"Obama honors fallen Americans at Dover"

[Clio the Leo]

Obama honors fallen Americans at Dover
By BEN FELLER
Associated Press Writer

<snip>

By many accounts, it was a difficult night.

After a 40-minute helicopter ride around midnight to the Delaware base where U.S. forces killed overseas come home, Obama went immediately to a chapel to speak with relatives of the fallen. Their loved ones had died just two or three days before.

Of the 18 fallen Americans on the C-17, 10 of them - including three Drug Enforcement Administration agents - were killed Monday when a U.S. military helicopter crashed returning from a firefight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers in western Afghanistan. The other eight soldiers were killed Tuesday when their personnel vehicles were struck by roadside bombs in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

The military calls the process of removing remains from the plane a dignified transfer, not a ceremony, because there is nothing to celebrate. The cases are not labeled coffins, although they come off looking that way, enveloped in flags.

A group of dignitaries, in this case including Obama, boards the plane for prayers, then stands in a line of honor outside. The family is brought up in a van. Then six soldiers in camouflage and black berets carry each case down the ramp and into a waiting van.

Most of what Obama saw, though, was private.

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.

His name was Dale R. Griffin, an Army sergeant from Terre Haute, Ind., and a top wrestler in high school and in college at Virginia Military Institute. He was remembered Thursday by friends and a former coach as particularly tenacious. Vigo County, Ind., Judge Chris Newton, a family friend, described him as "unbelievably tough and resilient."



<snip>

Griffin's remains were the last to be carried past the president. It was not quite 4 a.m. The sky was black and a yellowish light came from poles flanking the plane. The only sounds were a whirring power unit on the plane and the clicking of cameras. The president saluted as Griffin's case came down the ramp.

By 4:45 a.m., five hours after leaving the White House, the president had touched back down on the South Lawn. He walked inside, alone.
Gibbs said later that Obama remained quiet on the way back, saying thanks to his team but little else.

"I don't think you can go out there and not understand what you are seeing," said Gibbs, clearly shaken and moved by the experience. "It's hard not to be overwhelmed."

The president's trip to Dover, something he has wanted to do for months, came at a pivotal moment for the Afghanistan war.

The enormous blow to U.S. forces there this week was part of a month in which at least 55 U.S. troops have been killed, making October the most deadly for America in Afghanistan since the war began eight years ago.

And the visit came as Obama weighs how to overhaul the war so that terrorists can't take root again in Afghanistan and more U.S. lives and money aren't sunk into an effort that doesn't work. With the stability of Afghanistan in doubt and support for the war waning at home, it has become the dominant foreign policy challenge of his early presidency.

<snip>

Meantime, the dramatic image of a wartime president on Dover's tarmac was a portrait not witnessed in years. Obama's predecessor said the appropriate way to show his respect for war's cost was to meet with grieving military families in private, as Bush often did, but he never observed cases carrying remains coming off a cargo plane.

And now the ban on media coverage, so criticized for shielding the public from the human cost of war, is no more. Obama saw that cost directly.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_FALLEN_SOLDIERS?SITE=NJMOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

AP Video
http://video.ap.org/?t=By%20Section/U.S.&p=&f=NJMOR&g=1029dvs_obama_dover

[Honeycombe8]

1. Fitting that Obama does this while grappling with decisions on Afghanistan.

It gives him more of the full experience of war (not that any of us need it at this point).

A moving experience.

[muntrv]

2. Too bad Dimson didn't do the same thing.

[Peacetrain]

3. So different from the last administration, who ignored the returning bodies.

[HopeOverFear]

4. ...while they made it possible for more of them to come home that way

[IndianaGreen]

5. The only photo taken was of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Terre Haute. I posted story on Wednesday. Link

Terre Haute soldier killed in Afghanistan

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=151x7201

[MadHound]

6. Honors the dead on the one hand while sending the living into the meat grinder

Sorry, I can't play along with that, nor can I respect it. Bring the troops home NOW! End these wars NOW!

[IndianaGreen]

8. Politicians use dead soldiers as backdrops for photo ops

but lack the balls to end the wars, even long after everyone realizes the war has been lost.

[MadHound]

10. Yeppers, this is simply more of that "change" we can't believe in

But the suckers cheer because it is one of their own who is now in charge of the killing:puke:

[shireen]

7. sad

and touching to see the Commander in Chief pay his respects that way.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Sgt. Dale Griffin of Terre Haute would be alive today

had the President ordered the troops home after he took office.

[jenmito]

11. K&R. He's 180 degrees from Bush.

:hi: