American Military Families Decide!

We, The Military Families of America, want, need, to welcome home our loved ones, covered caskets, wounded, bloody, bleeding partial bodies, partial minds, the whole 900 yards! It's OWED to us to have this RIGHT by our Government Officials. How DARE they attempt to limit the freedoms of a grieving Nation, a grieving Military Family from viewing with Honor and Dignity our family members final flight home to the homeland! You took away the rights, freedoms, and privileges of our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers and sister, etc. when they enlisted and now you ATTEMPT to keep taking away from them and from us, Their Families, even after death in servitude to this Nation and to these peoples. It's NOT YOUR DECISION to make. It is OURS. WE WILL FIGHT YOU FOR IT! It's OUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE. For far too long YOU in Government have told us what is right, what we'll do, not do, etc. IT IS NOT YOUR RIGHT TO DECIDE!! It's for WE, THE PEOPLE, the rights, as well as the privileges of American Families. YOU WILL NOT TAKE IT AWAY FROM US. YOU HAVE ALREADY TAKEN THE LIVES OF OUR LOVED ONES.

BY OUR OWN RIGHTS, WE SHALL OVERTURN YOU IN LEAPS AND BOUNDS. TAKE HEED AMERICA, THE MILITARY FAMILIES ARE PREPARED TO FIGHT FOR THE HONOR, DUTY, PRIVILEGE OF OUR HEROES, TIL THE DEATH AND BEYOND!!

Senate endorses ban on war dead coverage
Monday, June 21, 2004 Posted: 10:02 PM EDT (0202 GMT)


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate refused Monday to change a Pentagon policy banning media coverage of America's war dead as their remains arrive in flag-draped caskets.

"It's an outrage," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who had sponsored legislation to restore coverage of homecoming ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The New Jersey Democrat said the Pentagon directive that requires strict censorship, "issued just as the Iraq war began ... prevents the American people from seeing the truth about what's happening."

The 54-39 Senate negative vote came as the American death toll in Iraq reached 845 Monday.

The vote defeated an amendment to the authorization bill for the Defense Department that would have required the Pentagon to produce a protocol in 60 days to regulate media coverage of the returning dead.

Banning press and public access to the arrival of casualties in Dover was started in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, during the term of President Bush's father.

The policy continued through President Clinton's eight years in office, although it was not strictly enforced and there was no conflict on the scale of the either the Gulf War or the war in Iraq during Clinton's tenure.

"During the Afghan war during this administration, flag-draped coffins were filmed [at Dover], and during the Kosovo conflict President Clinton was on the tarmac to receive the dead," Lautenberg said.

Citing privacy questions on the eve of the war with Iraq a year ago, the Pentagon reiterated the ban and began enforcing it at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Photos often had been allowed at Ramstein before the current Bush administration.

Sen. John Warner, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued the ban should continue to "to preserve the most important priority, and that's the privacy of the families ... and not open up this matter to greater scrutiny by the press."

The debate over whether Americans should see coffins of the war dead flared in April after The Seattle Times published a front-page photograph of coffins in a cargo plane in Kuwait and a First Amendment activist posted on his Web site dozens of like images from Dover, home to the nation's largest military mortuary.

A poll at that time found more than six in 10 Americans thought the homecomings should be covered.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.







Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/21/war.dead.media.ap/index.html