There is a tricky game of false compassion the media played during the Iraq War, as earlier, wherein TV programs and newspapers daily ran the names and pictures of Americans killed in action (or a soldier who died for any reason in the war zone). Another version of the trick was to show the flag covered coffins of the slain being unloaded ceremoniously at Dover Airbase in Delaware. The superficial implication was that people would want to show sympathy for the dead and their families and acknowledge their sacrifices.

People do want to show such sympathy. Some families appreciate it. Some don't like the intrusion into their privacy.

Regardless, for some the real reason for the photos was to build popular dismay at the cost of war in American lives. It was meant to demoralize. Almost everyone in the media and the military and the government surely knows the effect and therefore the motive. That is why Franklin Roosevelt banned pictures of Americans being killed in World War II. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eventually decided in most cases to keep the media away from the delivery of the coffins of the deceased personnel. But the reason the government doesn't want to dwell on the pictures is also why the left wing media want them. They have an agenda.

There have been a number of articles lately about the possibility of a change in policy in the Obama Administration that, one way or another, would reopen the opportunity for the media to show pictures of arriving coffins.

There are two remarkable facets of this. First, the media want to show the coffins of Americans killed overseas, even though that now predominantly means coffins from Afghanistan, where President Obama--whose election they overwhelming supported--is sending more troops to fight, just as he said he would during the campaign. The media are suddenly and already willing to undercut the man they helped elect president--only a month after he took office.

Second, some of the media are fairly obvious in hinting at their true motives. You don't have to read too much between the lines, for example, to gather the anti-war policy agenda of this editorial of The Palm Beach Post.

There is, however, another possible hidden motive in this situation, however unlikely it seems. If President Obama actually now wants to get out of Afghanistan as well as Iraq--despite his past commitments--and wants the public to end its support for the Afghan War before he does so officially, then changing the policy on photos of arriving coffins would be a good way to get the "change" underway. In that case, editorials like the Post's are just getting ahead of Mr. Obama, not turning against him.

For my part, and for the good of the all-too real war on terrorism, I hope that the new president does not grant the media rights to showcase American deaths and instead gives sustained support to defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.