Yahoo! News - Lawmakers Back Media Ban on War Dead at Air Base
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Monday backed the Bush administration's ban on media coverage of the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers being received at Dover Air Base, despite complaints that the policy was an attempt to mask the rising death toll in Iraq.

Republicans who control a Senate majority defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to make the Pentagon write new rules to allow media coverage of the return of the remains of soldiers to the United States.

As a result, "The over 830 service men and women who died in Iraq passed through a politically imposed void hiding the truth," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said in floor debate on the issue last week.

Instead of protecting the soldiers' families, Lautenberg said, "This policy has everything to do with keeping the country from facing the realities of war, shielding Americans from the high price our young service people are paying."

If this war is so just, why would the pictures be such a threat? Family privacy is not being breached as long as names are not read as to who is in those coffins.