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Thursday, October 29, 2009
News Obama greets fallen soldiers
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:42 AM
When was the last time you heard of any president greeting America's fallen soldiers as they returned home in their new home, a flag-draped casket? I've never know a president to do anything of the sort. In fact, until Bush, part duh, left office, the American media wasn't allowed to photograph their return at all.
Makes you wonder if he, too, is tired of every other month being declared the "deadliest month" of fighting in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Barack Obama saw first hand the human cost of the Afghanistan war Thursday as he saluted the flag-draped caskets of 18 soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan this week.After a midnight flight in his Marine One presidential helicopter, Obama landed in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the largest U.S. military mortuary and main point of entry for service members killed abroad.
The previously unannounced visit came as Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency that has reached its fiercest level in eight years.
A military chaplain accompanied Obama and other officials onboard and said a prayer over each casket before it was transferred out of the aircraft, military officials said.
The military calls the process 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.
By 4:45 a.m., the president had touched back down on the South Lawn.
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