>At lunch time I just read Maureen Dowd's column in today's paper. (Here is a link -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/opinion/22dowd.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=maureen%20dowd&st=cse&oref=slogin). She writes about Colin Powell saying one of the reasons he decided to speak out the other day was a photo in The New Yorker of a mother grieving over the grave of her son, who was killed in Iraq. Powell said he stared at the picture for an hour, thinking about how the politics of polarization have been used to divide us.
>
>As it happens the same photo arrested my attention, although not for an hour, when I read that issue a week or so ago. It was the picture of a mother's grief, along with her son's name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, that grabbed me. It was a reminder that all kinds of dash-Americans have died in Iraq. Here is the photo (#16):
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/09/29/slideshow_080929_platon?viewall=true#showHeader
>
>#18 also grabbed me.
>
>The New Yorker doesn't do a lot of photo galleries but they all seem to be memorable.

I also hate the war in Iraq, but somehow, that picture of the mother at her son's grave looks posed to me. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure she is grieving her son's death - what mother wouldn't. But that picture just doesn't look like a candid photo to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I got. Maybe it's because I would expect any mother or friend or relation to be facing the grave rather than sitting behind it.