Bush is the chicken of all time...he can't face the BLOOD ON HIS HANDS........Ashcroft must have come up with this.....
Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, October 21, 2003; Page A23
Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions
would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at
air bases in flag-draped caskets.
To this problem, the Bush
administration has found a
simple solution: It has
ended the public
dissemination of such
images by banning news
coverage and photography
of dead soldiers'
homecomings on all military
bases.
In March, on the eve of the
Iraq war, a directive
arrived from the Pentagon
at U.S. military bases.
"There will be no arrival
ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or
departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim
stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning
remains.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about
November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently
went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan
war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year.
Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had
restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the
spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."
President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in
Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage
events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House
press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning
remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them
politically -- I'm outraged."
Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy
covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to
the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling
family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.
One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion
of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops
along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.
A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for
soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although
he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in
Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.
The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim
tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999,
the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a
decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test,"
as the public reacts to fatalities.
Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became
increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada,
Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in
cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force
Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.
President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and
the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in
many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241
Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews
in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at
Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS
Stark in the Persian Gulf.
During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and
Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.
But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would
be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a
year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news
briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.
But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear
through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming
of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary
Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins
of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public
distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS
Cole in 2000.
The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush
administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion,
word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of
making the arrival ceremonies off limits.
"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes
down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent
policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it
very clear it applies to everyone."
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