Kicking Up A Shit-Storm. posted by Richard Seymour

Censorship And the Iraq War

Russ Kick, editor of such glossy books as Abuse Your Illusions and Everything You Know Is Wrong, (which seem eerily close to my own planned books, Abuse Your Relations and Everyone I Do Is Wrong), has made the news with his excellent website, The Memory Hole .

What has he done that has so troubled President Bush and made the front pages (in the non-Murdoch press)? He has filed for and successfully obtained the right to pictures taken of coffins draped in Stars n Stripes flags on their way to burial back home. Under the Freedom of Information Act, he has obtained 361 such photographs. And the President is pissed off .

Russ explains it thus:

Since March 2003, a newly-enforced military regulation has forbidden taking or distributing images of caskets or body tubes containing the remains of soldiers who died overseas...

Immediately after hearing about this, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the following:

All photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.

I specified Dover because they process the remains of most, if not all, US military personnel killed overseas. Not surpisingly, my request was completely rejected. Not taking 'no' for an answer, I appealed on several grounds, and—to my amazement—the ruling was reversed. The Air Force then sent me a CD containing 361 photographs of flag-draped coffins and the services welcoming the deceased soldiers.

Score one for freedom of information and the public's right to know.

The Independent reports:

Aware of the power of these pictures and their potential to inflict political damage on Mr Bush as he campaigns for re-election, his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, is desperate that they should not be published. Under a White House directive, the press has not been permitted to photograph the return of such coffins for more than a year. But last week 361 images of military coffins being returned to Dover air force base in Delaware were released to an internet news site under the Freedom of Information Act.

This week the Pentagon decided it should not have provided the pictures after all, and barred further releases. "Quite frankly, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified," said John Moline, a deputy undersecretary of defence.
Since their release, the photographs have been published prominently by newspapers and received widespread coverage by the television networks ­ triggering further debate about the war. Only Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has declined to show the pictures or report any discussion about the White House's decision to prevent their publication...

...The images the White House wanted to censor were obtained by Russ Kick, from Tucson, Arizona, who runs a website called The Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org) and who filed a Freedom of Information Act application. Air force officials denied the request but decided to release the photos after Mr Kick appealed against their decision. Mr Kick was unavailable for comment yesterday, but on his website he wrote: "These are the images that the Pentagon prevented the public from seeing."

Well, they may yet succeed in doing so, Russ. Remember the late J H Hatfield, and watch your everloving hide.


Freedom of the Grave.

Meanwhile, General Myers has told the Duluth News Tribune that the "war is going well" - so well, in fact, that US soldiers may have to remain in Iraq for "decades". It will depend, he says, on "how quickly Iraqis stand up and take responsibility for their country."

General, you appear to be giving way to your inner termites. Iraqis stood up and took responsibility for their own country not more than a few weeks ago. They knocked you out of several towns. You sent helicopter gunships in to slaughter them. They routinely tell opinion pollsters that they want you out of their country and power handed to an elected government. Your cohorts tell us, on the quiet, that Iraqis will only be granted "limited sovereignty". Perhaps, however, you mean "Iraqis" in the same sense that Bush Senior meant it when he called upon them to over-throw Saddam Hussein - that is, the senior Ba'athist generals who will rule once more with an iron fist, and whom you are now so anxious to make welcome in "the new Iraq".

Endnote: JustiC has an excellent little piece on Melanie Phillips and Mordechai Vanunu . Go see.