Very little seems to have changed in the Pentagon since 2004.

Back in April of 2004 I published at culturekitchen a call to online action, after the Pentagon, then under Rumsfeld's direction, had issued a media black out of images of the coffins of dead soldiers [See also the followups]. I became one of a group of bloggers worldwide who spread the word about the good people of The Memory Hole. This was at a time when the blogosphere had not exploded yet. Bloggers writing about technology, media, politics, even art and fashion helped in the push to make visible the ravages of the Iraq occupation here in the United States. The Memory Hole, through Freedom of Information Act requests, were able to obtain and publish public domain photographs about the war at a time when many newspapers were still debating the consequences of doing so.

Yet they are not only "indy media" heroes for showing photographs of the dead being brought back home. With The Woundedd, they became the first ones to publish in gruesome detail photographs and oral accounts of the first wave of wounded veterans coming out of Iraq.

This push against the Pentagon's war propaganda took full force by May 10, 2004, when Simon Hirsch published in The New Yorker, "Torture at Abu Ghraib". It's amazing but when you go back to that time, there were a handful of very influential writers on both the right and left who questioned the veracity of Hirsch's account.

Then the photographs of US soldiers posing next to the tortured to death Iraqis at Abu Ghraib exploded into the scene.

Much has been done to try to rectify this patter of misinformation, torture and abuse of power, but with the latest news published by the Washington Post, it seems like we're going back to where we were in 2004 :

What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs It had the feel of a throwback to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, when the military cracked down on photographs of flag-draped caskets returning home from the war. Rumsfeld himself was exposed for failing to sign by hand the condolence letters he sent to the next of kin. His successor, Robert Gates, has brought some glasnost to the Pentagon, but the military funerals remain tightly controlled. Even when families approve media coverage for a funeral, the journalists are held at a distance for the pageantry -- the caisson, the band, the firing party, "Taps," the presenting of the flag -- then whisked away when the service itself begins.

Nor does the blocking of funeral coverage seem to be the work of overzealous bureaucrats. Gina Gray, Arlington's new public affairs director, pushed vigorously to allow the journalists more access to the service yesterday -- but she was apparently shot down by other cemetery officials.

Media whining? Perhaps. But the de facto ban on media at Arlington funerals fits neatly with an effort by the administration to sanitize the war in Iraq. That, in turn, has contributed to a public boredom with the war. A Pew Research Center poll earlier this month found that 14 percent of Americans considered Iraq the news story of most interest -- less than half the 32 percent hooked on the presidential campaign and barely more than the 11 percent hooked on the raid of a polygamist compound in Texas.

The Pentagon knows dead soldiers can speak. Through their caskets, through photographs of crying friends, TV images of children holding fresh cut roses or the laments of a widow saying goodbye to her mate. The Pentagon and the Bush Administration understand the power of images and how they can be used to wage an information war.

Which is why they've gone back to their old antics.

It doesn't matter that this country is fixated on getting ready to rid of the current administration through the presidential elections. If we look closely, the Bush Administration has gone back to fighting this war like it's 2004 ... the last presidential election. If we pay attention we'll notice they won't go with a whimper. They're definitely preparing to go out with a bang.