Recalling their meetings with the president, Cindy Sheehan says "he has no compassion" and Roxanne Kaylor calls him "a liar," but Sherry Orlando says he was "very sincere."
By Mark Benjamin
(snip)
When we talked in June, I hadn't heard of Sheehan. I was gathering string for an article about parents who met the president after their kids had been killed in Iraq. Bush had chosen a unique method of consolation: He was visiting military bases across the country, meeting privately with the families of fallen soldiers. No media. No photos. No recording devices. What was the president like behind closed doors? Some family members gave him glowing reviews. And some didn't.
(snip)
Like photos of American soldiers' caskets, Bush's mourning for the dead has been conspicuously absent in the Iraq war. But some presidents have mourned in public. President Clinton attended a service in the memory of the sailors killed in the attack on the USS Cole. In 1983, President Reagan went to a ceremony at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to honor those killed in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. President Lyndon Johnson attended the funerals of two soldiers killed in Vietnam.
Bush, though, has privately visited families at Fort Stewart, Ga.; Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Polk, La.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Lewis and Camp Pendleton, Calif., among others. In most cases, families are placed in separate rooms in a building on a military base. The president shuttles from room to room, meeting privately with each family. That leaves only secondhand accounts of how the president acts when he has to look a grieving mother in the eye.
(snip)
"They put us in rooms and the president comes along and visits each one, kind of like a doctor's office," Owen said…
more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/23/bereaved/index.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
