For complete story go to http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1253
November 2, 2003, Summary:
As the saying goes, if you can't convince them, confuse them. With more lies told each day by President George Bush, here is yet another one. The US Department of Defense changed the name from "Body Bag" to "Transfer Tube" to describe how the bodies of our young warriors are returned home in the dark of night, with no official count of their growing numbers, and no solemn public ceremony to honor their proud service
Pentagon keeps dead out of sight.
Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war.
Even body bags are now sanitized as `transfer tubes.'
Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.
In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.
No television cameras are allowed at Dover.
"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University.
"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country."
Simpson notes that photos of the dead returning to American soil have historically been part of the ceremony, part of the picture of conflict and part of the public closure for families — until now.
"This White House is the greatest user of propaganda in American history and if they had a shred of honesty, they would admit it. But they can't."
If there are no pictures of caskets being delivered to U.S. airbases, citizens don't think of them, analysts say. For every Jessica Lynch, the wounded soldier who returned to a hero's welcome and a book and movie deal, there is a Shoshana Johnson.
Johnson, shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, will receive 30 per cent disability benefits, about $700 per month less than her colleague Lynch.
Johnson is black, Lynch is white and the Johnson family says that is the difference.
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