As an ex-soldier, I am touched with deep respect by these pictorial records of honorable military burial:

But I am equally filled with revulsion and disgust by President Bush's decision to prohibit sharing the record of these solemn moments with the American public.  His stated rational?  That the surviving families have a right to privacy and that such photos violate that right.  Bullshit. That is just a shallow  alibi and clearly Bush decided to bar access to these images only for fear of political backlash.  Shame on a President who sends our boys and girls to die and doesn’t allow a mourning public to share fully in the grief.

These are the photos that "We The People" were never supposed to see.

For the story of the "accidental release" of these historical records, visit thememoryhole.org .

Sidenote: eerily, while finishing this post, I switched the kitchen TV channel  from the History Channel to AMC and the beheld, in the closing moments of The Wrath of Khan, the'death' of Spock and his glorious funereal space dispatch with full honors to the new planet Genesis.