Release of Casket Photos

The Pentagon is finally releasing some photos [WaPo] of returning flag draped caskets, but many have been redacted.

Many of the photographs released were censored, with black rectangles blocking out faces, uniform insignia, name tags and other images that could reveal the identities of military personnel involved in the honor ceremonies.

"Individual judgments were made to black out some faces and identifying information to protect privacy information," said James Turner, a Pentagon spokesman.

Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which assisted in the lawsuit, said it was "an outrage and an insult that they blacked out those faces of the honor guard, when today on . . . [the Pentagon Web site] you can see photos of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. I can only imagine they put those black boxes there to make the photos unusable."

Not all images were of victims of today's conflicts. Some show coffins containing remains of U.S. service members from Korea and Vietnam.

A small victory. Now if we can just get them to admit that getting into this war was wrong in the first place. Is that too much to ask?