H.R.P.'s

Early on in Desert Shield the Department of Defense contracts for 16,099 "human remains pouches," a number that is not based on casualty projections, Pentagon sources insist, but simply on the size of the force deployed to the Gulf.

Factories in Newark, New Jersey and Ellicott City, Maryland go into overtime production to meet the orders.

Nobody wants to talk about this, however, because the Pentagon believes the Press has an unclean fascination with corpses. The military mortuary at Dover AFB is put off-limits to reporters. A few days into the shooting war the Army decrees that the faces of KIA's may not be recognizably photographed or televised.

And there will not be any damn body counts, is that understood?