Word: flagging
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...broadcasts are beamed to stations throughout the world, he is one of the world's most influential commentators on U.S. affairs ... Cooke focuses on minutiae. As he sees it, they tell more about a culture than the big issues that engross most journalists. [On] reverence for the flag, for instance ... he recently wrote, scarcely any other country shows such a high regard for that symbol. U.S. laws, he was surprised to find, prohibit use of the flag for ornamentation. So when he once looked for a box of candy with a flag on it to send to his mother...
However a government may try to hide them, there are ways to measure the costs of war, and last week people could take their pick. You could see, for the first time, the coffins of dead soldiers, wrapped tight like a gift in the flag for which they fought. You could mourn the one whose name was familiar, the football star who took a million-dollar pay cut to defend his country after 9/11. You could listen, for the first time, to the Pentagon leaders admitting that they would need both more troops and more money...
...past 13 years, the Pentagon has barred reporters from witnessing the transport of soldiers' flag-draped coffins to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. But in a strange coincidence last week, those images, which had become so iconic that many Americans did not realize they were prohibited, resurfaced in two places. On April 18, the Seattle Times ran a photo taken by an employee of a defense contractor in Kuwait of a plane filled with coffins. The cargo worker, Tami Silicio, was promptly fired. Then Russ Kick of Tucson, Ariz., put 361 Dover photos (all from the past year, including...
...there is an annoying condescension to this style of leadership. It assumes that nothing has changed since 9/11, that Americans are too busy living their lives to ask tough questions about that planeload of flag-draped coffins--an image the Pentagon didn't want you to see--heading home last week. It assumes that the public won't pay closer and more critical attention as the election draws near. If this is, indeed, the President's calculation, it is a cynical and dispiriting one. Perhaps Bush's EQ isn't so stratospheric after...
...unfortunate matter of the flag-draped coffins is playing out the same way. The Pentagon’s policy on not allowing images of coffins returning from war is understandable, if inexcusable. The policy could have been defended on grounds of morale or taste, for example. But when a number of tasteful, moving images of caskets returning from Iraq were released from the press, the White House decided to defend an ill-conceived policy rather than let it pass, and once again crossed the line from the mistaken to the absurd. A spokesperson for our president condemned the release...