State of the Art reports on an article from the New York Times, in which it is noted that “since last year the military has enforced new embedding rules that require photographers to obtain consent from wounded soldiers before images of them can be published.” I have to say, that’s quite the ingenious way to prevent the public from seeing the consequences of George W. Bush’s disastrous Iraq war (which, lest we forget this, also is the war of all those Senators who gave Bush the authorization for it and of those Senators who just handed Bush more money for it with no strings attached). So now we’re in the absurd situation where people can’t do anything about the war (because anything other than letting the President do whatever he wants would not “support the troops”), and citizens can’t see what’s going on (because taking photos of wounded and dead soldiers would not “support the troops”). There’s a lot of stuff that I could add now, but since Al Gore has already written about it, let me just recommend The Assault on Reason. Do yourselves a favour (if you live in the US, that is; I don’t think it’s out anywhere else yet) and buy and read the book.