Home > Defying Pentagon Ban, La. Guard Unit Allows Footage of Returning Coffins
Defying Pentagon Ban, La. Guard Unit Allows Footage of Returning Coffins
by Open-Publishing - Monday 17 January 20052 comments
Wars and conflicts International USA
By E&P Staff
NEW YORK The Pentagon ban on newspaper and TV images of coffins returning from Iraq suffered an unexpected jolt in Louisiana yesterday.
A Louisiana National Guard unit defied a Pentagon request to prevent television news crews from filming six flag-draped soldiers’ coffins arriving in the state following the men’s deaths in Iraq last week, according to a report by CBS News.
The Louisiana National Guard allowed a CBS crew to film the arrival of six soldiers’ coffins at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, La., near New Orleans. Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard, told CBS: "What we thought was, we’re going to do what the family asked us to do."
Footage broadcast by CBS showed an honor guard carrying the soldiers’ flag-draped coffins out of an aircraft to six waiting hearses, watched by grieving families. The six guardsmen died last Thursday after their armored vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
Forum posts
18 January 2005, 22:25
Good going Louisiana National Guard, seeing 6 parts of reality in Iraq is simply the least we can do to see,remember and honor the dead.America needs to see this. The Pentagon has image issues understandably but please face the music guys.
19 January 2005, 05:18
We need to see every lost soldier. We need to be able to mourn the loss of these brave, heroes who sacrficed their lives for us.
The criminals in this Administration, responsible for their deaths don’t want us to see the innocent victims of their crimes. W. and his thugs will never stop comitting these crimes if we don’t see these innocent victims.
God Bless the families of these brave soldiers and the hundreds of thousands of innocent dead Iraqui’s!