on the freedom of the press, and civilian deaths:
"It's a first glimpse at the claim process that's used in Iraq and Afghanistan but it's only a limited glimpse and is not indicative of the number of claims," Jon Tracy, military and legal advisor at the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), told IPS. "There are a lot more claims out there that could be released and should be released."
(...) "Since U.S. troops first set foot in Afghanistan in 2001, the Defense Department has gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human costs of war," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
(...) Photographers are banned from covering the arrival of caskets at U.S. military bases, Iraqi journalists have been paid to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort, "embedded" U.S. journalists are required to submit their stories for pre-publication review, journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan has been erased and statistics on civilian casualties have been consistently withheld.