Senators Cannot Meet Iraq War dead

[scorcher]

 http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_061905.pdf 

Face the Nation CBS News

Conversation between Sen. Joseph Biden and Bob Schieffer / Karen Tumulty(06/19/05)
Sen. BIDEN: I'm a United States senator. Well, let me be very...

SCHIEFFER: They're not letting you on a military base? (Dover Air Force Base – Dover, Delaware)

Sen. BIDEN: I'm allowed in the military base. I'm not allowed to go to the mortuary. I'm not allowed to be there when the flag-draped casket comes in. As a matter of fact, Bob, one family asked me whether I would meet their son who was tragically gunned down, actually car bomb in Iraq. This is several months ago. I said I would be honored to be with them. They wanted me to come with the minister. They wanted me through the whole process. The commander of the base told me that he couldn't allow that to happen and he's a friend--this is not like there's no hostility there; I'm on the base all the time--until he cleared it with the Pentagon. And I'm told the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. So in order for me to literally go in and accompany a mom and a dad and a son to pick up the body of a dead son, a young Marine killed in Iraq, I was not just able to do it as a senior United States senator, former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee--not like I'm new to this. I had to get specific permission for that specific event. ...It's the civilian decision in the Defense Department that you're not allowed to be there just to show respects.


Blame the Bush administration for this un-patriotic act of political dirt. The less our citizens see of the flag draped coffins arriving in the U.S, the longer we'll be receiving our dead heros killed in Iraq.