Maureen Dowd from the New York Times had a rather brilliant comment about Bush regarding Reagan's passing:
"Finally, there's a flag-draped coffin and military funeral that President Bush wants us to see."
Chills.
The Bush Administration says, no more photos from the largest military mortuary in Delaware. In fact, there is now minimal photographic evidence available of the slain. They say it's for the privacy of the families. Uh-huh. There was nothing private about Reagan's burial, now was there? We were allowed to openly mourn him, even walk right up to the casket. Watch it on tv.
Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington, said that the omission of photos of coffins or remains "is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war."
Uh-huh.
So, when someone dies in battle, we are supposed to just sorta hear about it in the headlines. No national mourning. There are just too many of them. At the time I am writing this, 834 American military people have died in Iraq. If we all stood around mourning every single one, I guess we wouldn't do much else, would we? We wouldn't be out spending our money and working to make money (in that order) and going about our business and having barbeques. And we'd never leave the house if we took the time to mourn for every Iraqi who has died. Currently, that number is in the neighborhood of 10,000.
How much more death of our bodies and destruction of our spirits? Oh... I guess a lot more.
