EARLIER I NOTED THIS NASA RELEASE pointing out that many newspapers were showing pictures of the space shuttle Columbia crew’s flag-draped coffins and identifying them as Iraq war dead. Here’s a partial list of outlets that were snookered. Apparently, they just picked these up from an antiwar website and didn’t do any further checking.

Remember this when Old Media guys talk about how untrustworthy the Internet is. . . .

UPDATE: I finally managed to get the Memory Hole site — which has been down from traffic load, I guess — to open. The problem is that he filed a Freedom of Information Act request that’s rather obviously flawed. Here’s the link, which may or may not work for you. But here’s the FOIA language:

All photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.

The request should have specified combat deaths. One reader emails that this was an Air Force mousetrap, because astronauts are not military personnel. Er, except that they usually are. I assume that this was an honest mistake on the part of the Memory Hole, but it’s a dreadfully-worded request, and it’s not surprising that the result included non-combat deaths. What’s more, to the extent that newspaper editors were aware of the wording of the request, they should have realized the risk that these photos would not represent Iraq combat deaths or, for that matter, combat deaths at all.