Posted on 10/30/2009 10:36:44 AM PDT by kristinn
ABC News' Pentagon correspondent Luis Martinez reports that Barack Obama brought twenty-four reporters, photographers and videographers from fourteen media outlets to Dover Air Force Base to cover his 'surprise' visit there early Thursday morning.
The New York Times reported earlier that there was a "small contingent" of media at Dover. However, two dozen is a crowd, especially when vulnerable grieving families are involved.
Liz Cheney is being attacked (and here) for pointing out that Obama imposed the question of media coverage on the families by his presence at Dover. Seventeen out of the eighteen families of the fifteen soldiers and three DEA agents refused media coverage of the return to American soil of their loved ones.
The AP reports that one family changed their minds and decided against media coverage when they were informed Obama would be there:
The wife of Army Pfc. Brian Bates, who died Tuesday in Afghanistan, said she changed her mind and decided against allowing coverage after learning by phone around 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday that Obama would attend.
"Brian met the president, and that's all that matters," Enjolie Bates, who was not at Dover for the transfer, said in a telephone interview from her home in Lakewood, Wash. "I know he would like that. We didn't need to broadcast it to the world."
Thanks to Obama, Pfc. Bates' grieving widow is answering phone calls from the AP not about her hero husband, but about Obama and the media.
The AP also reported claims by the Pentagon and Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that "there was no suggestion from the government for the families to lean either way on media coverage."
As was reported yesterday, the sole family out eighteen to permit coverage is well below the sixty percent rate of permission granted since the ban on media coverage was lifted by Obama in April.
Fourteen of the eighteen families were present at Dover Thursday morning, which is consistent with the seventy-three percent rate of families of the fallen coming to Dover since the Pentagon changed its policy to now pay for travel and hotel costs for the families. That policy was also instated in April.
The Pentagon videotapes each dignified transfer, apart from the media, and offers the video to the families. ABC reports about three-quarters of the families accept the videos.
It's unfortunate that Obama's motives in going to Dover are suspect, but his terrorist associations and his leaving his general and troops twisting in the wind in Afghanistan leave Obama open to such doubts--especially from military families.
Zero is suck a disgusting bag of puke.
^such^ Freudian slip, there.
What an unclassy thing to do Obama; surprise grieving families.
OMG....thanks Kristinn for posting this
Of all the digusting vile slimey crap odumbo has done this is at the top.
damn he is scum
That way he can salute more, like he’s ever earned the right to salute at all.
Only this guy could turn death into a photo op.
He is truly a disgusting human!
Bush, throughout his Presidential tenure, met IN PRIVATE with grieving 9/11 family members and the family members of fallen service member. The media was NEVER invited, not even off the record, to be present in those meeting. This is one Bush policy Obama, if he cared more for his country than his political popularity, would adopt immediately.
Ranks right up there in tackiness with our late Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll’s habit of crashing military funerals and referring to them as “functions.”
I am not at ALL surprised by this "man's" horrid actions.
He also claimed that he visited Walter Reed without media....
uhm, Walter Reed will not allow media to enter, Obama left his “media” that he brought, sitting outside....
either he didn’t know enough to realize that his photo-op croonies wouldn’t be allowed to go in with him.....
or, he called up media and invited them to join him for a car ride? Can you imagine? “
I am going to visit some folks. Now, you won’t be allowed to come in, but would you like to ride with me and just wait in the car?”
arrogant? Lying? Fool?
then later he spins it like he visited out of the goodness of his heart?
Pure and simple, Bam wanted a photo-op to stop his plung in the polls.
W would frequent Reed Army Hospital, but there were never any pix.
I added the correction below in a follow-up post. I think it was a ‘Freudian slip’.
Very unfortunately our enemies also know that he is a coward and appeaser and because of this they are emboldened to the extreme. That is why everything broke loose in Afghanistan since he was elected and may be soon the same disaster will happen in Iraq.
Obama is a Gollum.
I am proud of the 17 families who refused the POS.
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