US: A US contractor and her husband have been fired after her photograph of 20 flag-draped coffins of slain US soldiers going home from Iraq was published in violation of military rules.
"I lost my job and they let my husband go as well," said Ms Tami Silicio, who loaded US military cargo at Kuwait International Airport for a US company.
The Pentagon tightly restricts publication of photographs of coffins with the remains of US soldiers and has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base, where the caskets of slain soldiers usually first stop on their return to the US.
The military says the policy is in place to protect the privacy of families of those killed, but critics have said the rules are aimed at sanitising the war for the public.
The Seattle Times printed Ms Silicio's photograph last weekend. The picture shows soldiers tending to 20 coffins completely covered with American flags on April 7th inside a military cargo plane at the Kuwait airport.
Ms Silicio, who was raised in the Seattle area, was not paid by the newspaper for the picture, which a friend in the United States, Ms Amy Katz, passed on to the newspaper. Ms Katz said she had since found an agent to sell the photograph. - (Reuters)