Has this not been on Slog today? (Somehow I missed it when I was reading up on Obama's Iraq-withdrawal remarks today.) The ban on images like the one above—published this morning on the cover of the New York Times—has been lifted:

WASHINGTON — In a reversal of an 18-year-old military policy that critics said was hiding the ultimate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media will now be allowed to photograph the coffins of America’s war dead as their bodies are returned to the United States, but only if the families of the dead agree.

What happened 18 years ago that got the ban instituted in the first place?

The original 1991 ban had its genesis in an embarrassment for the first President Bush.

In 1989, the television networks showed split-screen images of Mr. Bush sparring and joking with reporters on one side and a military honor guard unloading coffins from a military action that he had ordered in Panama on the other.

Mr. Bush, a World War II veteran, was caught unaware and subsequently asked the networks to warn the White House when they planned to use split screens. The networks declined.

At the next opportunity, in February 1991 during the Persian Gulf war, the Pentagon banned photos of returning coffins.