15 US troops dead

[PennSkinsFan]

a chopper shot down in Iraq. Folks, we simply have no control. The insurgemnts are actually more effective than the Iraqi army durign the War. Makes you wander if we got suckered in with an early rout. Maybe that was part of the plan.

[rskinsfan10]

I've been thinking the same thing. I honestly believe that Saddam is alive and well and is actually in contact with those that he needs to be in planning this warfare.

[Spence]

Now comes the news that the Bush admin is trying to discourage coverage of the honor ceremonies for our fallen dead from Iraq. Bad publicity, you know.

At least they've got their priorities straight.

[Skins57]

This sucks these guys were on thier way home (where they should be anyway) for some R&R.

[rskinsfan10]

One guy was actually on his way home to attend his mother's funeral.

[NamVet4]

Originally posted by Spence
Now comes the news that the Bush admin is trying to discourage coverage of the honor ceremonies for our fallen dead from Iraq. Bad publicity, you know.

At least they've got their priorities straight.

Source ?...Please!

[Spence]

Originally posted by NamVet4
Source ?...Please!
Marlin Fitzwater, who was White House press secretary to President Bush's father, recalled that the elder Mr. Bush "went to a number of memorial ceremonies" where he met with families of troops killed in action in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

At the time of that war, the Pentagon barred media coverage of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The ban was relaxed during the Clinton administration, but then reinforced by the second Bush administration in the run-up to the current hostilities in Iraq. Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/campaigns/05STRA.html?hp)

Pentagon keeps dead out of sight
“Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war. Even body bags are now sanitized as `transfer tubes'"
By Tim Harper
Toronto Star, November 2, 2003

Washington—Charles H. Buehring came home last week.

He arrived at the air force base in Dover, Del., in the middle of the night, in an aluminum shipping case draped in an American flag.

When the military truck drove his remains across the tarmac, workers paused and removed their hats.

He was met by a six-member honour guard acting as pallbearers, to allow a "dignified transfer" to the Charles C. Carson mortuary, where he became one of an estimated 60,000 American casualties of war that have been processed there over almost five decades.

"It reminds us we are at war," says Lt.-Col. Jon Anderson, who describes business at the Dover mortuary as "steady."

But America never saw Lt.-Col. Buehring's arrival, days after a rocket from a homemade launcher ended his life at age 40 in Baghdad's heavily fortified Rasheed Hotel last Monday.

Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.

In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.

No television cameras are allowed at Dover.

Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism.

Buehring of Winter Springs, Fla., described as "a great American" by his commanding officer, had two sons, 12 and 9, was active in the Boy Scouts and his church and had served his country for 18 years.

No government official has said a word publicly about him.

If stories of wounded soldiers are told, they are told by hometown papers, but there is no national attention given to the recuperating veterans here in the nation's capital.

More than 1,700 Americans have been wounded in Iraq since the March invasion.

"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University.

"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defence has ever undertaken in this country." Source (http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=220&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0&POSTNUKESID=dc85deb6dacacf0de8ea3dcb5a16877a)

[Spence]

This is how Mark Shields see the issue: Time to take the Dover test

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) --At Harvard on January 19, 2000, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton provided a valuable standard, both to determine whether the United States ought to send the nation's warriors into combat and to enlist "the support of the American people as well as the Congress" needed to sustain that involvement. In Shelton's judgment, such a grave decision :

"(M)ust be subjected to what I call the 'Dover test.' Is the American public prepared for the sight of our most precious resource coming home in flag-draped caskets into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware -- which is a point entry for our Armed Forces?

This is an issue, I think, that should be raised early on. It should be discussed, and it should be decided by our political leadership before any operation begins."

In the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration chose instead to duck Shelton's "Dover test." The scene so familiar to older Americans -- of the military honor guard in white gloves, respectfully accompanying from the aircraft to the waiting loved ones the remains of the fallen warrior in the coffin covered by Old Glory, often with a military band offering an appropriately solemn piece -- was simply banned. George W. Bush's war against Iraq could not flunk the Dover test because there would be no Dover test.

One of the most enduring criticisms from Bush's fellow conservatives of those Americans, especially liberals, who opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam was that , as a consequence of that vocal opposition, no parades or bands or celebrations were held to honor and welcome American veterans returning from that war.

Today's Bush press blackout deprives the deceased hero and his -- yes, or her -- family of that most special moment and indelible memory when a grateful nation expresses its condolences and its respect.

The president of the United States is not simply the commander in chief. He is also be the comforter in chief. Which is exactly what President Ronald Reagan was on January 28, 1986, after the shocking explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the loss of its crew when , quoting from a sonnet written by World War II pilot John Magee, he said: "We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them , this morning, as they prepared for their journey and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

After 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, were killed in a terrorist attack on their Beirut barracks, Reagan went to Camp Lejeune not simply to console the grieving, though console them he did, but to do what President Bill Clinton would later do so memorably after the deadly attack on the USS Cole and the murder of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Nairobi -- to give voice to the national sense of grief and offer meaning to the ultimate sacrifices made.

Where is the outrage on the part of the press? Are we lapdogs? The administration in full spin control insists that the reality on the ground in Iraq is much more positive than the press reports. Yet the administration denies reality at home -- the reality of the recent heroism of this nation's fallen sons and daughters.

By official government policy,. there is no band to welcome them home. No honor guard to present the folded flag to their widow and orphan, to make certain the family knows that their loss is also their country's loss, that they do not weep alone. It is a cruel and ugly policy that robs the patriot of the glory and public honor he has earned and deserves.

The time is long past in 2003 to take the Dover test. Source (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/column.shields.opinion.dover/index.html)

[NamVet4]

Thank you for the sources. This type of political behavior does not surprise me.
Another instance of political expediency outweighing ethical and moral behavior.

Sad.... :(