Reuters wrote:WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has no plans to allow media access to a U.S. Air Force base receiving the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq, a Defense Department spokeswoman said on Friday.
The remains of 18 soldiers killed in the Iraq campaign and six who died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan have arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware since Tuesday. Each time, a military chaplain has uttered prayers and an honor guard has carried flag-draped aluminum coffins to waiting vehicles.
In some past conflicts, news cameras and reporters were allowed to record the transfer of soldiers' remains at the Dover base, which houses the U.S. military's largest morgue.
But a Defense Department spokeswoman said a policy in place since the 1991 Gulf War shields the return of war dead from the media spotlight and encourages family members not to attend. She said the policy was adopted at the urging of soldiers' families.
A U.S. tank carrying four U.S. Marines plunged from a bridge into the Euphrates River last week after the driver was killed in combat, apparently causing the other three crewmen to drown, U.S. military officials said on Monday. ... Central Command said the tank driver was shot and killed while crossing a bridge and the M1A1 tank toppled into the river, landing upside down.
The United States is prepared to pay a "very high price" in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a US central command official has said.
"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away," the official said, adding that US casualties in the war had been "fairly" light.
"If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties," said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named.
"There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking," he said, adding: "In World War II there would be nights when we'd lose 1000 people."
With six British casualties Tuesday, troop deaths in Iraq keep climbing - and American public patience ebbs a bit.
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – Every morning, Americans wake up to the possibility that, yet again, one of their own has been killed in Iraq. Since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major hostilities, at least 55 US troops have died in Iraq, either under attack or by accident - more than a third of the US death toll during the war.
It is a subject that makes administration officials uneasy. They know that American military deaths in Iraq could sap public support for the US role there, and eventually precipitate an early withdrawal. The question, for a White House as sensitive as any to public opinion, is how long the drip, drip, drip of US casualties can continue without major erosion of support for US policy.
Public concern is beginning to register. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday shows a decline in the percentage of Americans who believe the US casualty figures are "acceptable," from two-thirds in early April to about half now.
