Bush to Visit Ft. Carson on Day of Soldier's Memorial Service

NewsMax.com ^ | 11/19/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

President Bush will visit the military base at Fort Carson, Colo., on Monday, Nov. 24, the same day base officials plan to hold a memorial service for one of the 27 soldiers from the installation who have been killed in Iraq.

The visit comes amidst of a chorus of media complaints that the president is trying to downplay the sacrifices made by U.S. forces in Iraq, with some reports claiming, erroneously, that hasn't attended any memorial services commemorating troops killed there.

Although the White House has yet to officially announce the trip, a spokeswoman for Fort Carson confirmed the visit late Tuesday to Denver's ABC affiliate, 7NEWS.

A White House spokesman did not immediately return a call from NewsMax seeking confirmation that Bush would attend the memorial service for the so far unnamed soldier.

In a report earlier this month, the New York Times complained, "The president has not attended the funeral of any American soldiers killed in action." Claiming he was breaking with tradition, the paper added, "Like other presidents, Mr. Clinton appeared at some military funerals."

But a comprehensive review of news reports throughout the 1990s failed to turn up a single report of Mr. Clinton attending an individual soldier's funeral.

To back up their claim, the Times cited a memorial service for victims of the USS Cole terrorist attack in Oct. 2000, which Clinton attended.

But a public memorial service commemorating multiple deaths in combat is different from a private funeral. Like Clinton, Bush has attended memorial services where he paid tribute to soldiers killed on his watch.

Just last week Bush devoted part of his Veteran's Day commemoration at Arlington's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to memorializing the U.S.'s Iraq war dead.

"On this Veterans Day, with our nation at war, Americans are deeply aware of the current military struggle and of recent sacrifice - young Americans have died in liberating Iraq and Afghanistan," he told the gathering. "They did not live to be called veterans, but this nation will never forget their lives of service and all they did for us."

The same day the president signed legislation doubling the military's combat death benefit.

Apparently unaware of Bush's plans to visit Fort Carson, the Times was at it again on Wednesday, with columnist John B. Roberts complaining, "While the president writes letters to the families of soldiers who have been killed and meets privately with them at military bases, he has not attended an open memorial or a military service."

[Inspectorette]

and meets privately with them at military bases,

Because President Bush, unlike his loathsome predecessor, doesn't want to exploit them in the media in their time of grief.

[hresources]

If anybody doesn't think that the death of an American soldier effects this Commander in Chief deeply has to be blind. I have never seen a President so moved by the sacrifice of our troops (And I have seen a few having retired from the Army). Funerals are very private things and the attendance of a President turns it into a media circus. If the family wants him, I would bet anything he would try and be there. The troops love this President (Unlike the last one) and he loves and prays for them.

[ravingnutter]

You are absolutely correct, Clinton's actions offended him. Bush contacts each of the families individually with his condolences, which respects their privacy in their time of grief...found in a search...

"He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.

Or, as another White House official put it: "If you're the brother or mother of a soldier who was killed on Saturday, and nothing was said, and then the president says something on Sunday? Unless the president starts saying it for all of them, he can't do it."

So, for now, Bush is continuing to refer as generically as possible to the sacrifice of all, as he did when reporters asked him on Tuesday in California to comment directly on the helicopter attack. "I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life," Bush replied, then added that the soldiers had died "for a cause greater than themselves," which he said was the campaign against terrorism.

Bartlett would not discuss how much concern comments like Wilson's had created at the White House. "The president writes a letter to every family of a fallen soldier, and meets privately with families of soldiers at military bases," Bartlett said. "He grieves with them, he understands. I'm not going to judge anybody's comments made in such a difficult period. People say a lot of things."

People close to the president say that another reason Bush has not been more willing to express more public sympathy for individual soldiers killed in Iraq is his determination to let families have their privacy. Bush was offended, his friends say, about what he saw at times as President Bill Clinton's exploitation of the public's grief for political gain.

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