Controlling the Debate

I just want to point a brilliant Orwellian maneuver by Rove and the White House in reference to the "coffin picture" issue. They're evil bastards, but they're really good at what they do.

You notice, in the current debate over whether or not showing pictures of coffins during a war is "disrespectful," a huge question is being completely ignored.
We don't ever see actual dead people. Us or them.
Don't you think if they were showing what was really happening over there; the death, the carnage, the intestines all smeared around, don't you think people would be more than a tad less aloof about the war and about keeping out troops in Iraq?
By making the debate about whether or not we can see coffins on TV we completely go around the issue. People on both sides yell back and forth at one another and we have the appearance of a debate. It's not. It's a distraction just as much as the stupid OJ Simpson... er, Michael Jackson case.
The idea that showing an anonymous coffin on TV is disrespectful to a family is ludicrous at best- it's a coffin. The debate should be about the actual people we (in my opinion) SHOULD be seeing everyday on the news. We should see our soldiers and the Iraqi dead alike.
700+ of our soldiers dead and not a single image of what that really means. These are really dead people. They're not video game figures or extras in a movie. It really pisses me off that people who say they "support the troops" are the same people who think we should censor all of the ickiness of war and focus on the bravado and bullshit that goes along with every imperial enterprise since Rome. War is blood and nastiness and terrible atrocities by its very nature; pretending this isn't the case isn't just disingenuous. It's morally repugnant. The people that do it have a special place in Hell waiting for them. (Or I would think so if I believed in Hell.)
So every time you hear people ranting back and forth at one another about the coffins, don't fall for the mirage. Your watching a magician waving his hands around while the assistant sneaks out of the box. The dead are far too important for us to fall for the smoke and mirrors.
Wait for the battle of Fallujah. There's going to be a bunch of coffins on both sides. It's going to be terrible. And we won't see it. We should. Our taxes are paying for the blood.