Monday, June 21, 2004
Republicans keep hiding the war dead!
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The U.S. Senate on Monday backed the Bush administration's ban on media coverage of the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers being received at Dover Air Base, despite complaints that the policy was an attempt to mask the rising death toll in Iraq ( news -web sites ).
Republicans who control a Senate majority defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to make the Pentagon ( news -web sites ) write new rules to allow media coverage of the return of the remains of soldiers to the United States.
The Pentagon has barred coverage of the return of remains flown from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to Dover Air Base in Delaware since the 1991 Gulf War ( news -web sites ) under former President George H.W. Bush.
The Clinton administration made exceptions, but President Bush ( news -web sites ) reimposed the ban when the Pentagon issued a directive on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
As a result, "The over 830 service men and women who died in Iraq passed through a politically imposed void hiding the truth," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said in floor debate on the issue last week.
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