Coming home: does the American public have a right to see the country's war dead as they return from Iraq and Afghanistan?

• Author: Seelye, Katharine Q.
• Position: NATIONAL

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Every week, flag-draped coffins carrying the bodies of American troops arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. A chaplain says a brief prayer and then a military honor guard removes the caskets from the plane so they can continue their final journeys home.

This ceremony--known as the "dignified transfer of remains"--is not something the American public is allowed to see. Since 1991, the military has banned photographs and video coverage of the coffins returning home for burial.

Now, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in their sixth and eighth years, respectively, President Obama is reconsidering this controversial policy.

The review raises key questions about the impact of the photos on public morale during wartime and about how to balance the public's right to see the toll of war with the privacy rights of military families.

The military says the ban spares a soldier's loved ones the hardship and expense of going to Dover to be there to greet the arrival along with the news media.

Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, says that families might think "if the press is going to be there, well, by golly, I should be there to see my son or daughter, husband, wife, mother, father come home." Usually, families wait for their loved one to be escorted home.

But skeptics say the policy is an attempt to sanitize the war and manipulate public opinion.

"This is part of an overall strategy to control the media in terms of what we know about the war and how it's going," says sociologist Brian Gran of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Part of the debate turns on whether the return of soldiers is a private or public matter. While military families have disagreed about allowing the news media at Dover, many agree the return of a body is so deeply personal that they should be able to decide whether to keep it private. Critics say a soldier's joining the military is a public act, done on behalf of country, and that his or her return is of public interest.

Britain and Canada, two important allies in the war in Afghanistan, allow far more news media access to the return of fallen soldiers than does the United States.

OBAMA & THE MILITARY

With the current review, the Pentagon appears to be seeking greater balance between private and public interests. Morrell says that Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to allow families to keep their privacy "while at the same time trying to...