Following on recent posts here and here on the seemingly intractable problems in Iraq, this David Carr/NY Times op-ed comments on the efforts of the U.S. military to control the publication of images of injured or killed soldiers from the Iraq War. Carr’s op-ed prompted this letter to the Times editor by University of Houston Professor Bill Monroe, who you may recall had the best line at the Memorial Service for the late Ross M. Lence. Professor Monroe’s letter provides as follows:

To the Editor:
ìNot to See the Fallen Is No Favor,î by David Carr (The Media Equation, May 28), suggests that the reigning assumption among leaders in Iraq is that we canít handle the truth. In a curious way, it may well be the duty of fallen soldiers to let us see them ó wounded, dying and dead.
If we have the temerity to ask them to risk life and limb protecting American interests, we must ask them to help us know what it looks like, what it feels like, so that we can decide, as a Republic and a people, whether we in fact want to exact that private and public cost.
ìIt is well,î Robert E. Lee is reported to have said, ìthat war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.î
We canít handle the truth? We had better.
William Monroe
Houston, May 30, 2007