It’s almost like 1942, all over again:

A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday’s edition of The Seattle Times.
Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.
. . .
Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.

The picture at issue is currently displayed at the above link. Recall that much of World War II passed before the government allowed a single picture showing dead American soldiers to be shown.
Meanwhile, across the pond there’s controversy regarding a photo showed in a CBS broadcast on the Princess Diana accident:

Lord Spencer, the brother of Princess Diana, today said that he was “shocked and sickened” by the broadcasting of images of his dying sister on US television last night.
Grainy black and white photocopies of photographs showed the Princess of Wales being treated by a doctor as she lay slumped in the back of the car in which she was fatally injured in a crash in Paris in August 1997.
The images, in which the dying princess has her eyes closed, were aired for around 10 seconds on US network CBS’s 48 Hours Investigates programme.
. . .
The photographs were copied from a 6,000-page report of a French investigation into the crash. It was the first time that they had been shown in public.
They were taken moments after the crash, which happened in a tunnel at Pont l’Alma, by photographers who had pursed the car that the princess had been travelling in. Police had seized the film at the scene.

I haven’t seen the Princess Diana photographs yet, but generally I’m in favor of showing more of the graphic realism of war, accidents, and crime than the mainstream media tends to show. I don’t know how much of a benefit we receive in shielding ourselves from reality.

One of the interesting aspects of Bob Woodward’s new book, as I understand it, is his insights on the major players in the Bush administration during the lead up to war. Among these, Secretary of State Colin Powell appears to be the toughest nut to crack. By all accounts he very much opposed the idea of invading Iraq beforehand. But at some point he did an about-face and donned his war uniform. Why? If he thought war was wrong, how come he didn’t just resign?
Last night on Hardball, Woodward offered his theory on Powell’s thinking:

MATTHEWS: If that’s correct, how does he maintain his honor of being opposed to the war, signing on to it without resigning and then knocking the war while he’s still in office as secretary of state? How does he bring all that together?
WOODWARD: What’s the important constituency for Colin Powell?
MATTHEWS: History.
WOODWARD: I’m going to ask you–no, the soldiers who are out there in Iraq, 130,000 of them.
(CROSSTALK)
WOODWARD: And we’re sitting here quite comfortable.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
WOODWARD: and those people are going through hell. And Powell knows it, because he’s been there. And he knows, if he quit at any point in this…
MATTHEWS: Right.
WOODWARD: … he would undermine confidence in what they’re doing.
MATTHEWS: But has he undermined confidence by saying in this book to you, if he did, and he says he has, that he thought this was bad policy at the time?
WOODWARD: Well, he thought he pushed and issued very specific warnings to the president.
(CROSSTALK)
WOODWARD: Very, very clearly, no ambiguity.
But it is Powell’s belief that presidents make this decision, not secretaries of state. And I believe, if he had been asked, “Hey, Colin, what do you really think? Tell me. Let’s sit man to man up in that office in the residence,” he might have heard. But he was never invited in and he never felt comfortable enough to go and break the china to say, you have to listen to my recommendations on the bottom line here.

That makes as much sense as any explanation I’ve heard. It doesn’t make much sense that Powell is venting in a book now, though, since the troops are still under fire.
At any rate, if Bush wins reelection, I’d be very surprised if Powell stays in the cabinet after this term ends.

Preemptive release:

John F. Kerry yesterday disclosed nearly 200 meetings he has held with lobbyists since 1989, including dozens having business before his Senate committees, as the presumptive Democratic nominee sought to draw a sharp contrast with what he describes as the Bush administration’s more secretive and expansive dealings with corporate lobbyists.
No member of Congress-turned-presidential candidate has ever listed in such detail contacts with lobbyists, who are paid to influence policy decisions.
In an 11-page document provided to The Washington Post before wider release today, the senator from Massachusetts detailed the participants and dates of private meetings in his Senate office with lobbyists representing clients including labor unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, and such major corporations as Microsoft and IBM.

Provided Kerry is offering a complete list–not an edited one–this is a refreshing move. It may not directly translate into in the polls, but it distinguishes the senator from White House, Inc. And frankly our government might be a little cleaner if we knew who all our politicians were associating with.

Via Political Animal, I see there’s now a Wal-Mart blog up: “The Best and the Worst about Wal-Mart.”
I shop at Wal-Mart. It’s the closest store to home, and there’s also that low price thing going for it. One thing that strikes me about shopping there (apart from its low wages and imports from China) is the frequency I enter the store and see short check-out lines, yet by the time I head back to the aforementioned lines myself they’ve magically grown much, much longer.
Okay, maybe it just seems that way, but I do find it odd how customers have to wait in line sometimes given all the employees they have roaming about there.

First, King Abdullah postponed a visit to the White House “amid Arab anger.” Now there’s this from another Arab ally:

Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel’s assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday.
Mubarak, who visited the United States last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington’s actions had caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world.
“Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region,” he said in an interview given during a stay in France, where he met President Jacques Chirac Monday.
. . .
“At the start some considered the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it,” Mubarak said.
“People have a feeling of injustice. What’s more, they see (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon acting as he pleases, without the Americans saying anything. He assassinates people who don’t have the planes and helicopters that he has.”
. . .
“The despair and feeling of injustice are not going to be limited to our region alone. American and Israeli interests will not be safe, not only in our region but anywhere in the world,” he said.

This isn’t the direction we want to be heading.