I'm amazed that such a big newspaper takes the time to enforce this policy in such a strict way, when thousands of photos land on their desks from Iraq every day. Very impressive and the LA times certainly deserves a lot of credit here! About the photo itself: I don't see why it's so important to merge the two together. It's not such a strong photo in the first place. So why on earth take this kind of risc ? If he'd added some aircraft in the sky or something, I could have understand the reason why he edited it, or additional debris or something, but not this. BTW, if you check the 'Cameraworks' section of the Washingtonpost.com you can find MUCH better photos of the war. Very, very, very strong examples of real photojournalism! (And it also shows that dead bodies or blood are not required to show a war).