GO RUSS GO

Let’s give a big Defense Tech hug to Russ Kick and The Memory Hole.
Pentagon pho­tog­ra­phers were secretly tak­ing pic­tures of dead sol­diers return­ing to America. But the Defense Department refused to let any of the haunt­ing images out into the pub­lic realm.
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, Russ forced the Pentagon to release 361 of the pho­tos. And now, the pic­tures are all over the Internet and front pages every­where.
Despite all our pro­tec­tions, despite all our tech­nolo­gies, war still exacts a ter­ri­ble human toll. And it’s impor­tant that aver­age folks get to see the cost that Iraq is tak­ing on our sol­diers. This is a huge — and rare — win for the public’s right to know. Thanks, Russ.
THERE’S MORE: “President Bush was ‘moved’ by recently pub­lished pho­tos of cas­kets con­tain­ing U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel slain in Iraq,” accord­ing to CNN, “but (he) stands by his pol­icy bar­ring their pub­li­ca­tion.“
AND MORE: “Many news orga­ni­za­tions across the coun­try are mis­tak­enly iden­ti­fy­ing the flag-​​draped cas­kets of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew as those of war casu­al­ties from Iraq,” says NASA (via Drudge).

April 23rd, 2004 | Cloak and Dagger | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.