The Seattle Times reports that a woman was fired from Maytag Aircraft for taking photos of military caskets transporting soldiers’ remains.

…she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

The same company then fired her husband.

Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.

Media coverage of Vietnam taught the government nothing if not that support for a war sours in direct proportion to dead Americans witnessed by the US public. The Pentagon’s policy directly addresses this problem by keeping what’s out of sight out of mind.

More information:
Images of war dead a sensitive subject

“The image of dead Americans, especially the dead American soldier, is probably the most powerful image of war for Americans,” [said poet Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1863]. “It’s the one that immediately strikes us in the gut, because we hate to see it but we recognize we may need to see it.”

Other photos of soldiers’ coffins in transport:
The Memory Hole