I'm down for all or none. 9-11 jumpers lying broken on the concrete, bloated floating corpses from Katrina, and a full crotch shot of a 15 yr old girl's baby being taken out of her womb in pieces.

All or nothing.

Didn't really want to see the 9/11 bodies - but the impact of the planes, the collapse of the towers, and the people who jumped (from a suitably tasteful distance) were all things the MSM stopped showing as well.

The thing I find strange about this controversy is that the LA Times and cable news channels have already shown me plenty of corpses in New Orleans. They've exercised discretion in not showing any faces but other than that there has already been enough gruesomeness to convince anyone that bad things have happened there.

Is this controversy after the fact a result of MSM disappointment in the substantially lower body count compared to the 10K+ predictions?

I suppose there's little concern about an inflamed mob lynching the first hurricane it comes across.

Or the first Chimperor McBushitler it comes across.

Ace, this is where fair-mindedness is retarded.

Chance of getting real 9/11 footage from the MSM: zero.

So yes, I think they should generally show this stuff, but still! -- not after that precedent.

Waterlogged dead bodies all pretty much look the same. If they've been in the water for a week or so, there isn't going to be much recognizable.

Its obvious to me they only want to do this so they can make the swollen corpse/Bush nexus.

I think the point is that peopel who are missing loved ones may discover, via the wonder of television, that those loved ones are now dead. That seems like a pretty rough way to find out your husband/wife/mother/son has died.

Ace -- why is it "important to witness the full horror of the disaster."?

I didn't think I was out of the loop. My understanding was that FEMA requested that they not take pictures of authorities recovering bodies and that FEMA refused to transport journalists and photogs in FEMA boats.

What was the suit about? Surely they didn't sue for the right to ride in FEMA crafts. Christ, I must now be clueless.

why is it "important to witness the full horror of the disaster."?

So pictures of rotting corpses can be shown on the same page as Bush - above the fold of course.

Doh! I got it now. It was a preemptive suit. I guess that's why Ace put's those links up there, eh?

Oddly enough, HBO just repeated their excellent NYC 9/11 documentary yesterday - and it really brings it all back, what with multiple angles of the planes hitting both towers, the collapses, the screaming, the falling bodies, and the mutiple funeral aftermath.

I'm pissed.

That's why we need to be reminded what happened, and how it happened. If we aren't, we'll forget, and forget to take action.

Yeah, I'm really convinced the major incentive in showing bodies of Katrina in the media is to use them like a bloated, stinking club against Bush.

When pictures of that sort start to show up, don't expect it to be tasteful.

Seeing a dead body resulting from a Hurricane is different than seeing a dead body that was murdered by terrorits. Show the dead bodies from 9-11 to remind the world why we're fighting in the Mid-East, but spare the victims of Katrina the horror of seeing their dead friend/relative just to show the world how bad the hurricane was- we already know it was bad.

I've seen enough burned/mutilated/shot and stabbed dead bodies in my time as a firefighter/EMT and if the idiots insist on showing them while a child is present they should all be dragged out and shot. Let the children watch that also. CNN has went over the edge with this. Anyone that watches that pitiful excuse of a network is as bad as they are.

The MSM and the bush haters are going to be sorely disappointed. The number of corpses has been severly overestimated

Let's see:

the media wants pictures of caskets of dead soldiers;
the media does not want pictures of the dying on 9/11;
the media does not want pictures of the planes flying into the building on 9/11;
the media wants pictures of the dead from Katrina so that they can make up what they now lack in quantity (no 10K) with quality..show the same bloated corpse over and over again;
the media has joined an ACLU lawsuit to gain access and release more Abu Ghrabib pictures because you can never have enought Abu Ghrabib pics, I guess

When word spread that alligators were munching down on dead corpses, I thought to myself "Cool. I wanna see that! On video, please!."

Then I thought better of it and became ashamed of myself. That corpse was once a human, someone's mother, father, child, now an animalistic tidbit.

Then the MSM insists on showing this to me. Why? What does it add to the civilized debate or public understanding? What they're trying to sell, I ain't buying. They've become electronic crack pushers.

The difference between hurricanes and 9/11 is human agency. Osama's attacks were moral decisions. Hurricanes are not.

Show the pictures. If you don't want to watch, hit off, or tune to another channel.

Blame Bush or don't. It doesn't matter. I don't think he's running again.

As for showing Saddam's dead - great idea. I'd love to see a timeline of deaths as good as we can get showing the number he slaughtered when he was slaughtering FOR us and we paid him well (don't forget Big George kissed Saddam's ring and praised him AFTER he gassed the Kurds) compared to the number after we stopped our Love Saddam Fest.

'For a feather in your cyberspace cap, who can tell me the three top Republicans in Big George's envoy who went to Baghdad to tell Saddam how great he was how much Big George loved him ?

Sure you can sue CNN. Buy some stock. The CNN policy manuals/constating documents/general BS propaganda are bound to say something about 'fair and balanced', 'even handed', blah, blah, blah.

Sue the bastards for endless egregious breaches of their own guidelines.