Posted on 09/28/2009 9:47:17 PM PDT by elizabethgrace
Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"These young men and women are heroes," Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong."
In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.
But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
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“So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 — more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.
With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.”
Strangely enough the wall to wall coverage of casualties each day is not the top of each news ticker coincidentally coinciding with the change in administrations. In fairness though, we got thorough coverage of Obama’s NCAA basketball picks, his choice of canine and of course his wife’s latest dress.
My goodness - is this author attempting to suggest that many of the more ambitious politicians are self-serving hypocrites and insincere phonies? What a revelation! Oh, the humanity!
The terrorists feel as if they won a victory with Obama. They’re going to expand their operations on all fronts to see if they can get more.
You’re so right. The damn media in this country are beyond shameful. They wanted to use our fallen to humiliate President Bush, period.
The terrorists feel as if they won a victory with Obama. They’re going to expand their operations on all fronts to see if they can get more.
Oh yeah. For sure.
Less than 3m men and women have been killed or wounded in ALL the wars the US has fought in since 1776
Meanwhile, over 40m people have been aborted since 1973
I don’t see the press calmoring to photograph the waste buckets (sorry... Deliberately ugly phrase choice)
it’s obviously a political stunt designed to hurt GWBush. Personnally, using our sons and daughters as stage props makes me very angry
then again, I’m not a liberal
The bodies, portrayed not as American heroes but as victims of George Bush's warmongering, provided a talking point that helped get Obama elected.
That's all that those bodies ever meant to the press.
At present, Obama and his sycophantic press corps are content to leave our 68,000 demoralized and hanging in limbo because HE'S unfit for CIC. I won't go into the reasons why I know he's unfit, but let it suffice that he is an appeaser at the least and a mole at the worst.
You’re exactly right, TChad. It’s beyond shameful. It’s reprehensible and literally anti-American.
The ONLY motivation for their "concern" and "support" of our troops and their families was their hatred for George W. Bush and their desire to bring his administration down.
The left always has and always will hate our military. They don't give a rip about what happens to them, and that includes the man who is supposed to be their Commander in Chief.
We no longer HAVE a CinC. PRAY for our troops. PLEASE!
George Stephanapolus (sp?)—Stephy—always ends his Sunday morning talk show with his roll call of the fallen for the week. He is still saying “those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” If Iraq was Bush’s war and Afghanistan is Obama’s, I think he should show where the casualities are coming from.....overwhelmingly from Obama’s war. You are correct, the press was only interested in using the Iraq War to push the Obama presidency.
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By the way, where is Cindy Sheehan?
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