"NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists’ requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims. An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats.
"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "Excuse me!!
FEMA wants what? OK. We could accept the idea that our soldiers’ dead bodies should not be made the objects of the press’s attention at Dover AFB, but how are we to interpret this as other than an attempt to hide from the public just how terrible our losses were in this Gulf (our own)?
Pat Lang
It’s very simply the fascist tenet of controlling the media to control the people.
Colonel:
This ties into what I blabbed out yesterday in that some of the slime campaign was preparation for dissident, dissatisfied and crippled veterans.
We saw the process when a soldier asked Rumsfeld about vehicle armor. The right deflected the issue by claiming the question was planted by the press and therefore irrelevant.
However a quick set of searches on google taught me.
– There were problems with this armor.
– The factory which made it was not working at full capacity.
– There were armored vehicles availible which were better than the humvee.
– Much of our heavy armore, eg. Bradleys and tanks had been shipped home.
The thing is that we had a real problem and the possibility of some solution. the technique was to shift focus.
Pictures of dead force people to see and realize the real cost of things. I think thhis is the ideal. The citizens of WWII were not shielded from the tragedy, but still for the most part kept their will. It involves us in the process and allows us to keep our morality. It makes us responsible.
Modern American society has chisen to try and hide the ugliness and cost from the people. Democrats have done it, but this administration has done it more than ever before, somehow believng that we can’t deal with bad news, always offering the happy view with it’s supporters suggesting anything else is akin to treason.
I personally believe that staring reality in the face is the surest way of fixing mistakes and preparing oneself for difficult tasks.
But despite their claim of “responsibility” and old time values we have a leadership focused on the easy promises of the huckster. It is identical in form to losing 10 pounds in one week without dieting and exercise. Keep the illusion alive, appearance is all. We make reality.
A concept of some eastern mysticism.
One meme going around the right is identical to the video you posted below. The claim is made that 2,000 dead in Iraq is trivial compared to some previous wars.
Please understand I am willing to support far higher costs for worthwhile enterprises, even Iraq if it can be successful.
But I and thankfully large number of Americans will not trivialize each and every sacrifice from those who have taken our nation’s burden while we *think* about mayve driving a fe less miles this week and maybe write a $200 check.
A minority have take on a burden for this nation and even if the dead are less than one perfcent of WWII it is still heavy for those who bear it, we need to feel some anguish, to somehow if only mentally bear a bit of the burden and cost.
Since badly hurt soldiers both physically and mentally among us will remind us of the consequences of war the must be marginalized. Those who are bitter and angry wil be slimed even though they should be given some respect and tolerance for what they endured.
I don’t agree with all Ms. Shaheen’s statements, but my goddess she lost her son! She has a right to be “irrational.”
But the treatment of her is a prelude for those willing to undertake the darkest of human activities, but who are unwilling to allow themselves to feel any of the consequences.
The pain must be denied, it might interfere with our shopping or favorite TV shows. It might make us question whether we have the best of apossible wars and governments.
I wondered if they’d resort to this as a way to conceal the effects of their criminal negligence.
It certainly didn’t take them very long.
As in Iraq, so too with the huricane. The last thing this Bush regime wants to take root in the public mind is the idea that there’s a causal relationshipbetween their own actions and policies and the tragedies we bear witness to daily.
Yep, image is everything. The casualties of any event are cold, sterile numbers unless you actually see the photos. I don’t fully understand why, but images have much more of an impact than words. That’s why Abu Ghraib had any impact at all, and why they’re fighting to stop the release of much worse photos and videos. I guess reading and forming an picture mentally is a relatively much longer process than seeing a raw image. I would argue, though, that not wanting photos of the hurricane victims is the exact same thing as not allowing photos of the soldiers killed in war. In both cases, images would make the events real for us, not abstract. We might actually give the policy some thought. Wouldn’t want that.
not just the images, the sheer number. Computer sims of this situation project 100,000 deaths. Where do you put the corpses? How do you identify them after 9 days or more of decomp. How many were eaten by rats or gators? Twice the number that died in Nam. Two years total deaths for the USA. How do you dispose of that many corpses, how do you store them until disposal?