The handful of photos that the American public has seen of the remains of U.S soldiers returning from foreign wars is the product of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by one man, Russ Kick. Kick, as many of us know, is the proprietor of the website thememoryhole.org. In 2005, Kick petitioned the FOIA office of the Department of Defense for "all photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB." First rejected, then accepted on appeal, his request produced 361 unmarked photos. Kick didn't know what he had in his hands. Were these caskets of servicemembers killed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, or in other lands with U.S. military presences? As it turned out, mixed in the batch were 73 images of the return home of the astronauts killed in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

That the DOD released the assortment of photos to Kick at all was somewhat surprising. We debate today whether the new addition of 20,000 troops to the some 145,000 currently fighting in Iraq is some combination of (a) an unfortunate but necessary step, (b) an option better than the miserable alternatives, or (c) sheer lunacy. And right we should. But what seems frighteningly beyond debate at this point is that the Bush Administration is committed to the idea that the public must be kept separate and apart from the nitty-gritty of this war. We cannot see the dead come home; a chasm must be maintained between the American people and what the United States government does in its name.

Built into FOIA are nine exemptions and three exclusions, most geared towards protecting national security, law enforcement operations, personnel information, or personal safety. It seems as if since 2000, Pentagon policy has dictated that there be "no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing" from U.S. bases in Germany or Delaware. But the restriction had been little enforced until 2003.

The DOD's initial rejection of Kick's request -- though no security considerations could reasonably be claimed to be at play and there was no information in the released photos to identify who lay in the caskets -- is in step with how the executive branch under George Bush operates. Step-by-step, the Bush Administration has strangled the public's right to know what the government does. Moreover, the Bush Administration has again and again thwarted the efforts Congress has made to discharge its constitutional responsibility to oversee the executive branch.

The list is long. In a memo issued in October of 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft directed every federal department and agency to think long and hard before filling their FOIA requests. Via executive order, Bush upended the presumption established post-Watergate that presidential papers should eventually become public. Now, the American people must show "a demonstrated, specific need" to peek at them. Throughout the executive branch, new and largely undefined designations such as "sensitive but unclassified" and "for official use only" are regularly stamped on government documents. The situation is such that even Indiana Republican congressman and Clinton-antagonist Dan Burton has called the "veil of secrecy" that had descended around the Bush Administration "unseemly."

At play here are two distinct worldviews. The first, which I think can fairly be called "the Bush Perspective," understands that the United States Government is made up of the elected, appointed, and anointed. They exist to protect the American people, who cannot be trusted. There is the governing class and the governed, and the governed have no right to oversee the work of the governors. The bruised-and-battered second goes like this: the executive branch -- all of it, from the White House to the CIA to the Department of Defense -- exists for the sole purpose of serving the America public. As an instrument of the people, it operates with openness and accountability wherever and whenever possible. Holding onto majorities in both houses of Congress may require that Democrats claim that worldview with both hands, and never let the secrecy and pain of the last six years fade from the public mind.

(The photo above, like all of the photos released as part of the Kick request, are public domain and can be reposted and reprinted freely.)