According to The Washington Post, the Bush administration has banned "news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases." The Post clearly suggests that the administration has done this for PR purposes, in order to avoid weakening support for the war. Given the timetable and other facts that they cite, this conclusion seems virtually unavoidable.

It's crucial that we not fall into the trap of interpreting all of the Administration's actions in the worst possible light; it's also important that we not exaggerate the badness of its apparently bad acts. However, I simply can't think of any benign interpretation of this policy. On the face of it, this is another case of the Bush administration putting politics before truth--and, in this case, before honoring our dead. Perhaps another plausible interpretation will emerge, but I'm not optimistic. It will be interesting to see what they think about this over on the Right side of the blogosphere.