Putting Her Foot Down and Getting the Boot

[DogPoundPup]

The ghost of Rummy is proving difficult to exorcise.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to sweep out the symbols of his predecessor's capricious reign, firing acolytes of Donald Rumsfeld and bringing glasnost to the Pentagon.

But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead.

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last night, said he couldn't comment on Gray's firing. But he said the overall policy at Arlington is correct. "It appears to me that we've struck the right balance, consistent with the wishes of the family," the secretary said.

Just 10 days on the job, she was handling media coverage for the burial of a Marine colonel who had been killed in Iraq when she noticed that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery's deputy superintendent, had moved the media area 50 yards away from the service, obstructing the photographs and making the service inaudible. The Washington Sketch column on April 24 noted that Gray pushed for more access to the service but was "apparently shot down by other cemetery officials."

Gates had his staff inquire with the cemetery about the article and was told that "the policy had not in any way changed," Gates's spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said yesterday. Geren, the Army secretary, added that "the policy has not changed, and I understand the practice hasn't, either."

That, however, is false. Through at least 2005 -- during Rumsfeld's tenure, no less -- reporters were placed in a location where they could hear the prayers and the eulogies and film the handing of the folded flag to the next of kin. The coverage of the ceremonies -- in the nearly two-thirds of cases where families permitted it -- provided moving reminders to a distracted nation that there was a war going on. But the access gradually eroded, and Gray arrived to discover that it was gone.

Read more http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/09/AR2008070902169.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

[sasquatch]

1. My God I hate these people

[Faux pas]

2. Pathetically sickening. Evil seems to have no end.

:grr:

[formercia]

3. Dead, what dead?

The Illegal War of Aggression does not exist. It is just a figment of your imagination.

Move along, nothing to see here.

More perception management exposed.

[bulloney]

4. Denial is a river in Egypt.

Don't cha know?

[Olney Blue]

5. They've taken away our right to grieve.