Correction/Clarification regarding the coffin photos posted on The Memory Hole.

They've been re-categorized into two sets, one being the remains of Columbia astronauts, and the other being the coffins of dead soldiers at Dover Air Force Base. FYI, if Russ Kick's clarification is correct, The Oregonian published only photos of the caskets of war dead.

Here is the email from Russ Kick:

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From: russ@MINDPOLLEN.COM
To:
Date: 4/25/04 12:34PM
Subject: [IRE-L] Correction/Amplification Regarding Dover Casket Photos

Because The Memory Hole has been overtaxed to the point of paralysis, I
haven't been able to post the following further info about the Dover
photos, so I'm sending it to various mailing lists:

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Correction/Amplification Regarding Dover Casket Photos

Among the 361 Dover casket photos are a minority of images showing
coffins of the Columbia astronauts. I didn't realize this at the time
that I posted them, mainly because when the Air Force asked for
clarification during the process, I specifically told them that I wasn't
requesting photos of the Columbia astronauts, only military personnel
killed overseas.

(Not that I have anything against astronauts. One of the tricks for
writing successful Freedom of Information Act requests is to make your
request as narrow as possible. I was afraid that including the
astronauts in the request would give the Air Force another excuse not to
release the photos. As in: "Well, since you want the astronaut photos,
we're going to have to clear that with more federal agencies.....") I've
since been told by a reporter that NASA released the astronaut casket
photos at the time and has never objected to their use. Quite a marked
difference from the battlefield dead, who are swept under the rug by the
Pentagon.

So, out of 361 photos, the first 73 were of the astronauts. Doing the
math, this means that 288 photos are of military personnel who died
overseas.

Where exactly were they killed? The photos as released offer no clues,
nor did the Air Force's cover letter with the photos. But let's do some
more math. From March 2003 to the present, 726 US soldiers have been
killed in Iraq. During that same time period, 38 have died in
Afghanistan. Thus the odds are 19 to 1 that any given casket contains
someone killed in Iraq. Put another way, there's a 94.8% chance that a
casket comes from Iraq.

Plus, in no instance have more than seven soldiers been killed at once
in Afghanistan. One set of pictures shows 20 caskets in the plane's
hold. This group must be from Iraq.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who might definitively know
(through visual clues, for example) where the other caskets are from.

I apologize for the oversight on my part and hope that this
misidentification hasn't upset anyone.

Be this as it may, the significance of the photo-release remains unchanged:

We were not allowed to see the war dead arriving at Dover.

Now we are.

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As mentioned, changes will be reflected on the site when I'm able to
update it again.

-Russ-
The Memory Hole [www.thememoryhole.org]