The Staton Jones Report

From Salon's War Room '04 page:

The New York Times reports that the "Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures."

"The 54-to-39 vote came after little formal debate, with 7 Democrats joining 47 Republicans to defeat the provision. Two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, voted in favor of permitting news photographers to have access to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where coffins containing the war dead from Iraq arrive."

"'These caskets that arrive at Dover are not named; we just see them,' said Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam. He added, 'I think we ought to know the casualties of war.'"