junked by Pentagon civilian officials who disbanded the Iraqi army. Most Iraq experts had warned against such a step.

U.S. officials didn’t train new Iraqi security forces to confront an insurgency. I was told by a senior U.S. official in Baghdad in October that U.S. special forces could handle any insurgents so long as they had good intelligence. Iraqi forces would serve merely as adjuncts.

And so we watch as ill- equipped Iraqi police and paramilitary forces scatter before the threat of insurgent violence. And more U.S. troops are being ordered up.

So we must ask why prewar warnings were so willfully disregarded by the Bush team. … I believe top officials blocked out any information they didn’t want to hear. …

When looting and crime exploded in Baghdad after the war, Rumsfeld famously said, ”Freedom is messy,” and left it unchecked. Never mind that Iraq experts, and the best U.S. military commanders, warned that first impressions would be crucial. The early chaos in Iraq set the tone for everything that followed.

Iraqis, schooled for decades to the order of dictatorship, expected a new and better order. Its lack of and U.S. inability to produce it destroyed trust and bred conspiracy theories about U.S. intentions. These still haunt the occupation. And, of course, instability has hurt efforts to rebuild the country and attract foreign investment. …

This was not a failure of imagination. It was a willful rejection of inconvenient facts.
—
(Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Bush believes it’s all in god’s hands. Facts don’t mean much; scripture is everything to a huge number of our fellow citizens. mjh

I went looking for this AssKraft quote and found just what I was looking for on Lush Limbaugh’s website. mjh

From Rush’s Sack of Shit™: NPR on Rush: Shades of OK City

ASHCROFT: Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memoranda is a member of the commission.

TOTENBERG: That member, of course, was Jamie Gorelick. Within 48 hours House GOP leader Tom DeLay and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner were calling for Gorelick’s resignation and conservative talk shows were taking up the battle cry.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Who are the Clinton people? Who were they, Jamie Gorelick, Clinton, Gore, all these people, they are sixties relics. These are people who grew up hating the FBI. These are the people who gave law enforcement the name ”pigs.” And they now are in charge of it when Clinton assumes office? And what’s the first thing they do? Handcuff the FBI.

GORELICK: After John Ashcroft testified, there was an escalation. … Someone called the house and threatened to blow it up and blow me up.

TOTENBERG: FBI agents were soon swarming over Gorelick’s house and office. She had received hate mail at the office, she says, as have other commissioners but it had suddenly intensified.

Notice how Lush explicitly blames Clinton for 9/11 but takes no responsibility for his role in rabble-rousing. Of course, you don’t need to take responsibility for anything when you are doing god’s work — ask Bush or Bin Laden. mjh

Here’s another example of the peaceful rhetoric of the Radical Right:

”Other than assassination, all we can do is censure her,” committee chairman Richard Gibbs said before the vote. The resolution of censure says the clerk ”has brought disgrace to the party as a whole.” The Albuquerque Journal Online [What did Sandoval County NM Clerk Victoria Dunlap do — lie to the country?]

Plundering a New Mexico Treasure
Houston-based El Paso Corporation hopes to use close ties to the White House to gain drilling access to Valle Vidal. But not without a fight.
By Jeremy Vesbach, Alibi

Bush and Cheney aren’t exactly counting on the environmentalist vote this fall; however, there are around 47 million sportsmen in the United States, and of those who voted, around 68 percent voted for Bush-Cheney in 2000, according to estimates by the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, a D.C.-based advocacy organization whose board of directors includes corporate representatives from outdoor gear and apparel manufacturers.

Without that overwhelming support of hunters and fishermen, the people now in charge of lands managed by the federal government would still be working for the oil and gas industries. And this has angered a growing number of conservative sportsmen who are beginning to speak of a double-cross.

Tony Dean, the host of a popular outdoors show on television, has written in the publication Outdoors Unlimited that, ”Saying you are a friend of sportsmen because you support gun ownership, while using it to hide the dismantling of America’s conservation policies, is patently dishonest.”

Ryan Busse, vice president of the Kimber Manufacturing Company, (a high-end rifle-maker located in Kalispell, Montana), traveled to D.C. with Raton’s Alan Lackey and told reporters that because of the administration’s support for drilling in Montana hunting grounds, ”This year’s presidential election will probably be the first time in my life that I will have voted for somebody other than a Republican in a national election.”

Lackey also voted for Bush in 2000, believing what Bush said about the importance of conservation.

”Bush said that we can use the best technology to provide protection for the environment while providing energy for the country, but that was all double-speak,” said Lackey, ”What they have going is just the opposite. It’s a raid on our public resources and a double-cross to sportsmen and outdoors people.”

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has already shown an interest in trying to win over some of the reel and rifle crowd, now that he has demonstrated his prowess as a snowboarder and windsurfer. On an Iowa pheasant hunting trip, Kerry told reporters of his desire to extend the assault weapon ban and require unlicensed dealers to do background checks at gun shows, which was obviously antithetical to the die-hard gun lobby. But he did prove that he’s a good shot (two dead pheasants in two shots) and that he’s willing to take flak from animal rights activists to win over sportsmen.

Compare that to George W. Bush’s most famous hunting trip. In 1994, Bush staged a dove hunt to help win over the sportsmen while he was running for Texas governor. But in one of seven shots, he accidentally shot a protected shorebird known as a killdeer and had to pay the fine. Still, just how many hunters and fishermen will give Bush the ultimatum over public lands oil and gas development remains to be seen.

”I think it’s a real galvanizing issue for the hunter and angler,” says Lackey. ”We are ready to lose the last wild places that we can enjoy as a public, and I’m trying to get the word out to as many people as I can.”