coverage of military casualties coming home in flag-draped caskets. americans could see the combat. they were happy to embed reporters with the military to make sure the public saw that, but americans would not be able to see for ourselves this other part of the war, the part where we see the human cost to u.s. troops and their families. it's not that there were no pictures of the flag-draped coffins coming back from iraq. the pentagon had pictures. but they wouldn't release them. and they wouldn't let the media take their own. they walled off those ceremonies and all the visual evidence of them. and for years we did not see them. and then one day a blogger in arizona got a letter from the department of defense. that blogger was named russ kick. and he specializes in finding and preserving and publishing documents that the government wants to keep hid el paso. and he had been asking repeatedly in all different kinds of ways for photos of the solemn ceremonies.