Their Photos Tell the Story

As the U.S. casualty rate accelerates in Iraq, the Army Times, a civilian newspaper that is sold mainly on military bases, has used eight pages of its year-end review to run photos of almost all of the more than 500 soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the paper's managing editor, Robert Hodierne, getting the photos was a struggle because "The military doesn't give out so many photos of the dead." According to Jimmy Breslin, "The chilling photos run at a time when the government tries to describe the war as a civic venture, and nearly all of the news industry doesn't know how to object. This probably is the worst failure to inform the public that we have seen. ... The complaint about the military holding back pictures is one part of the attempt to make you as unaware as possible that soldiers are dying in Iraq. ... And the dead are brought back here almost furtively. There are no ceremonies or pictures of caskets at Dover, Del., air base, where the dead are brought. ... The wounded are flown into Washington at night. There are 5,000 of them and for a long time you never heard of soldiers who have no arms and legs." CNN and the Washington Post also maintain photo galleries with faces of the fallen.