WASHINGTON — Pat Moran felt "a real anguish and a lot of mixed feelings" Friday when she saw the photos of flag-draped caskets of soldiers killed in Iraq on her TV screen and the front page of her newspaper.
The images of casualties of war were widely shown after the Air Force released 361 photos from Dover Air Force Base, responding to a Freedom of Information request from a First Amendment activist, Russ Kick.
Defense Department officials late Thursday vowed to block making public any more photos, saying the initial release was a mistake that violated a 1991 ban set up to protect the privacy of families. But in the Internet age, the photos were already everywhere.
"The military's focus is on the families, and that's the most important thing — but I don't feel it was disrespectful to run those photos either," said Moran, of Peoria, Ariz. "It shows what freedom really costs."
A year ago Moran lost her son, Army Sgt. Josh Harapko, when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed at Fort Drum, N.Y. Harapko, 23, had just returned from combat in Afghanistan.
"I have such mixed feelings about this — I don't know what the right thing is," she added.
Moran is not alone. Military families have different views over whether such images should be shown, and media and political analysts don't agree on the impact.
Critics of the Iraq war say strict enforcement of the ban, which was not always followed during the 1990s, is a way to hide a powerful visual reminder of the war's toll.
President Bush saw the photos as a "reminder of the sacrifice that our men and women are providing in Iraq" but believes that family privacy outweighs public or media interest in the images, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
The military takes the photos for the "historical record but not for public release," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Families decide how much photo coverage they want at graveside ceremonies.
The scenes of flag-covered caskets arriving at Dover, the military's central mortuary, were more commonplace in the 1970s and '80s. And casualties from terrorist attacks in the 1990s were also shown.
"It's odd that they're clamping down on this now," said Matthew Felling, media director of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. "I think the Bush administration does worry that the photos could weaken resolve in the war."
Some military families say the photos of service members' caskets don't bother them — depending on how they are used.
If pictures are used "to show reverence and memorialize their sacrifice to the country, then I am OK with that," said Michael Hansen, a Florida National Guard captain from Lake Worth who served in Iraq for a year.
"If it is being used pro or con for the war, then it is absolutely disrespectful because it is trivializing the sacrifice they made," Hansen added.
The National Military Family Association, an advocacy group, acknowledged in a statement Friday that "there is no apparent consensus among families about whether they want events surrounding the death and burial of their service member made public."
The group favors the ban on coverage at Dover because "sensitivity to the grief of surviving families should be paramount."
Many newspapers and networks carried photos from Dover Friday, just as they ran graphic photos of the killing of four Americans in Iraq whose bodies were mutilated.
ABC News officials have protested the Dover ban, saying the photos of returning caskets are an important part of the war story. Some readers agree.
"People should see what is really happening," said Jeanne Feldbaum, 77, of Philadelphia. "They should not try to hide these casualties. I'm glad The Philadelphia Inquirer put the pictures on the front page, even though I haven't stopped crying over it."
Some media observers such as Felling said that since Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia and other wars, Americans are more used to coverage of casualties and graphic combat images.
Austin Hoyt, a longtime TV producer who worked on the PBS Vietnam series, said it's up to the media to use such images responsibly and "not wallow" in footage of casualties.
"The press should be allowed to set up at Dover and film — but that's easy to do," Hoyt said. "It's much harder to show what's happening in Iraq, including stories of how people have been helped by the war."
Contributing: Phil Long