America can handle the coffins

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A ban on showing the return of our military dead is a disservice to them and to us. Obama should lift it.

The ban was imposed during the Persian Gulf War by President George H.W. Bush, who -- along with then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney -- became convinced that if Americans saw photos and television footage of the caskets of dead servicemen and servicewomen being unloaded at Dover, it would undermine support for the war.

In part, this was a reflection of the aversion to openness and the antipathy toward the media that seem imprinted on the Bush/Cheney DNA.

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