Spinning the dead

While Bush has banned media coverage of dead soldiers returning from the Middle East and hasn't attended a single funeral for the nearly 400 troops killed in Iraq, he has found time to meet with the families of the UK's Iraq war dead during next week's visit. Bush says the 54 British soldiers died in a "noble cause," but Robert Kelly, who lost his 18-year old son in a gunfight near Basra, says, "For these people to meet families, it is only for their own gain. They are not sympathetic towards people like me. They don't really care that my son lost his life."

Stateside, the ban on media coverage of incoming coffins from Iraq has been expanded; now military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery are off limits too. "You can't understand the true cost of war if you can't see the amputees and the people who have been killed," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. "The results of war have to be witnessed at graveside, whether you like it or not."

Also: When did "body bags" become "transfer tubes"?