I recently heard the report on the use of split screen on the elder Bush "forcing" the administration to ban covergae of coffin returns and, since I don't watch Fox, I assume it was from a professional journalist, mostly probably someone from NPR, so I don't think pulling a Paul Harvey "rest of the story" here is really warranted.

Frankly, I believe it was more the actions of the anti-war movement; which tended to follow the coffins and, then, indiscretely, rudely one might say, staged protests at burials; which really turned the administration's stomach and perhaps rightly so. That is how privacy rights were violated.

As an aside, I am now so glad that I remembered Paul Harvey in a recent post. I rarely agreed with him but was always grateful to hear his no nonsense approach to the story. I honor him in absencia. We need more singular voices.

Are you bucking for his spot in the firmament of radio stars, Bob or Brooke?

"The military has banned media from photographing coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware since 1991. This, after a 1989 incident in which some TV news outlets used a split screen to juxtapose images of deceased Americans being returned home with images of President George H.W. Bush joking with reporters at a live news conference. It was a cheap shot that made the president seem insensitive to the somber ceremony and the sacrifice it commemorated. Hence, the ban."

That's from syndicated liberal Leonard Pitts, via the Miami Herald, and that's the rest of the story that NPR -- totally in the Democrat tank -- didn't tell you in its eagerness to cast Cheney as the designated villain in an anti-Bush diatribe.

You'd think On The Media would honestly discuss media culpability in using coffins as props to advance a liberal media agenda, but that would require a level of honesty and professionalism often absent from the "profession" of journalism and from NPR.

Concerning CaChingle, however you spell it, take a look at "millicent" project--micropayments, MIT and Digital Equipment Corp ha a robust effort in developing such stuff.

bw

Don't forget Andrews AFB, guys! That's where the wounded come back home--maimed and wounded.

And Dover, you'all were too cowardly to push against Bush I and Bush II (and Bill whosis, in a couple of cases).

First, tell me just what it is that identifies one casket from another that the press would or would not show. I have never seen any pix that show any such identification, so just HOW is anyone's PRIVACY being invaded by those coffins?

Also, we haven't seen pictures of wounded and dead soldiers in Iraq, nor of wounded and dead children, wounded and dead "collateral Damage," a.k.a. "Indigenous Populations" or "human beings that have much darker skin that we mostly do (or our leaders, anyway, until recently), and also, ignorant souls, they don't speaka da Ingisss.

bw

In this story, your reporter asked if seeing pictures of the coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base will scare Americans into a premature withdrawal from Iraq. I don't believe so. I think many US citizens have wanted the US to withdraw from Iraq for a long time already. That is one of the reasons we voted for Obama.

Sincerely,

Carol Urbanik