"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.
"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."
Is it me, or are their more of these type of sentences injected into current military articles?
Notice the "other eras" and "war and foreign county" in the third paragraph.
No change in policy that I see.
Just an other military hit piece.
If Iraq turns out to be an islamo-facist terror state, will the government buy new headstones?
Probably only you since we know how much the MSM is behind the troops and for the war. (s/)
"An accident at 4th and Main was caused by a distracted driver, obviously concerned about the quagmire in Iraq."
The Associated Press is an instrument of the Devil. Seriously.
I'm sure of it and I don't always believe that such quotes are real.
I mean that. how many family members are going to go out and have an AP story corrected, and if they do where do all the corrections go, the web log of lost mainstream media corrections?
This article makes no real sense at all, would families protest if their lost ones were listed on the wall, or on the WWII Memorial or even a flagpole in a park?
Of course not but having the operation where their lost one died engraved on a government supplied tombstone is bad?
Someone is being used, but not by our government.
This article is not surprising. Hardcore liberals and mainstream "journalists" often say they support the troops, but the truth is they loathe the military.
This is absurd. I think it should be routine to put on a gravestone the action in which a soldier/sailor/marine/airman was killed. Duh!
Max lost his limbs in "Operation f'ing around with explosives"; I can see his concern with the practice.
Someone already posted this article, but as I said in the other thread, OEF/OIF are not slogans! They are the names of the operations. It is not uncommon for the tombstones of soldiers who fought in previous wars to be marked with "WWII" "Korea" or "Vietnam." I have the feeling that the America bashing press in this case wants to leave the impression that the Pentagon is putting "Let's Roll!" or "Bring it on!" on the tombstones.
It's standard procedure to include the combat in which the soldier was involved, so far as I know. Even people who weren't killed in the combat will have "Korea" or "Vietnam," etc. on their headstones, if they get a VA headstone.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" was not a slogan, but the name of the combat (since it was not declared as a war) in which the military person in question served.
The left never rests, does it.
So what has changed? A serviceman killed overseas during World War II has that fact noted on his gravestone; a serviceman killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom will have that noted on his gravestone. I do not see the difference.
So . . . fallen veterans of previous wars had the name of the war printed on their tombstones, and so do today's heroes. I don't see the problem here.
I'm sure the libs at the AP would rather the tombstomes say "Bush's War" or "Halliburton."