Obama arrived at Dover AFB around 12:30 AM and met briefly with the families of the fallen soldiers. Typically about 2/3rds of the families give permission for the media to record the event, but of the 18 fallen warriors only one family gave Obama permission for their loved one to be used for the photo op.
When some objections were voiced concerning Obama using the fallen warriors for a photo op, many from the left do what they typically do, bring up some Bush Argument. Some of of them have said that Bush never went to pay his respects to the fallen. I have even heard accusations that Bush didn't personally sign the letters of condolence sent out by the White House.
Facts are so inconvenient for the left. President Bush sent a handwritten letter to the family of each and every soldier lost to the war on terror. Bush just didn't trumpet it and pat himself on the back telling the world what a great guy he was and the media would not have printed it, even if he had. 'W' also spent much time visiting wounded soldiers. Some of the visits were publicized to encourage support and funding for various programs that benefit wounded warriors and other visits were totally private with no media and no publicity. Much of what President Bush did became public knowledge only because the soldiers, families or staff have told the story.
George W. Bush routinely reached out to the families that had loved ones killed in action. They would often receive a call from the White House and were brought to locations where the President was visiting on other business so they could meet with him. There was no fanfare, no media. The families were briefed before the President’s arrival so they would know what to expect and told that “the President is on a tight schedule and while he wants to spend time with each of you, he needs to leave at ‘X’ time…”
President Bush would come into the room, make a few short remarks and then meet with each family. In every instance he would talk to individual family members about anything they wanted to talk about, he never rushed them and he stayed until the families suggested he should talk to someone else. There was always a White House photographer present to take pictures that were made available only to the families. Repeat, ONLY the families. The press was NEVER present. There was NEVER a public announcement from the White House that the President was meeting with the families of the fallen. Their privacy, and their loss was always respected.
SOURCES:
WA TIMES
As the nation slept, President Obama received home the bodies of 18 U.S. military and law enforcement personnel killed Monday in AfghanistanASSOCIATED PRESS
In adherence to family wishes, a small group of reporters was permitted to watch just one of the transfers, that of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., who died Monday along with seven other U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter when their armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the Arghandab River Valley in southeast Afghanistan.
The president's trip to Dover is his first since he lifted the 18-year-old ban on press coverage of the arrival of dead U.S. service men and women at Dover, where all U.S. casualties are processed before being returned to their families.
Obama goes to Dover to honor fallen soldiersAP NEWSWIRE
After landing, the president, wearing a dark topcoat, got into a motorcade to a base chapel, where he met privately with families of the fallen Americans. He had arrived on the base at 12:34 a.m. Thursday and was expected to be back at the White House before dawn.
The Pentagon this year lifted its 18-year ban on media covering the return of U.S. service members killed in action if family permission is provided. With Obama in attendance, the media were to witness the transfer of one fallen soldier.
An 18-year ban on coverage of Dover homecomings, dating to the 1991 Gulf War and strengthened by former President George W. Bush, was relaxed this year under Obama's watch. Now, families get to decide whether cameras can document the return. Nearly two-thirds have said yes to the media and even more to coverage by Pentagon cameras. In this case, the return of only one of the 18 was open to the media.
Click on READ MORE for more background info and links.
ABC NEWS ON THE LIFTING OF MEDIA BAN
Earlier this year, Obama lifted the 18-year ban on media coverage of the return of fallen soldiers to Dover, a ban critics said hid the costs of war from the American people. A senior White House official told ABC News that the president had wanted to do this ever since the policy of media coverage of the return of fallen troops was changed, but he wanted to do so "in a way that caused the least amount of disruption."17 of 18 Families of the Fallen Denied Obama His Photo-Op at Dover
Obama met with the families of the fallen at a base chapel before the dignified return took place... The sole family to allow media coverage was the family of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin. According to media reports, Griffin's casket was the last to be brought off the C-17 cargo plane that carried the bodies of 15 soldiers and 3 DEA agents killed this week in Afghanistan.
That is a stark contrast to the reported 60% approval by families for media coverage since Obama lifted the ban on media coverage in April. Byron York reported a month ago that media interest has plummeted since April such that at most dignified transfers there is only an AP stringer there to take still photographs.
Obama's photo-op last night was the culmination of a long campaign by Obama's left wing allies like Code Pink to give aid to our enemies by highlighting the deaths of America's servicemen and women in the war on terror.
While not casting judgment on the decision by the family of Sgt. Griffin, the near unanimous decision of the families to deny Obama his photo-op, compared to the average 60%, is telling.
WA EXAMINER
Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets
By: Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent
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."
That's an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 -- the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed -- there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story. Two days later, when the body of Army Spc. Israel Candelaria Mejias, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, arrived, 17 media outlets were there. (All the figures here were provided by the Mortuary Affairs Operations Center.) On subsequent days in April, there were nearly a dozen press organizations on hand to cover arrivals.
Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet -- the Associated Press -- there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.
The media can cover arrivals only when the family gives its permission. In all the examples above, the families approved, which is more often than not the case; since the policy was changed, according to the Mortuary Affairs Office, 60 percent of families have said yes to full media coverage.
But these days, the press hordes that once descended on Dover are gone, and there's usually just one organization on hand. The Associated Press, which supplies photos to 1,500 U.S. newspapers and 4,000 Web sites, has had a photographer at every arrival for which permission was granted. "It's our belief that this is important, that surely somewhere there is a paper, an audience, a readership, a family and a community for whom this homecoming is indeed news," says Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. "It's been agreed internally that this is a responsibility for the AP to be there each and every time it is welcome."
Colford says the AP has a photographer who lives within driving distance of Dover and is able to make it to the arrivals, no matter what time of day or night. As for the network news, it's not so simple; a night arrival means overtime pay for a union camera crew. And then there's the question of convenience. "It seems that if the weather is nice, and it's during the day, we get a higher level of media to come down," says Lt. Winter. "But a majority of our transfers occur in the early evening and overnight."
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.
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