Also needed for clarification is where the ban has been in effect, and for how long.

According to this article in the Washington Post from last October:

"Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins"

The ban at Dover, the nation's largest military mortuary, was in effect throughout the Clinton administration as well as both Bush administrations, it just wasn't enforced under Clinton--or, oddly, during the Afghanistan war--as it has been for the Iraq war under Shrub II.

The article also talks about this idea that the public should not be allowed to view the returning caskets because it will be "politicized" by an administration's opponents to the war, as being a military world view, that Dana Milbank (the writer) says the military brass refer to as "the Dover test".

However, the myth that this rooted in Vietnam doesn't stand up to reality testing. Milbank also notes that:

"Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending."

The article then cites example after example of Carter, Reagan, and Bush I participating at public, filmed and photographed ceremonies of returning dead soldiers at military bases. Until the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when:

"...the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving. But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration...The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits."

I saw that press conference, and I disagree that the split screen was inappropriate. I think it was very appropriate. I still don't understand why it so offended the patriotism mongers.

So while that may in fact be the justification for the Bush administration's complete and total censorship policy, the public doesn't perceive it as being about the press conference of his father's during the first war against Iraq. The public myth seems to think this is all about Vietnam.