1. Major General Harold Greene's body was returned to the US in 2014. Obama was golfing at the time, so he didn't attend the ceremony. Neither did the VP or the Secretary of Defense, and flags were not lowered to half-staff.
U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno presented the flag that had covered Greene’s casket to his widow, Susan Myers, a retired Army colonel. Odierno then presented three more flags to Greene’s son, Matthew, a first lieutenant in the Army; his daughter, Amelia; and his father, also named Harold.
The burial was preceded by a chapel service that was closed to media. Lt. Col. Juanita Chang, an Army public affairs officer, said the 650-seat chapel at Arlington was filled beyond capacity. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel attended and met with the family.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greene-report/
2. Four days later, Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, after robbing a convenience store and seriously injuring a police officer. Obama sent a three-person delegation to Brown's funeral.
Brown was shoplifting (he stole some cigarillos) but he was stopped for jaywalking. The police officer was not seriously injured; he had some redness and bruising on his face.
The funeral was attended by Assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement Marlon Marshall and Heather Foster, an advisor to the public engagement office.
Michael Brown did not have a felony record and he had no outstanding criminal complaints when he was shot.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/broken-record/
3. When Margaret Thatcher died, Obama sent only a small low-level delegation to her funeral.
While Barack Obama was invited, he has opted to send a presidential delegation comprising no serving politicians. Shultz was secretary of state to Ronald Reagan while Baker served the elder George Bush. Also representing Obama will be Barbara Stephenson, chargé d'affaires at the US embassy in London, and Louis Susman, the recently departed ambassador to Britain.
Separately, the Republican party is sending three members of the House of Representatives: Marsha Blackburn, who will lead the delegation, along with Michele Bachmann and George Holding. Blackburn is a leading fiscal conservative, while Bachmann, a member of the hardline conservative Tea Party faction, became internationally known during her spectacular if brief bid for the 2012 presidential nomination.
Another leading Republican conservative and attempted 2012 nominee, Newt Gingrich, is also among the confirmed attendees. Ronald Reagan's widow, Nancy, was invited but has said she felt unable to make the trip aged 91.
The somewhat ambiguous nature of Thatcher's funeral, which is not a state event but nonetheless has many of the trappings of such a ceremony, given the involvement of the Queen and members of the armed forces, has prompted a varying response from other countries in terms of representation.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/16/margaret-thatcher-funeral-us-representation
4. When Chris Kyle was killed, there was no expression of sympathy from the White House. Yet when Whitney Houston died of a drug overdose, Obama/Biden ordered flags to half-staff.
Texas governor Rick Perry issued a statement expressing his condolences to Chris Kyle’s family “and the thousands of service members that were his extended family,” but despite a good deal of public support for the gesture, Governor Perry did not issue a proclamation directing flags to be flown at half-staff statewide on the occasion of either Chris Kyle’s memorial service or his funeral. (As noted above, that honor is a traditional one for those who have died while active duty members of the armed forces, but Kyle did not die on active duty, having left the U.S. Navy in 2009.)...
New Jersey governor Chris Christie made a somewhat controversial decision in directing all New Jersey state flags to be flown at half-staff in (Whitney Houston's) honor
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flag-flap-3/
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Help with fact-finding, please: Obama and funerals (Original post)
Kali (54,135 posts) 
