The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releaseda series of documents showing a coordinated effort by the Pentagon and the Department of Defense aimed at hiding the human costs of the Iraq War. The effort is aimed at not only controlling information about US soldiers in Iraq, but also the deaths of Iraqi civilians. The ACLU charges that due to Pentagon policies, information about potential war crimes in Iraq is being hidden.

Additionally, the ACLU says that this policy is maintained by:

* Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas;

* Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort;

* Inviting U.S. journalists to "embed" with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review;

* Erasing journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and

* Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.